Whether or no James II. was a finished horseman does not appear, but it may be there is a hidden significance in the statement to be found in several histories that he was “the only crowned head known to have had a surgeon to attend him in the hunting field.” Nor is there evidence of his having ever attended a race meeting after his accession, with the exception of an important meeting held at Winchester in 1685. The stakes run for at about this time were of small value. Fifty sovereigns were deemed to be a prize well worth winning, while a purse of 100 guineas attracted many spectators and large fields and gave rise to “heated and excited speculation as to the probable results of the contest.” At some of the small meetings valuable horses would be entered to run for a paltry stake of thirty sovereigns, or even for five and twenty, and it was quite common for insignificant races of this kind to be “decided by vile persons.” The weights carried in races run during the latter half of the seventeenth century were out of all proportion. Thus we read of horses carrying ten, twelve and thirteen stone in the final heats of short flat races—in those days almost all races were run in heats. James II. does not appear to have owned any exceptionally famous horses, nor does the horse come prominently to the front during his brief reign of four years. * * * * * Two events of national importance took place in 1689: William and Mary ascended the throne of England, and the famous Byerley Turk, from which so many of our thoroughbred horses are descended, was brought over by his owner, Captain Byerley, who later was to serve in King William's army and fight for him in the battle of the Boyne. Some say that Captain Byerley had the Turk with him during that battle, but probably this was not so. From the standpoint from which we are passing the history of this country in review, the arrival of the Byerley Turk was an event of almost as great importance as William and Mary's accession, for as the popularity of the Turf was still increasing year by year the importation of so valuable a stallion as the Byerley Turk in a sense served as a landmark. And certainly this horse proved to be one of the greatest of all the sires that were brought over in the seventeenth century. The king, a good judge of a horse, was much attracted by “Byerley's Treasure,” as some soon came to call it, and it is known that the king himself owned at this time some of the finest thoroughbreds, probably, that had ever been foaled. That he ran horses of his own at Newmarket is beyond dispute, and the general impression amongst historical writers appears to be that he ran horses also at several other meetings.