For we read that “so great a master in the art of riding was he that he would often be beat to-day and within eight days lay a double wager on the same horses and come off conqueror” (_sic_). No doubt this paragon of honour has many emulators on the Turf to-day, but the relatives and friends of the latter at least have not the effrontery to tell us that such men are “strictly just, utterly detesting all manner of fraud,” the statement made again and again about the elder Hume by his kinsfolk. Elsewhere we learn that sometimes he ran two horses in one race and that upon occasions he was able to hoodwink the spectators assembled into believing that a horse had tried hard to win when in reality it had barely extended itself. Hume himself would talk openly to his friends about the races he meant to win, and apparently he seldom attempted to conceal the fact that some of his horses were meant to lose. Possibly this very “ingenuousness” may have led some of his friends, and a proportion of what we should to-day call the general public, to believe that he acted honourably and always in good faith. In justice let it be said, however, that he bred good stock, also that he was a better judge of a horse than the bulk of his contemporaries—though that is not high praise. While himself engaged in roguery in connection with racing he was all the time striving to purify the Turf. He would, in all probability, have amassed a large fortune—or what was deemed in those days to be a large fortune—had he been less addicted to gambling for gambling's sake, for it is certain that from first to last he won much money by laying against his own horses as well as by backing some of them. The more amazing, therefore, is it that certain writers, even in comparatively recent times, should speak of him in all seriousness as a man of remarkable integrity. Queen Elizabeth loved the Turf and apparently was extremely fond of horses, while in her youth she must have been rather a fine horsewoman. She kept many riding horses for her own use and many more for the ladies of her court, and we know that she was extremely partial to chestnut animals. There is not, I think, any trustworthy evidence that she ever attended a race meeting held at Newmarket, but the statement made in at least one history of her period that she witnessed races at Doncaster probably is accurate, for we have proofs that a racecourse had been laid down there or marked out by the year 1600. Also we know that Elizabeth was fond of gambling and that she squandered vast sums probably in connection with the turf. It must be remembered, however, that in the second half of the sixteenth century gambling was a besetting vice. “In the reign of Queen Elizabeth,” Mr Clarkson writes, “racing was carried on to such an excess as to injure the fortunes of many individuals, private matches being then made between gentlemen, who were generally their own jockeys and tryers.”