A sporting event of much later date and not quite so extravagant a nature was Captain Robert Barclay of Ury’s sixty-four-miles’ walk from Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, to Newmarket, on a hot July day in 1803. He accomplished that feat in ten hours. This famous pedestrian, son of another Robert Barclay, who once walked the 510 miles from London to Ury in ten days, was the hero of many such sporting performances, and in 1809 walked 1,000 miles on the Heath in 1,000 consecutive hours. He was thirty years of age at the time. On Wednesday, May 31st, he began what was then regarded as “the most remarkable feat ever recorded in the annals of pedestrianism,” concluding it on Wednesday, July 12th, at 3.37 p.m., in the presence of 10,000 spectators, with twenty-three minutes to spare. The wager (for no one in those days did anything without wagering) was for 1,000 guineas a side. It was supposed that not less than 100,000 guineas changed hands among those 10,000 onlookers. His mile average the first week was 14 min. 54 sec. During the last week it fell to 21 min. 4 sec., and his weight was reduced from 13 stone 4 lb. to 11 stone. This performance was undertaken without any training, and so does not compare on even terms with those of Edward Payson Weston, the American pedestrian, who, at the beginning of 1878, walked 1,000 miles in 398 hrs. 19 min., at the Cricket Ground, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and out of those 398 hours rested altogether 150 hrs. 38½ min. Weston, who improved even on this by walking 1,977½ miles in 1,000 hours along the roads, at the beginning of 1879, trained continually. Another famous sporting item of this period was Abraham Wood’s forty miles running match on Newmarket Heath, on April 16th, 1807. The stake was 500 guineas, and the performance was to be concluded in five hours. Wood, who was a native of Mildrew, in Lancashire, and considered, as an athlete, second only to Captain Barclay, completed the forty miles in four minutes under the five hours. He ran the first eight miles in 48 minutes, and the first twenty in 2 hours 7 minutes. The Palace built by James I., and rebuilt by Charles II., long continued in use. James II. was too busy striving to dragoon the nation into Roman Catholicism, to take much interest in the races, but William III. was often here.