That grim and silent monarch does not bulk largely as a sportsman in the minds of most people, yet he was a supporter of Newmarket, and we actually find him in October, 1689, the year after his accession, performing the extraordinarily quick journey of Hampton Court to Newmarket in one day, a feat then rightly considered surprising. He figures on one occasion as a reckless, unlucky, and infuriated plunger at cards. It was in 1689 that he lost 4,000 guineas overnight at basset, at one sitting. The next morning, still chafing at the loss, he gave a gentleman a stroke with his horsewhip for riding before him on the race-ground. It was rather an unfortunate outburst of temper, for from it arose the sarcasm that it was the only blow he had struck for supremacy in his kingdoms. Anne and the first two Georges were familiar with the place, but towards the close of George III.’s reign the Palace was sold. The Prince Regent, however, took a keen interest in racing, and ran a rather crooked course on the Turf, for he was practically warned off the Heath by the Jockey Club, that autocratic body of racing law-givers whose rules no one, from a jockey to a king, dare transgress. In such a world as that of racing, which it would be mere affectation to contend is followed in the main for purely sporting reasons, unmixed with the hope of gain, stringent and inflexible laws and exemplary punishments are necessary for the protection of all concerned. Like many another institution with small beginnings and unexpected growth, the Jockey Club emerges only in dim fashion from the past, and historians can only say that it was established somewhere in the reign of George II., between 1727 and 1760. Nowadays that body is all-powerful, not alone at Newmarket, but in the whole world of racing, whose events are conducted under its rules. The Heath itself is the Club’s unchallenged domain, for it is rented of the freeholder, the Duke of Portland, and its gallops are opened or closed just as the officials will it. The revenue of the Club, too, is enormous, for every jockey pays for a licence, and the fees exacted from owners at every turn, and the money taken for admission to the betting-rings and enclosures, total an income more than princely. The headquarters of the Club and Tattersall’s Rooms combined face the High Street in no very imposing manner, and the pavement in front of them becomes on race-days the Rialto of owners and trainers XXI