According to local tradition James I., when resident at Nonsuch Palace, was the first to introduce horse-racing on the downs, but the earliest competitions referred to in the contemporary press were apparently between men, not horses. Pepys, writing as late as 1663, describes a foot-race between Lee, the Duke of Richmond's footman, and a certain Tyler, a famous runner. That horse-racing was practised in the reign of Charles I. is however, proved by the fact that in 1648 a meeting was held by the Royalists on Banstead Downs under pretence of looking on at it, on which occasion, as related by Clarendon in his _History of the Rebellion_, '600 horses were collected and sent to Reigate for the use of the King's adherents.' Writing five years later, the dramatist Thomas Heywood says, 'Epsom is a place of great resort and commonly upon the market days all the countrye gentlemen appoint a friendly meeting ... to match their horses.' Charles II. was as fond of watching the racing as of attending the festivities at the spa, and it is generally supposed that it was his patronage that enabled Banstead to rival Newmarket in popular favour. However that may be, before the end of the eighteenth century the fame of the Epsom races had spread throughout the length and breadth of England, and advertisements {169} of the principal events appeared in all the principal newspapers of the day. In an August number of the _London Gazette_ for 1698, for instance, it is announced that the Banstead Downs Plate of £20 value will be run for on the 24th inst., being St. Bartholomew's Day; and the information is added that any horse may run for the said plate that shall be at Carshalton and certain other places specified, fourteen days before the Plate Day. Before many years of the eighteenth century had passed by Epsom had become practically the capital of the racing world, but the famous Derby and Oak Stakes were not instituted until 1779 and 1780. Both were founded by the then Earl of Derby, and were named, the former after him, the latter after his seat at Woodmansterne, a picturesque little village on the highest point of the Banstead Downs. As is well known, the May meeting, which lasts from the Tuesday to the Friday before Whitsuntide, during which these two great races are run, is the chief event of the racing year, and Derby Day is looked upon as a national festival, even members of Parliament taking a holiday in order to be present at the great event. A vast concourse of people assembles on the downs, and the scenes witnessed there and on the road to and from Epsom, that have been again and again eloquently described in poetry and prose, are without a parallel elsewhere. Scarcely less popular is the Oaks, often called the Ladies' Race, when only filly-foals are allowed to run, and the fair sex is always much in evidence among the spectators, but the {170} excitement is generally less than on the Derby Day. The grand-stand of Epsom, the finest in