The Sun.
London, England, 1860-09-11 00:00:00

ANECDOTES OF DONCASTER.

(From the Atheneum.)
A day there, when the place was really in its
prime, was by no means an idle day for the gay
people who were generally making nearly a week
of it, and were often paying a guinea a night for
their beds. The men began the morning, if last
night's business had not incapacitated them, by
hunting—cub-hunting, if they could get nothing
better. They went .out early, and were easily back
for the races by two o'clock. These over, they
dined, and went to the play—the capital York com-
pany supplying the actors, and the entire county
and some districts beyond furnishing glowing
samples of north of England beauty. This portion
of the hard day's toil or delicious pleasure, as some
thought it, being completed at, a reasonable hour,
the elite of the audience repaired to the ball, and
so kept it up till the grey dawn of a coming Sep-
tember morning. The dissipation was corn pounded
for by small subscriptions to local charities and
religious societies—a course the spirit of which was
something akin to that of the famous Princess
d'Harcourt, who both gambled and cheated till
four o'clock in the morning, but who never went

o bed till she had received the Sacrament at the

hands of her chaplain.
Doubtless, many of the nobility, the most aban-
doned to the allurements or sport, were influenced

by principles superior to the ie. Among them we
may mention the Marquis of Exeter, who once
proposed that the race for the Ribblesworth Stakes
should not take place on the Monday, as, in order
to be present, he was obliged to do what he would
rather avoid—namely, travel on the Sunday. Gen.
Grosvenor, if we remember rightly, treated the
proposal with a laugh and a " rider," to the effect
that the Ribbles worth Stakes, in such a case, should

be thenceforth called the " Exeter Change!"
Queen Anne not only gave cups to be run for in
the North, but this remarkably placid woman was

very eager as a runner of her own horses on the
Turf. Pick's old llistorzcal Racing ( alendar, pub-
lished yearly at York, from 1709 to 1785, affords
evidence of this fact. The Queen entered her horses

at York, to run for her own cups; but she does not

appear to have been fortunate. In July, 1712, her
grey gelding Pepper came in fifth and third, in
two heats, for her Majesty's nine hundred guinea
cup. In the following year her grey horse Mus•
tard ran seventh and fifth fora similar prize ; four

mile heats, it must be remembered, but the horses

wereisix years old. At the summer meeting of 1714,
Anne's bay hone Star won a plate of £4O value,
in four heats, thus lost and recovered—four, three,

one, one. This was the sporting Queen's last
triumph, one of which she was never conscious.
After this royal race had been run, " an express,"
says old Pick, " arrived with the advice of the
death of her Majesty Queen Anne, upon which the
nobility and getitry immediately left the field, and
attended the Lord Mayor (Wm. Redman, Esq.)
and Archbishop Dawes, who proclaimed his Ma-
jesty King George the First, after which most of
the nobility set of for London."
The splendour of the show at Doncaster culmi-
nated in our fathers' days, or in the spring time of
many of us, who remembar, as if it were but yester-
day, when Petre's Rowton beat Voltaire_ and Sir

Hercules. In these practical days the train simply
discharges waggon-loads of noble, gentle, and sim-
ple into the town. It was not so of yore. There
was then a gathering in its true and " gradual"
sense. The divers roads brought a diverse com-
pany. The great aristocracy of the country "pro-
gressed" to their lodgings or to the course, like
princes, in grand state coaches and six, with a
score of grooms as radiant as new liveries and old
ale could make them. There were their stately
masters, Rockingham and Fitzwilliam, Leeds and
Cleveland, Harewood and Wharacliffe, whose sons,

cantering along the roads in joyous groups, would
have made a body of cavalry as handsome as Porn
pey's and less regardful of their beauty. Sons of
peers, many brothers together, young squires—all
lords of land, in hand or in hope; it was a pleasant
sight to see them! Protestant or Catholic, there
was a general fraternisation, and the roads were
merry with them—Fairfax, Lane Fox, Markham
of Beetles, Middleton Chalonner, Vavasour, Bland
of Kippax, Mitton, the Gascoynes of Aberford,
young Conyers Osborne, and three or four of the
brothers Lascelles, the eldest of them a " curled son
of Clinias," and with a not more affable word for
Lord George Bentinck or Osbaldiston than for Mr.
Gully, who is riding down from Pontefract, and
through whose hat Osbaldiston, in a duel, once sent
a ball. Better there, as Gully remarked, than
through his head !
Then what a gathering there used to be in the
streets on the Monday before the races commenced !
Debrett might have found there nearly all his
" peers," Lodge his " baronets," and Burke all
his " commoners" of note. This sort of thing
was at its height in 1829, the year when Row-
ton won. We never saw the territory of
the old Saxon de Fossard—of Tostig, son
of Godwin—of Robert Earl of Mortaigne—of the
Malolieus, or Mauleys—and, finally, of the Corpo-
ration of Doncaster, so brilliant as in that year,
when the famous Duchess of St. Albans held a little
court on the sunny side of the street, where Nor-
man and Saxon did homage to that queen for an
hour, ere all, moving off to the races, were encoun-
tered by dozens of tract distributors, solemnly pro-
nouncing that the road to the Course was the route
to Hades, and something beyond.
Altogether, there was occasionally a very mixed
society on and about the Course ; among the so-to-
speak professional habitues, men who made a busi-
ness of the pursuit there—who were actors rather
thin spectators, and all of whom have disappeared
without leaving a successor in his peculiar line—
we may mention the old Duke of Leeds, redolent of
port—the white-famed Duke of Cleveland, the
Jesuit of the Ring"—Mr Ridsdele, ex footman,
then millionaire, finally pauper—blacksmith Rich.
ardson, who, shaking his head at " Leeds," would
remark of himself, that sobriety alone had saved
him from being hanged—Mr. Beardsworth, who
had been originally a hackney-ceachman, now
sporting his crimson liveries—Mr. Crockford, who
commenced life with a fish basket—and the well-
known son of the ostler at the Black Swan, in
York, wearing diamond rings and pins, betting his
thousands, and looking as cool the while as if he
not only largely used the waters of Pactolus, but
owned half the gold dust on its banks.
The two extremesof the official n en, an regarded
rank, were parhaps Lord Ge.mge Bentinck and Mr.
Gully, the ex-pugilist, The former introduced, at
Doncaster, the signal-flag to regulate the "starts,"