There is no certainty as to when racing
began at Epsom Downs; but most antiquaries
believe in the reign of James the First, who
loved a good horse and liked to sweep up a
stage. Certain it is that in 1648, six hundred
Cralier gentlemen assembled at Epsom Downs
under pretence of a horse race, and marched
from there to Reigate. Major Audely, with
five troops of horse and three of foot, overtook
them at Ewell, skirmished with them in
Nonesuch Park, and charged and routed them
over a hill half-way to Kingston. The Duke of
Buckingham—a noble, brave, handsome youth—
set his back to an elm tree, and there fought
dsperately at bay till he was struck down.
At Kingston the Cavaliers rallied, and drove
back the Puritan cavalry. The Epsom races
can only be clearly traced back as far as the
wear 1780, when the famous Madcap won the
prize, and proved the best plate horse in England.
The races were at first held in the spring
and autumn, and being then comparatively local,
began at eleven, and were conducted in a quiet
leisurely way, the company usually trooping
off to the town for a general dinner after the
first and second heat, and returning to another
tranquil race after their wine. In 1825, sixty
thousand persons was thought a grand assemblage
at the Derby. The London, Dorking,
Worthing, and Chichester coaches brought
down the few visitors, but there were no trains
to pour their two hundred thousand at once
upon the town. The day had not become the
carnival it now is: no green boughs, false noses,
or oak apples enlivened the noisy, jostling
procession. It must have been a sober trotting
along of long-coated men in cocked-hats for
a mere day's fresh air and pic-nic.

Epsom, a place proud of its traditions, has
a name of very doubtful derivation. Some
etymologists trace it back to Ebbs-ham (the
village of the Ebb), from an intermittent
spring that here gushes out of the chalk, and
at certain periods is drawn back into the
earth; others from the Princess Ebba, who
was baptised A.D. 660, and gave her hand to
one of the earliest of the Saxon kings. The
palace of the fair Christian stood where Epsom
Court now is. In Doomsday Book, Ebesham
stands good for thirty-four villains and six
bondmen, two churches, two mills, and a wood
that fed twenty swine. The manor belonged
to the monastery of Cherteey, about whose
Black Abbot there is a legend preserved, not
unworthy of the crow's record. A certain gay
princess became enamoured of a handsome
abbot of the river-side monastery, and, unable
to allure the holy man from his vows of
celibacy, the wanton lady sent a troop of her
maidens to lie in ambuscade for the austere
priest, and bring him by gentle force to her
castle. The maidens fell upon him and over-
powered him. The abbot prayed only for
time to repeat his prayers at the altar of a
neighbouring chapel: and his captors laughingly
granted his request. Prostrating himself
before the altar, the abbot prayed to the
Virgin to save him by rendering him at once
loathsome to all women. The Virgin granted
his prayer, and when the abbot returned to
the rejoicing escort he was black as a negro,
and an object of horror, and not of love. The
manor of Epsom, seized by Henry the Eighth,
was given by him to one of his companions at
the tournament, Sir Nicholas Carew, of
Beddington, who was soon after executed for
treason. Queen Elizabeth gave it to Edward
Darcy, a groom of the Privy Chamber, who
soon sold it to pay his 'gambling debts.

Now, Muse, arise and sing of Epsom Salts! It
was the discovery of this nauseous but efficacious
sediment that first made Epsom famous. A
donkey, and not a philosopher, first discovered
the medical spring in 1618, by wisely refusing to
drink its waters. Fuller and Aubrey both
mention the pool as aluminous, and with a deposit of
snowy flakes. About 1619, certain learned
physicians, following in the footsteps of the
learned ass, analysed the water and pronounced
it to be impregnated with " a calcareous nitre,"
or rather a soluble, bitter, cathartic salt, the
practical effects of which were beyond all argument

About 1621 the wells were enclosed and
a shed erected for patients. The doctors soon
began to sing the praises of Epsom. In Charles
the Second's time, Shadwell lays the scene
of one of his plays at Epsom, and introduces
a bubbling projector who proposes to
supply London with fresh air in bladders
from Banstead Downs. Nell Gwynne, at
this tune under the protection of Lord Buckhurst
one of her early lovers, lived in a
house next the King's Head Hotel, now a
shop, some years ago remarkable for its low
bay windows and balcony. There Nell, tossing
her golden curls, used to sit laughing and
bantering, watching the company parading to and
fro. She remained always fond of Epsom, and
Charles afterwards built her stables near Pitt'splace,
close to the parish church. In 1723 a
fantastic old writer named Toland, who
concocted An Itinerary through England, and who
had known Epsom in Queen Anne's tune, when
dull Prince George of Denmark came there to
drink the waters, bequeathed us a curious picture
of a fashionable country spa in the old time. It
seems to have been then a long, straggling
village about a mile in length, open to the
cornfields and the fresh breezy down, a church at one
end, Lord Guildford's palace (Durdans) at the
other, and gardens and trees before every door.
The ruddy-faced country people rode round
daily with fish, venison, and Banstead Down
mutton, fruit and flowers, and bargained with
the court and city ladies, who made it their
custom of a morning to sit on benches outside
their doors.

Epsom, at this period, boasted two rival
bowling greens, to which " the company"
devoted themselves every evening, especially
on Mondays, music playing most of the day,
and dancing sometimes crowning the night.
Indeed this intense coxcomb Toland tells his
fair correspondent Eudoxia that " a fairer
circle was not to be seen at Carlsbad or Aix-la-