ced himself to abject want.
'His excesses,' says Mr. Hunter, in his 'History of Doncaster,' 'are
still, at the expiration of two centuries, the subject of village
tradition; and his attachment to gaming is commemorated in an old
painting, long preserved in the neighboring mansion of Badsworth, in
which he is represented as playing at the old game of put, the right
hand against the left, for the stake of a cup of ale.

"The close of Sir Richard's story is as lamentable as its course.
An utter bankrupt in means and reputation, he is stated to have been
reduced to travel with the pack-horses to London, and was at last
found dead in an old hostelry! He had married Catherine, sister of
Lord Danvers, and by her left three daughters. Of the descendants of
his brothers few particulars can be ascertained. Not many years since,
a Mr. Gargrave, believed to be one of them, filled the mean employment
of parish-clerk of Kippax.

"A similar melancholy narrative applies to another great Yorkshire
house. Sir William Reresby, Bart., son and heir of the celebrated
author, succeeded, at the death of his father, in 1689, to the
beautiful estate of Thrybergh, in Yorkshire, where his ancestors had
been seated uninterruptedly from the time of the Conquest; and he
lived to see himself denuded of every acre of his broad lands. Le Neve
states, in his MSS. preserved in the Heralds' College, that he became
a tapster in the King's Bench Prison, and was tried and imprisoned for
cheating in 1711. He was alive in 1727, when Wootton's account of the
Baronets was published. In that work he is said to be reduced to a low
condition. At length he died in great obscurity, a melancholy instance
how low pursuits and base pleasures may sully the noblest name, and
waste an estate gathered with labor and preserved by the care of a
race of distinguished progenitors. Gaming was amongst Sir William's
follies--particularly that lowest specimen of the folly, the fights
of game-cocks. The tradition at Thrybergh is (for his name is not
quite forgotten) that the fine estate of Dennaby was staked and lost
on a single main. Sir William Reresby was not the only baronet who
disgraced his order at that period. In 1722, Sir Charles Burton was
tried at the Old Bailey for stealing a seal; pleaded poverty, but
was found guilty, and sentenced to transportation; which sentence was
afterward commuted for a milder punishment."

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MADRID