No doubt it was about this time that the growth of a regular professional class of pedestrians was encouraged by the general custom of the fashionable gentlemen of the period who kept 'footmen' or 'running footmen' in their service. When gentlemen took to having town and country houses as well, and travelled about the abominable roads of the period, a running footman could travel much faster than the family coach, and could even go further in a day than a man on horseback. It is small wonder that, in an age given up to betting, matches should have been made by gentlemen between their footmen, and the footman of the period was often a professional pedestrian kept for the purpose. In any case a strong runner would easily find a footman's place, and his regular business of carrying messages on foot, or travelling in front of the family coach to make arrangements for the journey, would keep him in good fettle for such matches as his master might make for him. The good roads of the end of last century began to put an end to the running footman, and the railway system has completed his downfall; as a rule there is little in the footman of the present day to suggest that the original ancestor of the type performed marvellous pedestrian feats.

A curious story which is told of the celebrated 'Old Q.' shows how a good runner could find his running powers available for procuring him service in a family. 'Old Q.' used to engage his footmen by a species of competitive examination. Every candidate for a vacancy was rigged out in the footman's uniform and given the regular staff to carry, and then had to 'show his paces' by running up and down in front of the house. One abominably hot day ' Old Q.' reclined on a balcony, and a candidate was running so well that the nobleman made him go on running and running in the heat for the pleasure of looking at him. Finally he shouted to him from the balcony, 'You will do for me.' 'Yes,' said the man, who had by this time resolved not to take service with such a master, 'and these things' (pointing to the gold-laced uniform) 'will do for me,' whereupon he ran off with them, and was quite a good enough runner to outstrip pursuit.

From the time, therefore, of the rise of running footmen we find a regular line of professional runners, some in and some out of service; and accounts of the most important matches between the more famous of them are to be gathered from many contemporary records, while more occasionally one hears of the amateurs - that is, of gentlemen who back themselves to run against time or against each other for a wager. From the 'Luttrell Papers' it appears that in 1690 'Mr. Peregrine Bertie, son to the late Earl of Lindsey, upon a wager, ran the Mall in St. James's Park eleven times in less than an hour.' In the same records for the year 1699 there are several curious entries. Mention is made of William Joyce, the Kentish strong man, who pulled over a dray-horse in a tug-of-war, and could lift 20 cwt. He performed at the playhouse in Dorset Garden, the price of admission being, boxes 10s. and pit 55., from which he must have amassed something considerable. Another entry is also remarkable: a 'sporting man' was fined 9l. 4s. for swearing in the space of five hours.

This the writer seems to consider a 'record' in the way of swearing.

One of the most graphic descriptions of a foot-race between two pedestrians, who were also 'running footmen,' is given in the diary of Sir Erasmus Phillips, who was an undergraduate at Oxford in the year 1720. The extract (which we gather from a correspondent to 'Notes and Queries') is as follows: 'Rode out to Woodstock: dined at the Bear (2s. (yd.). In the evening rode to Woodstock Park, where saw a foot-race between Groves (Duke of Wharton's running footman) and Phillips (Mr. Diston's). My namesake ran the four miles round the course in 18 min. and won the race, and thereby his master 1000l., the sum Groves and he started for. On this occasion there was a most prodigious concourse of people.' The alleged time is, of course, absurd, and shows that the distance cannot have been the full four miles, or that there was some other error in calculation; but the concourse of people to such an exceedingly 'out of the way' place as Woodstock is remarkable as showing the popular interest taken in the race.

But before we settle down to give any chronological sketch of the sport of pedestrianism and its regular paid exponents, it may be advisable to turn aside for the present, to show how far the nation still continued to indulge in running, jumping, and weight-throwing at country fairs and festivals. The Puritans had apparently succeeded in putting a stop to Sunday athletic meetings, but at the fairs and wakes the same sports went on as long as these fairs had any existence; while many of them, indeed, continued in one shape or another until they were replaced by the athletic meeting which is now almost invariably an annual affair in every country town. We have seen that, up to the time of Burton, the old country sports flourished with undiminished vigour. It is abundantly clear that they survived the Rebellion both in town and country. Stow, in his 'Survey of London,' published in 1690, after quoting FitzStephen, says that the exercises mentioned by him have ' lasted to our time.' Strype, who published in 1720 another edition of Stow's Survey, mentions ' pitching the bar ' amongst the pursuits of the lower classes of his day in London; while a later writer, Maitland, in his 'History of London,' published in 1739, also describes footraces and leaping matches amongst the amusements of the lower classes.

A paper in the ' Spectator' tells the same tale as Strype and Maitland - that by the beginning of the eighteenth century athletic pastimes were considered low-class sports. In No. 161 of the second volume of the 'Spectator,' Addison wrote a paper, professing to come from a country correspondent in the West of England, describing a 'Country Wake, which in most parts of England is the eve-feast of the Dedication of our Churches.' As a matter of fact, Addison is known to have been describing a festival which he had seen at Bath. The green, he says, was covered with a promiscuous multitude of all ages and both sexes. 'The whole company were in their holiday clothes, and divided into several parties, all of them endeavouring to show themselves in those exercises wherein they excelled.' There was in one place a ring of cudgel-players, in another a football match, in another a ring of wrestlers. The prize for the winners of these competitions was a hat, 'which is always hung up by the person who gets it in one of the most conspicuous parts of the house, and looked upon by the whole family as something redounding much more to their honour than a coat-of-arms.' One young fellow, who 'carried an Air of Importance in his looks,' appeared to have a reason for his pride, for 'he and his ancestors had won so many hats that his parlour looked like a haberdasher's shop.' The young maids also, it seems, took part in the diversions, for a farmer's son being asked what he was gazing at, says 'that he was seeing Betty Welch, his sweetheart, pitch a bar.' That running matches were also common at these wakes is clear from the comment of the 'Spectator' upon the letter.