10 May, 1676, Samuel Morris aged 27 years, deposed in Court about a
horse-race run at Rappahannock Church.

Richard Ligon, to whom his cousin Thomas Harris bequeathed his "mares
and foals" in 1679, was one of the racing enthusiasts of the Colony. He
engaged in a horse-race and a controversy over it in 1678, and the
following year he ran his horse against that of Alexander Womack, the
wager being 300 pounds of tobacco. In 1683, Andrew Martin and Edward
Hatcher put their horses in a contest in which the loser's horse was the
stake to be won.

The colonists often were quarrelsome over their racing, and not
infrequently, bets on horses were put in writing and recorded in the
County records, that there might be no mistake in regard to the terms.
These races elicited a great deal of interest on the part of the people
in the countryside where they were staged.

For active recreation, bowling and tenpins; and card games of various
sorts were engaged in, often at the ordinaries, and, since wagers on the
games of which there are a record, were usual, they will be dealt with
elsewhere.

MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

Although existing records do not convey information, as to the part
music played in the life of the Virginia planter of the seventeenth
century, they do provide clues that music was enjoyed, and that a number
of instruments were in the colony. Josias Mode, host at the French
Ordinary in York County, whose widow, before 1679, married Charles
Hansford, of York, owned two violins. It is reasonable to conclude,
therefore, that guests at his hostelry were frequently entertained with
music from that instrument. The virginal (a small rectangular spinet
without legs) was the most common of instruments known to have been in
possession of the colonists, while they also owned and played the
fiddle, both small and large, the cornet, the recorder (a flageolet or
old type of flute), the flute and the hautboy. These instruments in the
hands of music lovers, frequently self-taught for the most part,
entertained the planters' families and enlivened gatherings assembled
for weddings and birthday celebrations. The hand lyre also was known in
Virginia.

DRINKING HABITS

In their drinking habits the Englishmen in Virginia were no different
from the Englishmen "at home." Accustomed to the use of "strong waters,"
they brought their tastes and their habits to the Colony. Hence, it is
not surprising that the idea arose in England that the