course of 1 m. was
added in 1892. The grand stand was erected in 1777, but there are
several additional stands. Races have long been held at Doncaster, and
there was a stand on the course before the year 1615. The St Leger takes
its name from Lieut.-General St Leger, who originated the race in 1776;
but it was not so named till 1778. The meetings are held in the second
week of September. A system of electric tramways connects the town with
its principal suburbs. The agricultural trade is extensive, and there
are iron, brass and agricultural machine works. Doncaster lies on the
outskirts of a populous district extending up the valley of the Don.
Two miles S.W. is the urban district of Balby-with-Hexthorpe (pop.
6781); and 7 m. S. is that of Tickhill, where there are remains of a
Norman castle. Wheatley (3579) lies 2 m. N.E. The borough of Doncaster
is under a mayor, six aldermen and eighteen councillors. Area, 1695
acres.

_History._--There was a Roman station here, and numerous remains of the
Roman period have been found. In the reign of Edward the Confessor,
Doncaster, as a _berewic_ of the manor of Hexthorp, belonged to Earl
Tostig; but before 1086 it had been granted to Robert, earl of Mortain,
whose successor William was attainted for treason in the time of Henry
I. The overlordship then fell to the crown, and the families of
Frossard, Mauley and Salvin successively held the manor as underlords.
Doncaster was evidently a borough held of the crown for a fee farm rent
before 1194, when Richard I. granted and confirmed to the burgesses
their soke and town to hold by the ancient rent and by twenty-five marks
yearly. The town was incorporated in 1467 by Edward IV., who granted a
gild merchant and appointed that the town should be governed by a mayor
and two serjeants-at-mace elected every year by the burgesses. Henry
VII., while confirming this charter in 1505, granted further that the
burgesses should hold their town and soke with all the manors in the
soke on payment of a fee farm. He also by another charter in 1508
confirmed letters patent granted by Peter de Mauley in 1341, by which
the latter renounced to the inhabitants of Doncaster all the manorial
claims which he had upon them, with the "pernicious customs" which his
ancestors claimed from bakers, brewers, butchers, fishers and
wind-fallen trees. In 1623 Ralph Salvin tried to regain the manor of
Doncaster from the mayor and burgesses, who, fearing that the case