THE REV. JOHN RUSSELL. 115 



the Rev. Peter Gliibb. The latter had for manv 

 years kept and hunted a very killing pack near 

 Little Torrington ; while the former, who lived 

 at Eggesford, occupied, with his grand pack of 

 foxhounds, a rough and extensive countrv, over 

 which, by virtue of his manorial possessions, he 

 claimed, if he did not exercise, the almost feudal 

 rights of a baron of the fifteenth century. For 

 though, 



"Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have 

 his way." 



The kennels of both these packs w^ere within 

 ten miles of Iddesleigh, and nearly equidistant 

 from that place ; consequently, in so circum- 

 scribed a country, over which he might almost 

 have flown a paper kite, the prospect of pursuing 

 the w^ild animal with success would indeed have 

 been a hopeless one. It would also have involved 

 him in endless strife, for he must inevitably 

 have encroached on the conventional rights of 

 those gentlemen, and aroused their jealousy and 

 ill-will at every turn. Iddesleigh, if he did so, 

 he was well aware w^ould be looked upon as 

 the centre of a civil war, and he as a kind of 

 Rob Roy — a marauder and freebooter, who, by 

 violating a law strict as that of the Medes and 

 Persians, w^ould be entitled to no quarter under 

 such outrageous circumstances. 



To obtain, then, an enlargement of his too 

 narrow bounds — just a few outlying covers 



