1809] 



NIMEOD AND JOHN LUCY. 37 



In the i^aiiw letter "Niinrod '" gives an aecouut of tlie great Diteliley run, 

 and how tlie Rev. John Lucy, out of 150 persons present, was tlie only man 

 who went with the hounds to the (>ud. The two next best, he says, were Lord 

 Molyneux and the late Sir Charles Mordaunt. It appears that the run was 

 described to him at this celebrated dinner he had at Hampton Lucy, and ho 

 says, rather in contradiction of what has lie&n quoted before, that " the pace 

 Lord Middleton's hounds went through the whole of this run, the seA^erity of 

 the c;juutry l)eing also taken into consideration, exceeds anything that I had 

 before seen or heard of. or that I liave seen ever since, and whicli onhj hounds 

 in the very bed condition could have diown." I cannot for the life of me 

 make out whether " Ninirod " is speaking himself here, or whetlier he was out, 

 in this run. They were tough old sportsmen then. Whoever it was who was out 

 had to be at Daventry by ten o'clock the next morning, so he was obliged to 

 turn out at ten o'clock at night from the house of the friend who had mounted 

 him in order to proceed to Stratford-on-Avon to prepare for the next 

 viorniny'^ st(frt. Seven of the sportsmen ' in tlie clul)-ro(mi asked him 

 what had l)ecome of th(> fox, and he could not say. During the run it 

 hailed and rained, witli a cutting north-east wind, and the time was just 

 about Christmas. 



•• Niinrod." having given an interesting pedigree of the rev. gentleman,* 

 mentions that a gentleman of the name of Knightley was of the party 

 at Mr. Lucy's, whose family, he says, have been long seated in this fine 

 county. "The name of the mansion house is Offchurch, so called from 

 having been the residence of King OfEa, but the Knightleys have possessed 

 the estate since the time of Harry the Eighth. Mr. Knightley has 

 not long left the University of Oxford, where he acquired a taste for 

 foxhunting, which, it is to be hoped, will only leave him with his last 

 breath." 



Li the Sporting Magazine, November, 1824, there is a print of the 

 celebrated lumter Confidence, engraved by Webb, from a painting by Clifton 

 Tomson, the property of that celebrated sportsman John Lockley, Esq., 

 and was tvice sold for 700 guineas. See also Vol. 15. new series, 

 p. 409. We reproduce the print on page 33. 



In the Sporting Magazine, February. 1825. there is an engraving of the 

 celebrated hound Trojan. The picture is by Elmer, and is engraved by W. 

 Smith. He is taken in the park under an old oak tree, with a lake and Sun- 

 dorne Castle in the distance. The picture is probalily still at Sundorne. It 

 is evidently the same hound as is re])resented in the right hand corner of the 

 celebrated print of Mr. Corbet and his hounds, but he is not delineated as 

 such a good-looking hound. He has great, strong quarters and thighs, which 



* It was in Sir Thomas Lucy's park — as is well known— that the frolic was played 

 which drove our great Shakespeare to London, but for which, perhaps, his plays might 

 never have been written. This reminds me of a laughable anecdote : " (ioing one night, 

 some years ago, to Drury Lane Theatre with a brother foxhunter, who had sacrificed 

 rather Ireely to the jolly god, we were shown into a box, and saw an actor djing on the 

 stage. My friend, who thought he was going to laugh at a comedy, and had no turn 

 for the tragic muse, called out loudly to the box-keeper, and asked him what the play 



was. ' One of Shakespeare's tragedies, sir,' said the box-keeper. ' D that fellow ! ' 



said my friend ; ' I wish they had hanged him when he stole the sheep ! ' " It is almost 

 unnecessary to add that he was in some danger of being turned out of the theatre from 

 his want of taste, to say nothing of the ignorance he displayed in making our great 

 poet a sheepstealer. — Nimrod. 



