THE EIGHTH DUKE OF BEAUFORT 



Just at first some of the older followers of the 

 hunt, who had come to believe that old Philip was 

 the only huntsman in the world, found fault with his 

 successor. Long's voice was inharmonious and his 

 dog language inferior. But Long was a born hunts- 

 man, one of those men who trust their hounds and 

 whose hounds love them. He was very quiet with 

 the pack till his quick eye saw that the moment had 

 come to act, and then he would rouse every hound 

 to activity with a ringing cheer. 



He had a very wide and varied country to hunt 

 over. For nine years of his service as huntsman, 

 the Duke of Beaufort's country included the present 

 Heythrop territory. Every year Long took his 

 hounds to the Heythrop kennels, which stood where 

 the laundry of the present house is now, and ex- 

 changed the woods, light plough, and fine if deep 

 pastures of Gloucestershire and Wilts, for the 

 stonewall country of the Heythrop. The latter does 

 not carry so good a scent as Gloucestershire, and a 

 huntsman needs to be able to lift his hounds at times. 



When in 1835, shortly before the death of the 

 sixth Duke, the Oxfordshire country was given up, 

 the present Heythrop hunt was founded. The hunt 

 servants there still wear the Badminton green plush 

 instead of pink, as a memory of the days when the 

 country was a part of the Beaufort hunt, just as 

 we are reminded by those same plush coats of the 

 continuity of the Badminton hounds from the stag- 

 hounds of early days. 



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