32 THE ESSEX FOX HOUNDS. 



Mr. Coke, and the Duke of Grafton. Mr. Canning, in 

 fact, had slices of country lent or made over by each of the 

 above masters. Then Mr. Tufnell's hounds, which enjoyed 

 excellent sport during the first year of the century, are 

 said never to have done so well in any former season. 

 There were never fewer than fifty sportsmen out, and 

 they were sufficiently popular to be invited by General 

 Egerton to meet at Danbury, on which occasion they 

 ran for more than three hours, and the fox and hounds 

 were nearly five miles ahead of the field : so at least wrote 

 the hunting correspondent of the period. A pack of 

 what were probably harriers, and were certainly not 

 Mr. Harding Newman's, used to hunt bag-foxes in the 

 neighbourhood of Rochford, and we find records of the 

 Woodford foxhounds prior to the time of the brothers 

 Rounding, while mention is made of sundry other packs 

 which amply fulfilled the object of showing sport, though 

 failing to make their mark in the foxhunting history of 



' This Duke of Grafton hunted a portion of Suffolk, Tom Rose, his 

 famous huntsman, going backwards and forwards from Suffolk to the Grafton 

 country. The Duke's grandfather, who also had the Grafton country, kept 

 another pack of hounds at Croydon, Surrey, prior to 1735. On hunting 

 mornings he used to go from London, and was so often kept waiting by the 

 ferryman at Westminster that he conceived the project of building a bridge 

 over the Thames there. He eventually brought in a Bill to authorise it, and 

 the bridge was built in 1748. 



