MR. THOMAS WILLIAM COKE. 39 



Strange that he, a new comer, should have taken such a 

 leading part in getting the country hunted. The Colonel 

 commanded the Loyal Essex Regiment of Fencible 

 Cavalry, and history records that he was once tried by 

 Court-martial on no fewer than seventeen counts, but he 

 was acquitted at the last, as Yentrice, the prosecutor, was 

 held to have " prevaricated." The Colonel, too, put up 

 the Harlow Bush Rooms as drill rooms for levies made 

 to meet an expected invasion by Bonaparte. He farmed his 

 own land in Essex, and, like Mr. Coke, contributed to 

 Arthur Young's Surveys of the Eastern Counties ; in 1 798 

 he was appointed a Yerclerer of Epping Forest. 



This, then, was the gentleman who was instrumental 

 in bringing Mr. Coke's hounds into Essex. The latter's 

 principal kennel was, of course, at Holkham, but he had 

 another at Castle Hedingham, and eventually it became 

 necessary for him to have a third for his Essex country. 

 Where this kennel was is not quite clear. " The Druid " and 

 a writer in the Sporting Magazine assert that the hounds 

 were kennelled at Epping ; but in a life of Jones, who, 

 after whipping in to Catch, Mr. Coke's Oxfordshire hunts- 

 man, obtained his promotion on the migration of the pack 

 into Norfolk, the Essex Kennel is definitely stated to have 

 been at Harlow Bush, though no trace of any such building 



