ESSEX FOXES. 57 



My answer was, '/ hope not alive, sir! My hounds were 

 close at his brush when he broke covert, and they went the 

 very best pace for fifty-five minutes over the open without 

 a check, and killed him at the edge of a chain of wood- 

 lands, where we were certain of changing. Not forty 

 yards from the place where they killed him a fresh fox 

 went away ; if, therefore, he could only have held on for 

 that short distance we should, in all probability, have 

 changed." 



" I could enumerate many more capital runs to prove 

 the stoutness of the Essex foxes, which I had from 

 Manwood, Brickies, Witney Wood, Lord Maynard's 

 High Wood, East End, Leaden Roothing, Matching 

 Park, Row Wood, Marks and Offrey. All the foxes 

 found in the coverts mentioned are stub-bred. I declare 

 to you, I do not remember ever finding a bad running 

 fox from Ongar to Haverhill, a disUmce of thirty miles." 



He mentions that the longest run he ever had after 

 a fox in Essex was from Hempstead Wood (a covert 

 notorious for stout running foxes) to between Heding- 

 ham and Colne, where hounds killed him ; the distance was 

 calculated at seventeen miles. 



In the Sporting Magazine for October, 1809, an 

 amusing account is given of the opening day of his 



