96 RECORDS OF THE CHASE 



sporting talent gained for him the highest respect, I 

 may say affection and adoration; but unhappily he 

 was cut off in the prime of life when sojourning at his 

 seat Ravensdale Park, in the county of Louth, in 

 Ireland, on the twenty-second of August, 1833, in the 

 thirty-seventh year of his age. I was given to under- 

 stand by some of his acquaintances' that a short time 

 previous to his death he had been amusing himself 

 otterhunting, and at all times regardless of weather, 

 had taken a severe cold, the shock from which his con- 

 stitution was unable to withstand. To the astonishment 

 of everybody, and, I believe, not less so to his for- 

 tunate successor, he left all his unentailed property to 

 his friend, Mr. Francis Littleton Holyoake, a gentle- 

 man who had been well known in Leicestershire as one 

 of the best, if not the best man over a country of his 

 time. He was the eldest son of Mr. Francis Holyoake 

 of Tettenhall, Staffordshire, a great friend and contem- 

 porary of Mr. Corbet's, and a member of the Stratford 

 Hunt Club, when Warwickshire first became 

 distinguished in the annals of fox-hunting. 



Leicestershire now came into the possession of Mr. 

 Holyoake as it were by inheritance, together with the 

 horses and hounds. A part of it was very soon after- 

 wards separated for the purpose of the Marquis of 

 Hastings establishing a pack of hounds to hunt that 

 which has subsequently been called the Donnington 

 country; an example which has been followed in other 

 parts with manifest advantage. As foxes have become 

 more numerous, the preservation of them more care- 

 fully considered, a given tract of country is capable of 

 affording more hunting by such an arrangement. Mr. 

 Meynell only hunted three days in the week over a 

 greater extent of country than the Quorn was prior to 

 the separation of the Donnington. The former now 

 affords five or six days in the week, the latter three ; 

 thus eight or nine days' hunting is obtained where, in 

 olden times they could only enjoy three. 



Shortly after coming into possession of the property 



