ii6 CENTURY OF ENGLISH FOX-HUNTING 



authority says : " His one fatal mistake was not 

 keeping his huntsman, Tom Sebright, whose assist- 

 ance he often needed in the field after he had gone 

 to Earl Fitzwilliam. When the Squire was hors de 

 combat, after the accident already referred to, Sebright, 

 with Dick Burton to whip-in to him, hunted the 

 country with satisfaction to everybody." But the 

 Squire was ambitious to hunt his own hounds, which 

 he did six days a week, a feat which only one other 

 gentleman huntsman, namely Lord Darlington, has 

 ever achieved. He invariably rode to covert, and 

 when asked on one occasion whether he should drive 

 to Widmerpool, as the roads were good, replied, " Oh, 

 no ; there is nothing like the pigskin." He was also 

 extremely fair towards his foxes, believing, with the 

 great Meynell, that murdering foxes is a most absurd 

 prodigality, for seasoned foxes are as necessary to 

 sport as experienced hounds. His zeal cannot be 

 questioned. On one occasion, in 1825, having drawn 

 three coverts blank, a rare experience in Leicester- 

 shire, he observed that there was a moon, and he 

 would draw till the next morning but that he would 

 find a fox. As it happened, he found one at the 

 next covert. Nor did he spare any expense in pro- 

 viding his followers with sport, for once, when hounds 

 had met at Owelthorpe, in Nottinghamshire, at 

 2 p.m., a clean pack of hounds with a clean stud of 

 horses were turned out from the inn at Widmerpool. 

 Even in those days the Leicestershire fields of hunt- 

 ing people had assumed abnormal proportions, and 



