BIOGRAPHIES IN A NUTSHELL 151 



a pack of foxhounds four days a week, though after- 

 wards he was constantly seen at covert-side, for there 

 were few members of the hunt who were not ready 

 to give him a mount whenever he wanted one. 

 He was succeeded by Charles Payne, of Pytchley 

 celebrity, who remained with the Wynnstay hounds 

 till 1883, which was the last season that Sir Watkin 

 was seen in the hunting field on horseback, his last 

 appearance being at Gresford on the 7th of April, 

 1883, when his friends could not help but notice 

 what ravages disease had made in him. His clothes 

 hung about him, and to a large extent his spirits, 

 hitherto good, had left him. For the last four or five 

 years he had but seldom seen his own hounds. 



Just a few words of Sir Watkin Wynn as a Master 

 of Foxhounds. Though never a flyer, he had an 

 extraordinary knack of getting over the country. He 

 would creep through blind places, drop his horse into 

 a road, jump the Aldersey Brook at a stand, never 

 lose the line of his hounds. In his heyday he always 

 rode big horses, but latterly he had ridden strong 

 cobby horses, and tested their understandings pretty 

 well down all sorts of roads that younger and lighter 

 men would have shuddered at, with a loose rein at 

 full gallop. Mr. T. H. G. Puleston writes of him : 

 " Sir Watkin had a strong seat, a light hand, good 

 nerve, and a quick eye to hounds ; he never pulled 

 his horses' mouths about, and therefore, though he 

 courted one very often by galloping down all sorts 

 of lanes, and cramming his horses through blind 



