2 England's oldest hunt. 



chase one of the main concerns in life, and thus it is that 

 directly or indirectly the early history of many a country 

 side, both local and social, is interwoven with the sporting 

 history, and to part the twain would be well-nigh impossible, 

 whilst detracting from the interest of the subject in hand. 

 One writer has a couplet pregnant in its suggestiveness of 

 this inter-connection between the importance of sport and 

 the corresponding importance of the locality — 



111 fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 

 Where wealth accumulates and hounds decay. 



Which bears out what I have said as to history local and 

 history sporting going hand-in-hand together. 



My point is this, that whilst this is pre-eminently the 

 history of England's first pack of foxhounds, it is at the 

 same time a review of the lives, the manners, the customs, 

 and the beliefs of those who lived in North Yorkshire in the 

 early seventeenth century, and of the evolution of their lore 

 and legend, as well as a description of the topography of the 

 beautiful portion of the Riding at this period. These ex- 

 cursions into the fertile field of the past prove that from the 

 very inception of foxhunting it has been a popular sport 

 in the county of broad acres, and that, however enthusiastic 

 we may be at the present time, we are not more so than our 

 hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard-swearing forbears — the 

 squirearchy and the yeomen of a couple of centuries or more 

 ago. They reveal also much of interest regarding the early 

 modus operandi, and the strange beliefs of these old Nimrods, 

 whilst showing that the change not only in sport, but the 

 whole social life of to-day, has affected but little those in the 

 isolation of the dales and hill-sides of which I shall speak. 



It is necessary at the outset to say a word regarding the 

 fox and foxhunting generally. To-day, it is generally ad- 

 mitted that he provides the " sport of all sports," but this 

 discovery is of comparatively recent date. Foxhunting 

 claims nothing of the antiquity of harehunting. The very 

 first sentences in the most recent history of "Hare hunting 

 and Harriers," by Mr. H. A. Bryden, runs : — 



" Hare hunting can claim a more respectable antiquity than the 

 chase of the fox. It may be doubted whether Tickell, the poet, is 



