THE DUKE'S HUNT. 



19 



Again, in the diary of Nicholas Assheton, of Downham, 

 near Olitheroe, Lanes., we find the following entry : — 



"June 24, 1617. To Worston Brook. Tryed for a foxe, found 

 nothing. Towler lay at a rabbit, and we stayed throught and took her. 

 Towler home to Downham to a foot-race. June 25 — I hounded and 

 killed a bitch foxe. After that to Salthill. There we had a bowson 

 (badger). Wee wrought him and killed him." 



The hearty and hardy squires of Queen Anne and^the 

 early Georgian period found, as the Duke of Buckingham 

 had discovered several decades before, that the little red 



THE SECOND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. [From an Old rHnC 



rover could provide much better sport than the crude 

 methods then in force produced. 



For some reason the Duke seems to have made Bilsdale 

 a favourite hunting-ground. He went, it is true, into 

 Bransdale, which is just over the hill top, and he occasionally 

 visited the beautiful valley of Farndale, which is to Bransdale 

 in position what that dale is to Bilsdale. It was in the 

 former dale, however, that he made a sort of second home ; 

 it was here he spent many an evening after having been out 

 all day with hounds ; it was here he caught that chill whilst 

 waiting for a fox to be dug out which ended in his death 

 at Kirbymoorside ; and it is here you must go would you 

 hear a kindly word spoken of this early Nimrod. There is 

 an old saying, which I doubt not is not peculiar to Yorkshire 

 or to Yorkshire people, to the effect that " seem' is believinV 

 They saw with their own eyes that George Villiers was a 



