24 England's oldest hunt. 



Our old sporting ballads all seem to associate sporting 

 and drinking very closely, and no doubt they did go pretty 

 much hand-in-hand together. Buckingham kept a cellar 

 at Bumper Castle, and always told his host that if " owt 

 happened him " he had to have his erstwhile sporting 

 friends in and " drink t' lot dry." I have already said 

 that His Grace had the faculty of adapting himself to cir- 

 cumstances. He was able to adapt himself to his company, 

 and there is every reason to believe that he did this very 

 successfully. I have heard my own good mother often say : 



44 The most perfect manners are those devoid of mannerisms, and those 

 which succeed in placing other people at their ease." 



The Duke decidedly succeeded in the latter qualification. 



" Ya knaw," a Bilsdale man once said to me, " t'awd Deuk mun 

 'a'e been a very different sort ov a chap to these 'ere gentlemen wot 

 comes intiv t' deeal noo. They're all show off an' bounce, an' ower 

 mich awd buck (patronising) fur me, an' not a bit o' droll (conviviality 

 or joke) amang t' lot on 'em — an' not deuks nowther — bud then deuks 

 is deuks, an' can be free, bud t' other folks hev ta try ta be what tha 

 harn't." 



There is a moral here, as well as a trite expression of opinion 

 — no doubt correct — that the first master of hounds was 

 nothing if not free, and this very freedom, coupled with 

 his horsemanship, gained him great popularity. It is 

 next to an impossibility, of course, to collate any accu- 

 rate accounts of runs in the Duke's time. With one consent 

 the dalesfolk and those " awd originals," as families of long- 

 standing were all called, around Helmsley, insist " he wur 

 yan ov t'fiercest an' bouldest riders 'at ivver was ; ther's 

 nowt noo 'at can touch what he mud 'a'e been. Runs ! 

 Why Ah've heeard mah grandfeyther say they sumtahms 

 ran all neet, an' when it wur moonlight t'hossmen follered 

 'em." It may seem somewhat inconsistent, to suggest these 

 remarks are exaggerated, not so far as hounds running 

 all night goes, for only last season the Farndale pack 

 were left running in Bransdale one Saturday, darkness 

 coming on, and they ran till Sunday morning, but with 



