CHAPTER X. 



EVOLUTION OF THE PACK. 



I left the actual history of the Bilsdale Hunt at a time 

 when it was in very low water, to deal with the connection 

 Bobbie Dawson had with the pack. Now, at the time when 

 the Bilsdale hounds were almost extinct in the dale which 

 gave them their name, Dawson had the only hounds in it. 

 By some means, which I cannot quite explain, a portion of 

 the pack had found their way to Swainby. It will be 

 remembered that the late Lord Feversham ordered hunting 

 to cease owing to a story reaching his ears that the huntsman 

 had been selling some of the hares which they killed. Some 

 of the hounds went to Squire Bell, and so far as I can gather, 

 a number, which were trencher-fed around Swainby and 

 Faceby, were gathered together by one John Rickitson, 

 who hunted them. In " The North Countree," Mr. Dixon 

 gives the following extract from the journal of John Andrew, 

 a name so intimately connected with the Cleveland Hounds. 

 Wednesday, April 2nd, 1818. We having twelve couples of hounds 

 and John Rickaby five couples and a half. Found a fox in Newton 

 Wood, ran by the stell side nearly to Upsall, where he was headed at 

 the Stockton Road. Then to Nunthorpe and by Brass Castle, down 

 below Newham, then turned and went below Sunny Cross, nearly to 

 Tanton, then near Newby, where the hounds ran up to him and killed 

 him in a wheat field, where he could not make a trot. A burst of 

 forty-five minutes without a check, Rickaby the brush. The Doctor 

 (Dr. Mackereth, of Skelton), James Andrew, John Andrew, and Rickaby's 

 nephew well up. Nine couple of our hounds up at the death, and two 

 couple of Rickaby's. N.B. — Rickaby rode well. The absent hounds 

 with Richard Scarth, W. Coates, Isaac Booth, and Mason Williamson, 

 being thrown off, ranged Mr. Jackson's plantations, and found a bitch 

 fox, and ran her for three hours very hard to Wilton Wood and Court 

 Green and back several times, until both horses and hounds were tired, 

 when they lost her in Mr. Jackson's plantations. 



This, of course, was prior to the date when the late Lord 

 Feversham wished the Bilsdale Hunt to cease : but I am 



