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life with happiness, as the last season might be the last 

 for me. So, gentlemen sportsmen, I must conclude by 

 saying God save the Queen and all the Royal Family, 

 and all )'ou, gentlemen fox-hunters. Gentlemen, I am 

 Samuel Curnock, the old runner of North Sibley, 

 Gloucestershire.' 



The story goes, that instead of getting the thirty 

 pounds a year for which he asked, he had nearer 

 fifty. 



Lord Fitzhardinge the second was succeeded in his 

 title and estates and in the mastership of the Fitzhardinge 

 hounds by his son Sir Francis William Fitzhardinge 

 Berkeley, who was born in 1826, educated at Rugby 

 under Arnold, and saw a good deal of varied life in the 

 Far West before joining the Blues, with whom he was 

 immensely popular. He was full of fun and high 

 animal spirits ; he possessed, moreover, a fund of dry 

 humour that made him an inimitable raconteur. When 

 he succeeded to the title and estates and settled at 

 Berkeley Castle, he became as popular among the 

 Gloucestershire farmers as he had been among his 

 brother officers of the Blues. There are fine horsemen 

 and bold riders down there, but Lord Fitzhardinge 

 found none who could beat him with his light weight 

 across the Berkeley Vale, mounted on such flyers as The 

 Pope and Citizen. One innovation he made which, per- 

 haps, was not universally popular : he abolished the orange 

 plush or ' Berkeley tawny ' as the uniform of the Hunt, 

 and went back to the old scarlet with black collar which 

 had been in vogue in his grandfather's time. 



The third Lord Fitzhardinge kept up the traditional 

 excellence of the hounds and hunting establishment, and 

 died deeply regretted by all who knew him in 1896. 



