58 MnQB of tbe If^untino^ffielt) 



twelfth year of Henry II, and the Sir Hugo of Edward 

 the First's tin:ie received the Order of the Bath for his 

 conspicuous gallantry at Crecy and Poictiers. Of such 

 good old stock came Hugo Meynell, who was born in 

 the month of June 1735. At the early age of three- 

 and-twenty he was High Sheriff for Derbyshire, a proof 

 of the good position he held in his native county. 

 He was three times elected a Member of Parliament. 

 From 1 76 1 to 1768 he sat as representative of Lichfield ; 

 in 1774 he was elected Member for Lymington, and in 

 1778 he was returned for Staffordshire. In June 1754 he 

 married Anne, daughter of John Gell, Esquire, by whom 

 he had one son, Godfrey, born October 4, 1755. Mrs 

 Meynell died at Hopton in Derbyshire in June 1757, 

 and, exactly a year after her death, Hugo Meynell took 

 to himself a second wnfe in the person of Anne, daughter 

 of Thomas Boothby Scrimshire, Esquire, of Tooley Park, 

 by whom he had two sons — Hugo, born in 1759, who 

 died in 1780, and Charles, born in 1768, who was 

 subsequently Master of the Ro}'al Tennis Court. These 

 bald facts are all that is now known of the private life of 

 Hugo Meynell. Even the date of his first appearance 

 in Leicestershire, where for fifty years he reigned as a 

 king of the hunting field, cannot now be ascertained, but 

 it was probably about the year 1754 that he purchased 

 the house at Quorndon, which he transformed into a 

 commodious hunting seat, and which, on the illness of 

 his eldest son, was sold in 1800 to the Earl of Sefton, 

 who succeeded him as Master of the Quorn. 



How popular and successful Hugo Meynell was as a 

 Master of Foxhounds may be gathered from the 

 following eulogistic remarks by ' Nimrod ' in his 

 Huyttifts^ Tours. 



