72 mms of tbe irDuntiuo*3fielt) 



then goes on to specify certain months in the year 

 during which the respective parties are to keep at their 

 proper costs and charges, sixteen couples of hounds, 

 the huntsman, a boy and three horses. The agreement 

 was to stand for five years. Two things are noteworthy 

 about this document. In the first place, the hounds are 

 definitely styled ' foxhounds,' a proof that fox-hunting was 

 regarded as a special branch of the Chase, and apparently 

 ranked above hare-hunting in the Brocklesby country, 

 which certainly was not the case in any other part of 

 England at that time, or for long afterwards. In the 

 second place, we have here the first mention, so far as I 

 am aware, of the number of hounds, horses and servants 

 in a hunting establishment of the period. It is a modest 

 total, no doubt, — not sufficient, one would think, for more 

 than one day's hunting a week. But then, as I have 

 shown elsewhere, foxes were very scarce in those times, 

 for there was no attempt made to preserve them. What 

 happened after the expiration of the five years named 

 in the agreement there is no record to show. But the 

 manuscript list of hounds in the archives of Brocklesby, 

 which date back to 1746, prove that at that time, at any 

 rate, the hounds were in the sole possession of the 

 Mr Charles Pelham named in the memorandum, who, 

 as I have already stated, died in 1763, at the age of 

 eighty-four. There is probably, therefore, truth in the 

 tradition which assigns to the house of Pelham the un- 

 interrupted mastership of the Brocklesby for a hundred 

 and sixty years. 



And scarcely less remarkable than the uninterrupted 

 reign of the Pelhams as Masters has been that of the 

 Smiths as huntsmen of the Brocklesby. The first of 

 them was Thomas Smith, whose tenure of ofifice was 



