%ovt> dPorester 127 



thing was apparently forgiven to Cecil Forester. ' 'Tis 

 only pretty Fanny's way.' If any one else had played 

 such pranks, he would probably have been sent to 

 Coventry. But Cecil Forester was a chartered libertine, 

 whose fascinating manners and dashing bonhomie 

 capti\ated men and women alike. For thirty years 

 as Cecil Forester, and afterwards as Lord Forester, 

 of which title he was first holder, he rode and lived as 

 hard as any man could do. Then gout laid him by the 

 heels, and he was reluctantly compelled to bid farewell 

 to the hunting-field. He died in May 1828, and his son 

 reigned in his stead. 



The second Lord Forester, whose portrait adorns 

 these pages, was born on the 9th of August 1801, and 

 educated at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford. 

 He soon showed himself to be a chip of the old block, 

 and in his undergraduate days was among the first flight 

 with the Bicester, what time Sir Thomas Mostyn was 

 Master, and such clippers as Lord Jersey, GrifF Lloyd, 

 and Sir Henry Peyton shed brilliancy upon the meets of 

 that famous pack. 



After leaving Oxford, Lord Forester went straight to 

 Melton, then in the glory of its ' golden age,' when the 

 'Four M's,' Maher, Maxse, Moore, and Musgrave, Captain 

 John White, Lords Sefton, Plymouth, and Lichfield 

 ' painted the town red,' whilst Thomas Assheton Smith 

 showed unrivalled sport in the field. In that day no 

 ploughshare had ever desecrated those virgin pastures, and 

 the gallops over limitless grassland were the finest to be 

 had in England. I have already quoted ' Nimrod's ' tribute 

 to the first Lord Forester, and this is what he has to say 

 of the second. ' Is there a quick thing in Leicestershire 

 in which Lord Forester is not in his place, and that 



