150 IkUxQB ot tbe •ffjiinttno-'iFielD 



best professionals he had ever knov/n, who could hold a 

 candle to the present Duke of Beaufort. And I 

 remember hearing Mr Nevill Fitt relate, as an instance 

 of the deep personal interest His Grace took in his 

 pack, how he had himself once seen the duke pull up 

 and go back after a young bitch, that was left running 

 another fox in covert when the hounds went away, and 

 bringing her up to them at a check long afterwards, 

 thus for her sake sacrificing the best part of a fine 

 hunting run. 



At the time the hounds came into the present 

 duke's possession they had attained a very high degree 

 of proficiency under the care, first, of Philip Payne and, 

 afterwards, of William Long. The former, who came 

 from Cheshire to Badminton, introduced the celebrated 

 New Forest 'Justice' as a sire, from whom sprang the well- 

 known strain of ' badger pies ' for which the Beaufort 

 kennels have become famous. Indeed it passed into a 

 saying in the Hunt ' that a Beaufort will never be happy 

 without a badger-pied hound on the benches.' Will 

 Long, who had been whip under Phil Payne since 1 808, 

 succeeded him as huntsman in 1825, and for nine-and- 

 twenty years carried the horn till he was too old to 

 discharge the arduous duties of the post. He was 

 pensioned off with a comfortable cottage, a steady 

 hunter, and a handsome annuity which he lived to 

 enjoy for two-and-twenty years. Then the duke him- 

 self took the horn, and for three years showed splendid 

 sport. There was no lack of foxes then in the Bad- 

 minton country — enough to afford six days' hunting a 

 week, and the condition of affairs was a strange con- 

 trast to that which prevailed half-a-century before, when 

 the then duke, with but two days a week, had to eke 



