Zhc Dunes of Beaufort i5i 



out the scanty supply of foxes in his own country by 

 taking over the Heythrop as a supplement. But the 

 present duke had too many irons in the fire to enable 

 him to give as much time as he wished to hunting his 

 own hounds, and in the spring of 1858, when Mr Morrell 

 gave up the Old Berkshire, His Grace snapped up that 

 gentleman's excellent huntsman Tom Clark, who carried 

 the Badminton horn for ten years. 



On Clark's retirement in 1868 he was succeeded by the 

 duke's eldest son, Henry Adelbert Wellington Fitzroy, 

 Marquis of Worcester, who had just attained his majority, 

 and had already shown himself a hard and fearless rider, 

 and an enthusiastic lover of the ' crafte of venerie.' He 

 had, in fact, taken to hunting as readily as a duck takes 

 to water, from the day he first crossed a pony. ' May- 

 flower,' says a writer in Daily's Magazine, ' a little chestnut 

 pony that passed through the family as instructor- 

 general, giving each member in turn a dirty jacket by a 

 rapid wheel, if hounds or greyhounds turned short, was 

 his first mount ; and under Tom Clark, who hunted the 

 duke's hounds six days a week for ten years, and never 

 during that period missed a day from cold or illness 

 of any kind, he learnt a great deal. In the latter days 

 of Clark's reign. Lord Worcester, who soon began to be 

 known as a hard rider, had two very good horses, 

 Methuselah and Stonemason, on either of which he was 

 very difficult to beat ; and so fond wa.'^ he of the hounds 

 as well as the sport, that there was but little surprise 

 expressed when on Clark's retirement he took the horn. 

 This was in 1868, and to say that he has carried it ever, 

 since, to the entire satisfaction of both field and farmers 

 is to ^ay comparatively little. His heart and soul 

 are in the business of hunting ; for that he comes out, 



