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as the best shot in England, Sir Henry thought it 

 prudent to apologise. ' The Squire ' accepted the 

 apology, but abruptly took his hounds away. 



When the great Assheton Smith resigned the Quorn 

 to take the Burton country, Osbaldeston succeeded him 

 and continued to show wonderful sport up to 1 826, when 

 he broke his leg whilst out one day with Lord Anson's 

 hounds, and this accident prevented him from riding 

 for more than a year. Touching this mishap, the late 

 Captain Horatio Ross, of rifle-shooting renown, who 

 was a contemporary, and to a certain extent a rival, of 

 Osbaldeston, says : — ' I never saw " the Squire " ride to 

 hounds in his best day ; before I made his acquaintance 

 he had met with a terrible accident. During a very 

 quick "thing" he had a fall. Sir James Musgrave, 

 following far too closely on his heels, could not stop or 

 turn his horse — he jumped right on "the Squire" and 

 smashed one of his legs frightfully. I believe the bone 

 protruded through his boot. After that fearful smash 

 he was never the same man he had been previously — he 

 was nervous in riding at " blind " unknown places, and he 

 was painfully nervous if any one, during a run, was 

 following rather close behind him — and no wonder. 



' I have always heard those who knew his riding 

 before his leg was broken, say that he was one of the 

 hardest and straightest men across country they had 

 ever seen. Notwithstanding this drawback, " the Squire " 

 hunted his'- hounds to the last, and was always near 

 enough to help them when at fault.' 



In 1827, George Osbaldeston became Master of the 

 Pytchley, and to show the excellence alike of the hounds 

 and their master, it is enough to say that he had forty 

 good days' sport out of fifty, and no less that twenty- 



