268 mms ot tbe 1[)untlno^fieID 



for, at this moment, the Fitzwilliams own no less than 

 92,000 acres of land in Ireland, from which the reputed 

 revenue is ^50,000. His grandson was created first 

 Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford in the peerage of Ireland 

 in 1620, and the third Baron was created Viscount Mill- 

 town of West Meath and Earl Fitzwilliam of Tyrone 

 in 1 7 16. But it was not until the reign of George II that 

 the Fitzwilliams became peers of the United Kingdom. 

 The third Irish Earl and fifth Baron was created 

 Viscount Milton and Earl Fitzwilliam of Norborough, 

 Northamptonshire, on the 24th of June 1746, and 

 married the daughter of Thomas Watson Wentworth, 

 first Marquis of Rockingham. This marriage had 

 important consequences for the Fitzwilliams. For, when 

 Charles Watson Wentworth, second Marquis of Rock- 

 ingham, celebrated both as a statesman and a sportsman, 

 died in 1782 without issue, he bequeathed his vast 

 Yorkshire estates, including Wentworth House, to his 

 nephew, Charles William, Earl P^itzwilliam, who thus 

 added upwards of ^^40,000 a year to his revenues. 



With Charles William Wentworth, the second English 

 and fifth Irish Earl, the great renown of the Fitzwilliams 

 in the hunting-field commenced. Born in 1748, he 

 succeeded to the title in his ninth year, and from his 

 boyhood showed a passion for the Chase. It was prob- 

 ably in 1769, when he came of age, that he first started 

 the now famous Milton pack, which he purchased from 

 Mr Foley and Mr Crewe (afterwards Lord Crewe), who 

 had bought them of Mr Child, the banker, who hunted 

 Oxfordshire with them for many years, having in his 

 turn taken the hounds from Lord Thanet, who had 

 also hunted the same shire with them when it was a 

 perfectly open country. 



