Ube Buhes ot IRutlanb ^os 



Tony Weller was boniface, and to this day you may 

 still come across country inns which commemorate this 

 jovial warrior as their patron saint. 



Not much is known of the Marquis's career as a 

 Master of Hounds, beyond the fact that he occupied 

 Croxton Park as a hunting-box and had his kennels 

 there. In Lord Yarborough's Kennel Book there is an 

 entry dated 1756, noticing the introduction of the 

 Marquis of Granby's Dexter as a sire, from which 

 one may gather that the Belvoir blood had even then 

 attained some notoriety. 



The son of the soldier Marquis in due course 

 succeeded his grandfather, who died in 1779 at the age 

 of eighty-three, and who to the last day of his life was 

 an enthusiastic lover of the Chase. The fourth Duke 

 had been an early friend of William Pitt, and was 

 induced by that minister to accept the Lord-Lieutenancy 

 of Ireland. ' Young, of noble aspect and of princely 

 fortune,' says Lord Stanhope in his Lz/e of Pitt, ' he was 

 generous, frank and amiable, as became the son of the 

 gallant Granby. Fond of pleasure, he held a Court 

 of much magnificence, and the succession of various 

 entertainments which he gave, splendid as they were 

 in themselves, derived a greater lustre from his Duchess, 

 a daughter of the house of Beaufort, and one of the most 

 beautiful women of her day. But, besides and beyond 

 his outward accomplishments, the confidential letters of 

 the Duke to Pitt show him to have possessed both 

 ability and application in business.' 



His Grace's habits, however, were somewhat eccentric. 

 He would eat seven or eight turkey's eggs for breakfast, 

 then ride forty or fifty miles, dine at seven, drink hard till 

 the small hours of the morning, and after a heavy supper 



