Masters of tbc /Ibeatb 405 



came the paradise of hard riders — t/te hunting country of 

 lre\a.nd par exce//ence. When Lord Spencer came over 

 first as Viceroy in 1868 he and his sporting staff revelled 

 in the Meath pastures, which some of them declared to 

 surpass the Shires, and even, like ' Chicken ' Hartopp, 

 the long-legged Quornite, as reckless a madcap as the 

 wildest Irishman of them all, throwing up their allegiance 

 to Ouorn and Pytchley and Belvoir and Cottesmore, 

 thenceforward cast in their lot with the Meath. For 

 twenty years Sam Reynell ruled the destinies of the 

 Meath, and when circumstances compelled him to resign 

 the Mastership in 1872, the grateful sportsmen for 

 whom he had so splendidly catered presented him with 

 a purse of ;^4000 as a token of their admiration for the 

 untiring zeal and magnificent management by which he 

 had raised Meath from the lowest to the highest place 

 among the hunting countries of Ireland. 



His successor was Mr William Newcomen Waller of 

 Allenstown, a son of the first Master of the united Meath 

 pack. For five seasons young Mr Waller, with Macbride 

 as his huntsman, did his best to show sport. But he ha 

 not the physique to enable him to hunt such a country, 

 and, realising that he was only ruining his health in the 

 attempt, he wisely resigned in 1877. 



Then came, perhaps, the greatest Master the Meath 

 has ever had, greater even than Sam Reynell — Mr John 

 Oswald Trotter, known to all hunting men as ' Jock ' 

 Trotter. 



Mr Trotter came of a good old Scottish family, the 

 Trotters of Morton Hall, which claimed descent from 

 one William of that ilk who was ' a captain for keeping 

 the peace of the Border' in 1373; and it was a fond 

 boast of ' Jock ' Trotter's that an ancestor of his was 



