ANNUAL COST OF THE PACK — ASCOT RACES. 269 



stipend of that post from June 11, 1727, "by virtue of an 

 Establishment under His Majesty's sign manual dated Decem- 

 ber 20, 1727." The established allowance of this office was 

 now fixed at 2,341^. per annum, out of which the Master had 

 to defray all the ordinary charges of the pack from year to 

 year. Some other incidents relating to his appointment are 

 mentioned in our brief memoir of this Master, consequently 

 we may leave him here for the present to follow his doings at 

 the head of the Royal Buckhounds. 



Partly owing to the Court being in mourning, political 

 affairs, and the domestic arrangements of the Royal Family, 

 no formal meetings of the Royal Buckhounds appear to have 

 taken place in the season of 1727. Nevertheless we have 

 official authority showing that at least 18 stags, 8 hinds, and 

 4 bucks had been hunted by the pack. Assuming each of 

 those deer gave more than one run the sport must have been 

 fairly good. Another proof of the popularity of the hunt, even 

 in the unavoidable absence of royalty, is derived by the 

 circumstance that on July 81 a plate of forty guineas was run 

 for at Ascot, by such horses as had, during the season, carried 

 their owners to the death of a leash of stags in Windsor 

 Forest, twelve stone each ; which race was won by Mr. 

 Walter's grey horse Hobler, beating four others. For some 

 reason or other the King evinced reluctance to inhabit Windsor 

 Castle, and in the hunting seasons usually occupied, when he 

 was in England, Hampton Court Palace and Richmond Lodge. 

 As we have already seen, the latter was his local habitation 

 and his home in summer, during his father's reign. In those 

 days Richmond Lodge was quite unworthy to be occupied by 

 any member of the Royal Family of the greatest nation in the 

 world. The situation was good, the park charming, the house 

 a wretched place swarming with vermin.* It went from bad 



* " Kichmond House having been very much pestered with vermin, one John 

 Humphries, a famous Eat Physician, was sent for Dorsetshire by the Princess, 

 through the Recommendation of the Marchioness of Hertford, who collected 

 together above five hundred rats in His Royal Highnesses' Palace, which he 

 brought alive to Leicester House, as a proof of his art in that waj."—Brice's 

 Weekly Journal, No. 29. 



