THE EARLS OF DERBY. 35 



Lord Derby kept for many years a splendid stag-hunting estab- 

 lishment at the Oaks, in Surrey, and gave it up only when advanced 

 years rendered him incapable of riding to hounds. He would, 

 however, have continued the pack, though unable to carry on the 

 sport himself, but for the gross insults which he received at the 

 hands of certain Radical farmers in the neighbourhood, whose 

 determined opposition gave him so much annoyance that he re- 

 solved to break up his hunting establishment. There was yet 

 another sport of which the earl was a conspicuous patron. Fond 

 as he was of seeing his home-bred horses carry the black and 

 white to victory, if it were possible for him to love anything better 

 than a thoroughbred horse it was a thoroughbred game-cock. Under 

 his care and superintendence the Knowsley breed of black-breasted 

 reds was brought to perfection, and at Chester and Lancaster the 

 north-country earl was well nigh invincible. It may be truly said of 

 him that he was the greatest cocker that ever lived ; and in saying 

 this it must be recollected that since his time opinion has changed 

 very much as to the humane treatmeftt of animals ; in his day 

 cocking was considered as respectable a sporting taste as a gentleman 

 could have. Nobody had thought of writing it down, far less of 

 legislating against it, and it was as reputable to fight a main of cocks 

 as to hunt the fox. Many will doubtless remember Admiral Rous's 

 letter to the Times shortly before his death, some eight or nine years 

 ago, in which he cleverly and enthusiastically defended the old 

 pastime of cock-fighting, which, after all, was one of the least brutal 

 of the sports of our ancestors, and has far more to be said in its 

 favour than, for example, the aristocratic pastime of pigeon shooting. 

 It is a curious instance of the irony of fate that the cockpit 

 which the earl erected at his own expense at Preston, has now 

 been converted into a temperance hall. But it is time to close 

 our sketch of this famous racing man and all-round sportsman. None 

 of his contemporaries lived more esteemed or died more universally 

 regretted. He was born on a great day in the sportsman's calendar 

 — the festival of St. Partridge, 1752 — and died at Knowsley, October 

 21st, 1834, in the eighty-second year of his age. Sans changer — 

 the motto of his illustrious race — may well be applied to his untiring 

 devotion to all manly sports. "He was English, sir, from top to 

 toe." 



They say that gout usually skips a generation, and it seems to be 

 also the same with the hereditary taste for sport. The thirteenth 

 Earl of Derby was not a sportsman, but devoted himself almost ex- 

 clusively to zoology and ornithology. The maintenance of his 

 menagerie and aviary, which necessitated the occupation of one 

 hundred acres of land within Knowsley Park, in addition to a water 

 space of seventy acres, is said to have cost him upwards of £15,000 

 a-year, and the probability is that this statement is under rather 

 than over the truth, for he had agents in almost every knowm country, 

 who were constantly purchasing for him living, as well as dead, 



