of tbe 1Rot>, Iftffle, anfc (Bun 



the one sporting parson in particular whose knowledge 

 of sport and great experience with dog and gun entitle 

 him to a place in these pages to wit, the Reverend 

 William Barker Daniel, author of " Rural Sports." I 

 am afraid that I cannot rank the Reverend William 

 Barker Daniel among those sporting parsons who 

 were models of clerical propriety as well as experts 

 with rod and gun. But as he was never a beneficed 

 clergyman, his orders sat lightly on him, and he, at 

 any rate, did nothing, so far as I can discover, to dis- 

 grace them. 



Mr. John Sargeaunt, in his admirable little history 

 of the famous Essex Grammar School, Felsted, devotes 

 the following paragraph to Parson Daniel, who was 

 educated there : 



" If Felsted can claim, in Dr. Townson, one of the 

 most learned of English Divines, we must not from any 

 fear of the contrast omit the name of one of the most 

 eccentric of clerics. Whence Daniel came we do not 

 know, but as a precocious schoolboy of ten summers or 

 thereabouts, he recited an English copy of verses at the 

 Felsted Speech Day in 1763. He left school some time 

 later, and went no man knows whither. He was nearly 

 thirty when he appeared at Cambridge, where he 

 graduated in 1787. It is probable that he had been on 

 sporting bent, and when he took orders he did not lay 

 aside his gun. He held no benefice, and the only 

 recorded occasion whereon he preached is the Felsted 

 Feast Day in 1792. Nine years later he published the 

 work on which his reputation rests. He called it ' Rural 

 Sports,' and it ran through several editions in a short 



