The Wilkinsons and the Tees. 25 



Hurworth country. I was told that the three brothers, Hving 

 so near the river, were excellent swimmers, and during the 

 summer they used to train their horses how to cross, so that 

 they would be prepared for the hunting season. Their modus 

 operandi was this. They divested themselves of their clothing, 

 got a cat, put it on a barrel in the river, then, with terriers and 

 their horses, they swam into the water, crossed and recrossed, 

 and accustomed the horses to landing and swimming. So, 

 except when the Tees was at flood, and was really not safe to 

 cross, they were rarely beaten by foxes taking the water. The 

 present Hurworth M.F.H. (Lord Southampton) also swims the 

 river, but Mr. Forbes never cared for this. 



Bound up with the history of the Hurworth are the names 

 of various members of the Wilkinson family. They were the 

 founders of the hunt, and for many years carried it on practic- 

 ally at their own expense. From what one can gather, they 

 cared little or nothing for show and pageant, and were of that 

 hard-bitten type of old Nimrod, who were in the saddle all day 

 long, took their bottle in the evening, and were ready again at 

 daybreak for the chase. We don't breed that class of men 

 nowadays. 



If one goes far enough back into the history of most of the 

 old established packs of foxhounds, we discover they had 

 their origin as harriers. Hare hunting boasts a much more 

 respectable antiquity than the chase of the fox, and up to not 

 much more than a century ago Reynard, the fox, occupied a 

 much inferior place in the venatic social scale to the hare. 



Tradition has it that these harriers annoyed Lord Darling- 

 ton, and he made arrangements with the masters that if they 

 would let him have their covert and give up " thistle-cutting," 

 he would give them some coverts on the Cotcliffe side of the 



