SEASONS 1855 TO i860. 

 WILL DANBY AND MR. T. WILKINSON. 



Mrs. A. C. Wilkinson now begins to keep the Hurworth 

 Hunt journals, and her first record is with reference to Will 

 Danby : 



2nd October, 1855. — Sockburn : Danby's first day as hunts- 

 man. Killed a cub. Rode " Quaker." 



Of Will Danby, " The Druid " writes in Silk and Scarlet: 



" The former [Tommy Hodgson, of Holderness fame] has hung up 

 his horn for years, but Will Danby, his equally famous whip, is just enter- 

 ing upon his fiftieth season of his life in scarlet ; and although the grey 

 hairs may be seen straggling under his cap, he is a wonderful instance Of 

 what a hardy Yorkshire constitution, good temper and rigid temperance can 

 efiFect for a man in * these degenerate days.' Will is quite a key to York- 

 shire hunting history ; but tiles have, of later years, become his thorn in 

 the flesh. • This draining,' as he emphatically observed to us, when we 

 took counsel with him near the Hurworth kennels, * is just the ruin of 

 scent ; T wish they'd be done with it ; when I was a boy we could hunt 

 from morning till night.* He was born near Hornby Castle ; and the ruling 

 passion with him was strongly fostered at fourteen (in 1809), when one of 

 the farm houses, included in his father's lease, was converted by the Duke 

 of Leeds into a kennel for his hounds. This was the crisis of his fate, and 

 henceforward he devoted his attention more to helping the feeder to walk 

 the hounds about than to grounding himself in the elements of agriculture. 

 His expressed views on drainage would, in fact, have militated so strongly 

 against his advancement that it was well he established himself in the good 

 graces of Kit Scaife, the huntsman, and found a more congenial outlet for 

 energies." 



After acting as whip in the Badsworth and Scarborough 

 countries, Will Danby went to the Holderness, as first whipper-in 



