COURSING 



LET us pass over the early history of coursing. 

 ^ We know that Arrian wrote of the sport 

 in the second century, that King John accepted 

 greyhounds in lieu of cash for renewing crown 

 tenures in the thirteenth, that that all-round 

 sportsman, Henry viii., allowed twenty-four loaves 

 a day for his grey hounds, and that Thomas, Duke 

 of Norfolk, bestowed his approval on the first 

 code of coursing laws in Elizabeth's time. It is 

 also common knowledge that Thomas Goodlake 

 assigns to Lord Orford (famed for his four-in-hand 

 of red deer) credit for laying the foundation of 

 modern coursing by his establishment of the 

 SwajQFham Club in 1776, which club's modern 

 namesake courses over the same ground. Lord 

 Orford is said to have crossed the greyhound of 

 his day with the bulldog, and to have persevered 

 with this somewhat unpromising experiment to the 

 sixth or seventh generation when he confounded 

 his opponents by producing the ancestor of the 

 modern greyhound. *The blood of the late Lord 

 Orford's Dogs,' says Daniel, 'engrafted into those 

 of Wiltshire and Yorkshire have turned out the 

 best Greyhounds.' Czarina was one of Lord 

 Orford's breed : she ran forty-seven courses without 



48 



