APPENDIX I 



BILLESDEN COPLOW POEM 



\_From ^^Reminiscences of the late Thomas Assheton Smith, Esq.''^'\ 



The run celebrated in the following verses took place on 

 the 24th of February, 1800, when Mr. Meynell hunted 

 Leicestershire, and has since been known as the Billesden 

 Coplow Run. It will only cease to interest, says a writer 

 in the Sporting Magazine, when the grass shall grow in 

 winter in the streets of Melton Mowbray. They found 

 in the covert from which the song takes its name, thence 

 to Skeffington Earths, past Tilton Woods, by Tugby and 

 Whetstone, where the field, as many as could get over, 

 crossed the river Soar. Thence the hounds changing 

 their fox, carried a head to Enderby Gorse, where they 

 lost him, after a chase of two hours and fifteen minutes, 

 the distance being twenty-eight miles. A picture de- 

 scriptive of this famous run was painted by Loraine 

 Smith, Esq., who was one of the few who got over the 

 river, and was until very lately in the possession of Robert 

 Haymes, Esq., of Great Glenn, Leicestershire. In this 

 painting, which shows the field in the act of crossing the 

 Soar, we see Mr. Germaine, who has just crossed it, and 

 was the only one out that day who did so on horseback. 

 Mr. Musters is in the middle of the stream, and on the 

 point of throwing himself off his horse, who is too much 

 distressed to carry him over. The other horsemen in the 

 picture are Jack Raven the huntsman. Lord Maynard, 



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