THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



fields, and ho was told that such parts of it strongly rescnil)lcd 

 Leicestershire. He had also a regard for it, on another con- 

 sideration. In a fine run from Pusey Firs, he was one of only 

 five who cleared the Rosey Brook, himself taking the lead upon 

 Achilles, altliough, as somewhat of a take oti' from the merit of 

 it, it had been leaped, nearly in the same place, by Mr. Barry 

 Price, upon his famous horse called Monarch, a few days before 

 — the said I\Ir. Barry Price being eighteen stone plum weight 

 in the scales. But the Rosey Brook is, in most places, a very 

 serious affair. 



Our hero, up to this period, had had but a slight taste of 

 Warwickshire, and this at two of its least inviting fixtures ; 

 namely, Wolford Wood, and Witchford Wood, almost the only 

 two covers within possible reach of Oxford men ; roughish 

 places, both of them, but often holding, as most rough places 

 do, very capital foxes. But Frank Raby had heard enough of 

 Warwickshire to induce him to make it his election for his 

 debut on the fox-hunter's stage, so sent his stud to Stratford- 

 on-Avon, the head-quarters of the Hunt ; and arrived there 

 himself, in his travelling chaise, on the evening of the fourth of 

 November, anno Domini, 1808. 



He found a highly finished gentleman at the head of this 

 establishment, in the person of Mr. Corbet, of Sundorue Castle, 

 Shropshire, who himself sustained the expenses of it, keeping 

 a complement of hounds and horses for four days a week, and 

 occasionally a fifth; having two kennels, one at Stratford-on- 

 Avon, and another at Minden, near Coventry, whence the 

 country called ' The Mereden ' was hunted at two different 

 periods in the season, but chiefly in the spring, for which it is 

 eminently adapted. He soon obtained an introduction to the 

 members of the Stratford Hunt Club, whom he found living 

 together on the best possible terms — Mr. Corbet joining them 

 at dinner on every Thursday in the week, and commonl}^ enter- 

 taining some of them on the other six days. He found a man 

 hunting these hounds, whom, although he was too young to 

 give an opinion on his merits as a huntsman, he pronounced 

 to be the finest horseman, in the form of a servant, he had 

 ever hitherto seen ; and it was told of him that, during his 

 service with that eminent sportsman, Mr. Childe, of Kinlet 

 Hall, in Shropshire, as whipper-in, he was the only man in his 

 establishment that he would ever suffer to mount the horses he 



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