IN THE TIME OF SOMERVILLE 19 



Castle, hunting all the way, attended by many lords 

 and knights. Train scents were prepared, and live 

 hares, conveyed in baskets, were turned down on the 

 heath, which afforded excellent sport for his Majesty. 

 Sir John Harrington's hounds are mentioned as having 

 been in requisition for the occasion, and that the King 

 took ' great leisure and pleasure in the same.' The 

 contrast is amusing to contemplate when we consider 

 the style of riding which the royal James was 

 accustomed to enjoy, on steeds highly broken and so 

 completely subservient to the hand that, going with 

 their haunches well under them, they never exceeded 

 three-parts speed. The hounds, therefore, must have 

 been equally slow, or the stately sovereign could not 

 have enjoyed their company. 



Queen Anne gave encouragement to sporting amuse- 

 ments in the way of racing, but took no part in hunting. 

 Neither did the succeeding kings, George the First or 

 Second ; but about the period of their reigns fox- 

 hunting became an amusement with the nobility and 

 wealthy landholders of Great Britain. Before that time 

 the sport was confined to driving the foxes to ground 

 and digging them out, trapping, destroying them, or 

 worrying them with terriers. 



We have ample testimony that at the period I have 

 named fox-hunting had assumed a position, from the 

 inimitable descriptions and directions sung by the 

 poet Somerville, who, I find, was born in the year 

 1692 and died in 1742. The practical knowledge which 

 he had acquired on the subject is incontestible evidence 

 that the chase of the fox was in vogue ; for it would be 

 too great a stretch of imagination to suppose that his 

 ideas arose from problematical fancies. No man 

 could have introduced the forcible arguments, the cor- 

 rectness of which has stood the test of a century, unless 

 he had been in possession of facts to guide his opinions. 

 Although born in the reign of William and Mary, it 

 must have been during the time of George the First 

 that Somerville wrote his beautiful poem, The Chase, 



