LORD LINCOLN'S COUNTRY 25 



and lost him in Kensington Gardens, about which there 

 was in those days some rough ground. 



The late Earl of Berkeley gave his hounds and resigned 

 the country to the Club a few years before his death, 

 which was in 1810; they were kept by subscription till 

 1842, and the servants continued to wear the orange 

 plush, or ' tawny coats ' of Lord Berkeley's ancestors. 

 Mr. Harvey Combe was of late years the leading man. 

 They did not, however, continue to hunt so great an 

 extent of the country as formerly, and in course of time 

 new countries were formed. The Earl Fitzhardinge, 

 then Lord Dursley, established a pack of hounds either 

 in 1807 or 1808, with which he has hunted the Gloucester- 

 shire portion ever since. The old Berkshire and Mr. 

 Philips' countries have been formed more recently. 

 Latterly the Old Berkeley countr^^^ was confined to the 

 neighbourhood of Rickmansworth, where Mr. Harvey 

 Combe had kennels. 



In 1842 the country was given up, in all probability 

 never to be restored, and the hounds were purchased 

 by Lord Southampton ; but there could have been very 

 little, if any, of the leaven of the old sort. The masters 

 of these hounds had been dependent on drafts for many 

 years, to which Sir Jacob Astley's pack was added 

 when the baronet gave up hunting in Norfolk. On 

 Mr. Osbaldeston's retirement from the Pytchley, and 

 unfortunately from fox-hunting altogether, he disposed 

 of his celebrated pack to Mr. Harvey Combe. This was 

 in 1834 ; therefore it was principally the blood of Mr. 

 Osbaldeston's kennel that passed into Lord South- 

 ampton's, although in the course of eight years much 

 of that must have been lost, from the circumstance 

 already named. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Harvey 

 Combe did not hunt the Old Berkeley country at all 

 in 1833, as that must have been the year when Captain 

 Freeman was hunting it with the hounds which he 

 brought from the South wold. 



The country around Retford clauns notice from having 

 been hunted at a very early date. More than two 



