1808] END OF THE VERNON HUNT. 9 



main road leading to Derby. Mr. Talbot lived at Brere- 

 ton, and, when the hounds were in Leicestershire, was in 

 the habit of riding over to Gopsall after taking the Sunday- 

 duty at Ingestre, to be ready for hunting on the following 

 day. Temporary kennels were arranged in three different 

 parts of the country, and the hounds hunted alternate 

 fortnights in Staffordshire and Derbyshire, except in 

 November and February, when they remained at Gopsall. 

 The hour of meeting was half-past ten, and they hunted 

 four days a week from September till April. This arrange- 

 ment continued till November, 1812, when Mr. Talbot 

 died in the hunting-field at Sutton Chainell, near Bos- 

 worth, on the first day of the season. Immediately after 

 his death, the hounds, about sixty couples, were sold, with 

 the exception of ten couples which Lord Vernon retained. 

 Some went to Mi\ Lambton in Durham. Mr. E. M. 

 Mundy bought five couples for the Derbyshire pack, while 

 the Hon. Edward Harbord, Lord Vernon's son-in-law, took 

 fifteen couples, and finished the season at Sudbury with 

 them and his father-in-law's ten couples, but did not 

 advertise. Eighteen couples went to Lord Middleton in 

 Warwickshire, Harry Jackson accompanying them as 

 huntsman. He is said to have been a rare kennelman, but 

 slow in the field, and was pensioned off by Lord Middleton, 

 after being disabled by a bad fall in 1818. Samuel Law- 

 ley lived on at his farm at Aston to a good old age, and 

 his descendants are with us still. Like most people, he 

 was a laudator temporis acti, bemoaning the decadence of 

 the hounds, and averring that " these Meynell hounds are 

 bred all for pace. They'll soon get so as no horse can live 

 with them ; only," he would add, " they'll always be going 

 over the scent, and the horses '11 get up to them then." 



So the Vernon Hunt came to an end, and the old lord 

 himself passed away in 1813. 



Then followed chaos, confusion, and troubles arising 

 from undefined boundaries. It is even said that matters 

 nearly culminated in a duel between Sir Henry Every, who 

 kept a pack at Egginton, which hunted hare and fox 



