18 THE MEYNELL HOUNDS. [1878 



in connection with the latter is worth mentioning. It 

 was always the custom in his time for hounds to come 

 to Shirburn Castle, his seat in Oxfordshire, on the open- 

 ing day. The year after his death, out of consideration 

 for the feelings of his family, they met elsewhere, but 

 hounds ran their fox to Shirburn, and killed him close to 

 where the old Earl was buried. This almost goes on all- 

 fours with the story of the white-brushed Bradley Wood 

 fox preceding the hearse when the great Hugo Meynell 

 was carried to Bradley churchyard. 



"Pis for Parker, come, gladden your eyes, 

 Like a bird o'er the fences her ladyship flies." 



And so she did. In fact, no one, when she was at her 

 best, went any better than she did. 



She came to a tragic end, having fallen over-board in 

 the night on her return from Australia, and was not 

 missed till next day. It is a curious thing that no less 

 than four tenants of Field House should have died 

 suddenly. Lord Alexander Paget got into a carriage to 

 •drive home from the Moors in Scotland, with three others, 

 and when the carriage arrived at its destination there 

 were but three in it. The bright spirit of the fourth had 

 taken its flight silently as they drove. Lord Parker was 

 found dead in his bed in his London house ; her ladyship 

 lost her life as above-mentioned ; and Lord Hindlip, who, 

 as Mr. Charles Allsopp, lived previously in the same house 

 at Marchington, died suddenly after an operation for 

 cancer. 



This season was rather an eventful one in the annals 

 of the Hunt, for, with the advent of Admiral Cumming to 

 Foston, that steady flow of new blood into the country, 

 which has gone on ever since, seemed to begin. This 

 practically worked a revolution, and gradually a pluto- 

 cracy took the place of the squirearchy, who, partly from 

 old age, and partly from bad times, practically retired 

 from the field. It has been so in every grass country, 

 but, for a long time, the Meynell country defied change. 



