WARWICKSHIRE 23 



Mr. Ward's, who occasionally huuted some part of the Stratford 

 country, at the same time that he hunted Oxfordshire. His kennel 

 was at a small village, called Newbold, five miles from Shipston-on- 

 Stour, and six from Stratford. It was on his declining Oxfordshire, 

 and taking to Northamptonshire, in the year 1791, that Mr. Corbet 

 took possession of Warwickshire, and continued to hunt it, with the 

 greatest success, until the year 1809, when he resigned it in favour 

 of Lord Middleton, who gave it up in 1820, in consequence of a fall 

 the preceding season ; and it is now (1822) hunted by a subscription 

 pack, of which Mr. Shirley, of Eatington, is at the head. 



Although it cannot be said that he hunted Warwickshire for 

 thirty-one years, yet as it was in the year 1778 that he first hunted 

 the Meriden country, together with Staffordshire and Shropshire, 

 Mr. Corbet and his hounds may be said to have been known in 

 Warwickshire for that period of time ; and I have reason to believe 

 that he was a master of fox-hounds upwards of forty years, without 

 ever having had a guinea subscribed to them, with the exception of 

 five pounds a-year by each member of the Stratford-hunt Club to 

 reward the earth-stoppers of the country. I recollect hearing him' 

 say he had kept hounds longer at his own expense than any man 

 had done before him. 



Succeeding to a fine estate, Mr. Corbet went abroad after having 

 concluded his education, and returned to his native country a finished 

 gentleman of the. Old School. To the last year of his life, he was 

 remax'kable for the neatness of his person and extremely gentleman- 

 like appearance. His manners were peculiarly adapted to a man at 

 the head of a pack of fox-hounds, being civil and obliging to the 

 whole field, and particularly so to the farmers, by whom he was so 

 much respected that the destruction of a fox by foul play was never 

 heard of in Warwickshire in his time. 



This celebrated fox-hunter, it seems, was first entered to hare ; 

 having, when he came of age, been in possession of a remarkably 

 clever pack of harriers, which, just before he married his first wife, 

 he converted into a pack of fox-hounds ; and, commencing with the 

 country about Shrewsbury, then given up by the late Lord Berwick, 

 he crept by degrees, first into the Shiffnal country, previously hunted 

 by the late Sir Edward Littleton ; then to Shenstone, under the 



