WARWICKSHIRE i>5 



two previous to this the Hunt races took place at Warwickshire, 

 which generally afforded sport. Exclusive of the different stakes, 

 several matches were made by the members of the Hunt ; and Mr. 

 Corbet gave a plate to be run for by the farmers, which they were 

 proud to win — not more for the value of the plate, than for the sake 

 of him who gave it. 



Although Stratford-on-Avon has been, for many years, the head- 

 quarter^ of the Warwickshire hounds, it is situated quite at the 

 outside, and in the worst part of what is called the Stratford country ; 

 and were a person to form an idea of Warwickshire as a hunting 

 country, by travelling through that place on his road from Birming- 

 ham to Oxford, he would have no favorable opinion of it as a 

 sportsman. Scarcely anything but a deep-ploughed country and 

 large woodlands are to be seen, and he would little suspect that he 

 was within so short a distance of as fine a grazing district as 

 England can boast of. 



This, it must be observed, is all on the other side of the river 

 Avon, and which he would see nothing of. Ploughed and wood- 

 land, however, as this part of the country is, it affords excellent 

 sport. It is no unusual thing to find a fox within two or three miles 

 of Stratford, and to kill him in the Pytchley country in North- 

 amptonshire — to get to which he must pass through the parishes of 

 Kineton, Geydon, Chesterton, Itchington, Ufton, Ladbrook, Southam, 

 Wormleighton, or Shugborough, &c. ; which are for the most part 

 composed of grass fields of from thirty to one hundred acres each, 

 with practicable fences, and no river to interfere ; and fastidious 

 must that man be who can find fault with such a country. When 

 we recollect that it is always well supplied with foxes, and that the 

 Stratford draw in this direction reaches to Ladbrook gorse, within 

 two miles of Southam on the left, and to Wroxton Abbey, within 

 three miles of Banbury on the right, nothing more need be said in 

 its praise. It may not, perhaps, be amiss to mention one circum- 

 stance in corroboration of what has been said on this subject. It 

 was usual with Mr. Corbet not to fix one of his prime places 

 on a Saturday : it was the market-day at Warwick, and he 

 had a consideration for the yeomen and farmers of the county, 

 whose business obliged them to attend. The fixture, on the day I 



