32 NIMROD'S HUNTING TOUR 



Lockley ; and the purchaser was Mr. Eichard Best, also well known 

 in the sportmg world, and a member of the Stratford Hunt. Mr. 

 Lockley having had this magnificent horse since he was four years 

 old, and having ridden him several seasons in Leicestershire, his 

 fame as a hunter was well established ; but the immediate cause of 

 Mr. Best's purchasing him at the price stated, was his carrying Mr. 

 Lockley in a superior style, over a most trying country, for an hour 

 and twenty minutes, and taking a large timber fence at the end of it, 

 when the jmni') was out of all the other horses. On Mr. Best coming 

 up, he asked Mr. Lockley if he would sell his horse ; and on the 

 price being fixed, the bargain was closed on the same evening. 



This sum being somewhat above a Warwickshire price, it may be 

 supposed that Mr. Best upon Confidence was in some measure an 

 object of attraction, and he was expected to "out-Herod Herod." 

 A decoy was laid for him one day, by getting Will Barrow on one of 

 his great jumping horses, as the hounds were drawing over the 

 country, to lead him in conversation into the corner of a field, out of 

 which there was no way but over a very high rail, and a tremendous 

 ditch on the other side. On Will's clearing it, there was a cry of 

 " now, Mr. Best." Mr. Best, however, followed ; and came at least 

 a yard further into the next field than the horse that went before him. 

 What man, however, who had ever ridden him could fail to put 

 confidence in Confidence, as there was nothing that any other horse 

 could do in the field to which he was not equal, for a finer animal 

 was never formed by nature. He had every appearance of being a 

 thorough-bred horse, with the powers of a cart-horse and the docility 

 of a lap-dog, and a model of his shoulders and hind legs should have 

 been preserved as a master-piece of nature's work in that way. 



When on the subject of horses, it may not be uninteresting to 

 hear a little of the history of one of the most enterprising and 

 spirited horse-dealers that England ever gave birth to, in the 

 person of Mr. Eichard Bradley, who resided near Stratford-on-Avon 

 during great part of Mr. Corbet's and for several years of Lord 

 Middleton's hunting Warwickshire. The reputation of Mr. Bradley, 

 as a judge of a hunter and a brilliant rider over a country, reached 

 the ears of George the Fourth, then Prince Eegent, who, on his 

 road from Eagley, called at his house, and waited nearly an hour 



