BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 319 



although, from the members of his family, and from his grand- 

 son and present representative, Hugo Charles Meynell, Esq., 

 residing and keeping foxhounds upon his property at Hoar Cross 

 Hall, Rudgeley, Staffordshire, I have experienced all the cour- 

 tesy and attention to inquiries, which might have been expected 

 at the hands of his descendants. My intimacy with the son of 

 one of this great man's most intimate and valued friends, C. 

 Loraine Smith, Esq. — himself of no little celebrity in his day — 

 has enabled me, through that assistance, to lay before my readers 

 some few points connected with his history, which, not having 

 yet been published, may be interesting to those who are dis- 

 posed, with myself, to regard with reverence all associations of 

 the times to which they refer. 



It is to the present Mr. Loraine Smith, that I am indebted 

 for the sketch of the chief, which has supplied the frontis- 

 piece to this volume, in the act of a colloquy with his 

 huntsman. Jack Raven, upon the merits of a hound called 

 Glider (also introduced in the picture), in the year 1794, 

 by the pencil of his father, of whom he has also afforded me 

 a likeness. The name of Loraine Smith has been so blended, in 

 the course of my researches, with all that I have been able to 

 collect of Meynell, that I have thought it advisable to offer the 

 presentment of both these heroes of the olden time, conjointly, as 

 brethren of the same school, with the following particulars. 



Mr. Meynell had, at no time, more than three or four sub- 

 scribers to his hounds, and at first only two — Lord R. Cavendish 

 and Mr. Boothby. With Prince Boothby he lived for some 

 time at Langton Hall, and the hounds in those days were kept 

 at Great Bowden Lm, a most convenient place for the Langton 

 and Harborough countries. Mr. Meynell considered horses 

 merely as vehicles to the hounds — in which his heart and soul 

 were centred — in the field ; but he well knew the necessity of 

 having beneath him the means of being with them upon all 



