THE WARWICKSHIRE HOUNDS. 



CHAPTER IV. 



Tab Cannings— the weight reducing efforts of 

 Francis Canning— Robert Canning, the "crack 

 man " of the hunt — his exploits and horses — 

 Mr. John Hawkes — Mr. Morant Gale— his 



HARD RIDING— Mr. JoHN VeNOUR— A RUN FROM 



Wellbsbourne, 1804. 



e Cannings. j t^jajj^ perhaps, I have now sufficiently progressed 



into Mr. Corbet's period of mastership to introduce my 

 readers to some of the worthies who followed his 

 hounds over Warwickshire. The position of '* crack 

 man " must, I think, be yielded to Mr. Robert Canning, 

 of Houndshill. He and his brother Francis, who lived 

 at Foxcote, shone brilliantly in the country, and welter 

 weights as they were, their performances were all the 

 more creditable. They were comparatively uneducated 

 in the art of riding to hounds, their education 

 having been obtained on the Continent, where 

 working a horse across country is not, as a rule, to be 

 added to the attainment of severer knowledge with 

 the same facility that it is in England. The elder 

 brother, Francis, was the heavier of the two, but such 

 was his zeal that he took every possible means to re- 

 duce the weight which would tell against him when 

 the hunting season came round. Both he and his 

 brother are referred to in the poem "The Epwell 

 Hunt," to which I shall make more reference directly. 

 Goulburn, the author, says— 



