THE WARWICKSHIRE HOUNDS. 



he must have commenced at an early age. 

 is as follows : — 



His epitaph Early Days. 



Here Hoilt, and his sports and labour past, 

 Joins his loved master Somerville at last ; 

 Together wont the echoing fields to try, 

 Together now in silent dust they lie- 

 Servant and lord, when once we yield our breath, 

 Huntsoaan and poet are alike to death. 



Early Packs of 

 Fox-hounds. 



Somerville's residence at Edstone was close to the fox- 

 covert Austywood. It was a perusal of his poem that 

 first gave the well-known master, Earl Fitzhardinge, a 

 love of the chase, and indeed no one can read it with- 

 out being struck and charmed with the knowledge of 

 the details of hunting displayed therein. 



During the last century a few hounds were to be 

 found in the kennels of almost every country squire. 

 With these he would provide his neighbours with an 

 occasional gallop after a hare, or a fox or two. In time 

 the advantages of breeding hounds according to the 

 chase in which they were to be used became recognised, 

 as is seen in the lines of the Warwickshire poet quoted 

 above. While many continued to keep the more 

 diminutive for following the hare, there were fewer 

 who established packs for the pursuit of the nobler 

 animal. The first pack of fox-hounds of which we have 

 any authentic account in Warwickshire is that kept 

 by Mr. Wrightson, of Cash worth, in Yorkshire. He 

 had two kennels, one at Swalclifife Q^range, and the 

 other on the other side of the country, at the White 

 Lion Hotel, Stratford-upon-Avon. ^This hostelry was 

 a conspicuous place in the earlier days of the Warwick- 

 shire Hunt. It was one of the principal resorts of 

 the sporting characters of the country, and well may 

 we imagine the merry evenings spent round the festive 

 board after a fine day's sport, in the good old days, 

 when three bottles of port were looked upon as the 

 ordinary sequence of a good dinner. The date at which 

 Mr. Wrightson hunted Warwickshire was about 1780. Mr. Wrightson. 

 The Warwickshire Hunt, however, can hardly be said 



The first War- 

 wickshire Pack 

 on record, 

 1780. 



