116 



THE WARWICKSHIRE HOUNDS. 



Mr. Henley 



Greaves. 



1858-1861. 



The boundary 

 road. 



Jem Hills. 



A run from Wol- 

 ford. 



Crossing 

 road. 



the 



poor equipment for the wear and tear of a huntsman's 

 life. He was only ill ten days before hia death. 



One piece of work of his is worth recording. The 

 high road through Banbury,Bloxham, Chipping Norton, 

 and Stow-on-the-Wold constituted the boundary be- 

 tween the Warwickshire and the Heythrop countries. 

 The horn of the Heythrop was carried at this time by 

 the celebrated Jem Hills. A rare old huntsman was 

 Jem, and I almost regret that he was not in service with 

 the pack on the other side of the road, that I might 

 have been at liberty to have written more con- 

 cerning him here. This said high road was the 

 subject of a long standing joke between Jem 

 and the hunt on the other side. It was a curious 

 thing that for very many seasons no Warwickshire fox 

 had been chased across the boundary, which Jem 

 facetiously oflfered to have turfed that the hunt might be 

 able to cross it. At last, however, on one auspicious 

 day, when Mr. 'Greaves was master and Wells carried 

 the horn, the meet was at Wolford Wood and a stout 

 fox went away, taking them in a line laid well for the 

 enemy's country. Cornwell and Sarsden were his 

 principal points, and he yielded his brush at Pudlicot 

 Quarries, close to Shorthampton. The debt had been 

 paid with a vengeance. The brush was presented, to 

 Jem as a memento of the long delayed visit of his 

 neighbours, and he promised to have it mounted with a 

 silver plate bearing the inscription " This is the brush 

 of the fox which it took the South Warwickshire five- 

 and-twenty years to kill." It is somewhat singular 

 that foxes so rarely take a line into the Oxfordshire 

 districts compared with the runs they make in either 

 an easterly or westerly direction. My readers will re- 

 member in the earlier days one or two long runs into 

 Oxfordshire, but they are few compared with the many 

 good things I have recorded either into Gloucestershire 

 and Worcestershire on the one side, or into North- 

 amptonshire on the other. That runs into Oxfordshire 



