398 The Book of the Horse. 



between Sir John Tyrwhitt, Charles Pelham, Esq., and Robert Vyner, Esq.,* that the fo.x;- 

 hounds now kept by the said Sir John Tyrwhitt and Mr. Pelham shall be joyned in one 

 pack, and the three have a joint interest in the said hounds for five years, each for one 

 third of the year" [therefore they must have hunted all the year round]; "that the estab- 

 lishment shall consist of sixteen couple of hounds, three horses, and a boy." The united 

 pack soon passed into the hands of Mr. Pelham, and down to this day the hounds are 

 branded with a " P." 



I also examined at Brocklesby rough memoranda of the kennel from 17 10 to 1746. From 

 1746 the stud book has been kept up without a break. From 1797 the first Earl of 

 Yarborough kept journals of the pedigree of the hounds in his own handwriting ; since that 

 time, up to the date of my visit, they had been kept by three generations of huntsmen of 

 the name of Smith. The last Smith was killed hunting a few years afterwards, a very 

 unusual death for a huntsman. In the time of the first Lord Yarborough, 1794, his country 

 extended over the whole of the South Wold country part of the Burton Hunt, which is now 

 hunted from Lincoln ; and he used to go down into these districts for a month at a time to 

 hunt the woodlands. He told his grandson that when he began hunting, about 1750, 

 there were only three or four fences in the thirty miles between Horncastle and Brigg. 

 Turnips had not then conquered heath-land and rabbit warrens. Hugo Meynell, the father 

 of modern fox-hunting, and the founder of the Ouorn Hunt, formed his pack chiefly of drafts 

 from the Brocklesby kennels. 



A good picture of the manners and customs of fox-hunting men of the last century may be 

 gathered from the "Annals of the Tarporley Club," by Mr. Rowland Egerton Warburton, 

 of Arley Hall, which forms the introduction to the last edition of his hunting songs. Mr. 

 Warburton was long not only one of the most brilliant horsemen, but the poet-laureate of 

 that famous hunting club. 



THE TARPORLEY HUNT CLUB. 



The Tarporley Hunt was established for hare-liunting, on a very primitive plan, in 1762. 

 Those who kept harriers brought out their packs in turn. If no member of the Society 

 kept hounds, it is ordered by Rule VIII. that "a pack be borrowed and kept at the expense 

 of the Society." 



The country was then, as now, a dairy district, but very little fenced in, until the disco\-ery 

 of the value of bone-dust in fertilising pastures and the profits of potato-growing made 

 farmers insist on dividing their improved fields from waste lands with which the countr}' was 

 intersected. After 1798 war stimulated and made universal enclosures and reclamation. 



The founders, ten in number, included the names of John Crewe, Booth Grey (a son of 

 the fourth Earl of Stamford), Sir Harry Mainwaring, two Wilbrahams, a Cotton of Combermere, 

 and a lady patroness (Miss Townshend), all names still prominent amongst the local 

 aristocracy of Cheshire. 



By the rules of the club they agreed — 



"'To meet twice every year, tlie meeting for hunting to be lield the second Monday in November.' They 

 assembled, it seems, at the club room, at the Swan Hotel, Tarporley, over niglit. ' Each meeting to last seven 

 days. The harriers never to wait for any member after eight o'clock in the morning.' 



• Ancestor of the .\iilhor of "Nolitia Venatica," ami formerly M.istcr of the Worcestershire Hounds. 



