400 The Book of the Horse. 



Mr. Warburton adds — 



"1 am assured by a lady now living, that so late as 1809, in cue of the most hospitable houses in the 

 county, a silver fork was never seen on the dining-table." 



In the same year it appears that Mr. Smith Barry was the first master of a pack of fo.K- 

 hounds in Cheshire, supported entirely at his own expense. Mr. Smith Barry's name is 

 celebrated in the annals of fox-hunting as the owner of two hounds. Blue Cap and Wanton, 

 which, in October, 1762, ran a match for five hundred guineas, over the Beacon Course 

 (about four miles) at Newmarket, with a couple of hounds the property of the still more 

 celebrated Hugo Meynell, and beat them. Mr. Barry's hounds were trained in Essex, on 

 Tiptree Heath (since made famous in a different line by Mr. Mechi), "over ten miles of 

 turf." " Blue Cap came in first. Wanton very close to Blue Cap ; Hugo Meynell's Richmond 

 was beat by upwards of a hundred yards ; the bitch never ran at all. Sixty horses started 

 with the hounds; only twelve were up at the finish. The first up, ridden by Mr. Barry's 

 huntsman, was rode quite blind ; and a King's Plate horse, called Rib, was twelfth. The 

 distance was done by the hounds under eight minutes." Mr. Meynell's hounds, it was said 

 were fed on legs of mutton during the time of training. 



In 1773, at the request of the Club, Mr. Smith Barry sat for his portrait to a local 

 artist, Crank of Warrington, " one of whose pictures was sold for a large sum recently as a 

 Gainsborough." But evidently in those days portrait painters were not much more valued 

 in Cheshire and Lancashire than house painters, for "the picture is a full length; at his 

 master's feet sits Blue Cap, the winner at Newmarket; the portrait of the master is excel- 

 lent," yet the Club paid only ;^2i for it, and £'j l6s. for the frame! 



The Cheshire County Subscription Hounds originated in a pack established by Sir Peter 

 Warburton (an ancestor of Egerton Warburton) and others, after the Hunt Club had quarrelled 

 in 179S with Mr. Smith Barry and warned him off their covers. 



So much for hunting-clubs, which flourished in every hunting county at the time when a 

 distinct line divided country gentlemen from courtiers and wealthy citizens. 



Hare-hunting was in the highest favour in England when the country was intersected 

 with hundreds of thousands of acres of w.iste lands and poor pasture, employed in feeding 

 rabbits or miserable sheep ; which turnips, fed off by improved breeds of sheep, between 1730 

 and 1 8 14, turned into carefully-fenced grain-growing farms. 



Resident landlords, improved agriculture, and fox-hunting, have flourished together ; and 

 if the scent is not so good and the runs not so long as when wild foxes were hunted over 

 a wild country, there are more packs of hounds and more followers of the chase by many 

 fold than in the days when amongst tiie educated class a fox-hunter passed for, if not a fool, 

 a clown. 



" Three generations of Pelhams turned thousands of acres of wastes of Lincolnshire heath 

 and wolds into rich farm-land. The fourth (the late earl) did his part by giving the same 

 districts railways and seaport accommodation. ' Brocklesby Kennels ' and the ' Pelham Pillar ' 

 may be called as witnesses to the common-sense of English field-sports. It was the love of 

 hunting that led the Pelham family to settle in a remote county of wild heath, and to colonise 

 a waste with farmers of the first class."* 



* When the late Mr. Pusey, in a speech at a tenants' dinner at ihocklesby Park, said, " What astonishes me is where 

 Loid Yarborougli gets his tenants," a stout farmer answered at once, "I'll tell you, sir; his lordship breeds 'em." In the 

 Midland Counties it is considered an impertinence for a tenant farmer to wear scarlet ; but ths Urocklcsby Hunt was com- 

 posed chiefly of tenants, who wore scarlet, with the button of the Hunt. 



