Lord Altiiorff. ox Fox-iicxtixg. 467 



are no crops to be damaged by tiie sport. Fox-hunting properly commences in November, 

 cub-hunting as soon as the corn crops arc harvested, and the season finishes, in most counties, 

 about tlie last week of March, although in purely grass and woodland counties a May-fox is 

 often killed if the season is favourable to scent. 



From Norman times to the reign of George III. hunting was pursued all the year rounu. 

 The "Spectator" arrived on a visit to Sir Roger de Coverley on the last day of June, and 

 writes, " Sir Roger is so keen at this sport (hunting with stop-\\o\ynAs, a sort of slow beagles) 

 that he has been out almost every day since I came here." 



Throughout Queen Anne's reign the farmers complained piteously of the losses they 

 suffered of hounds and horses galloping through standing corn. Pamphlets were written, and 

 every sort of appeal resorted to, in vain. " The Queen herself followed the hounds in a chaise 

 with one horse, 'which,' says Swift, 'she drives herself, and drives furiously, like Jehu; and 

 is a mighty hunter, like Nimrod.' She was, if Stella's journalist did not exaggerate, quite 

 equal to runs even longer than those performed by the Coverley hounds ; for on the 7th 

 August, 171 1, she drove before dinner five-and-forty miles after a stag." 



It was not until George III., the " farmer's friend," came to the throne, and exercised a 

 personal influence over legislation, that the abuse was abolished, and an Act passed by which 

 the sport was limited to those months in autumn and winter which the old Sa.xon Chronicle 

 had originally fixed as the " hunters' months." 



The keen young sportsman, with time and money at command, may thus commence in 

 Somersetshire in August, and if in September cub-hunting does not satisfy him, may hunt 

 hares on Salisbury Plains, on the downs of the south coast, and the moorlands north, until 

 November, when the best sport will be found in counties where there are no ditches, like th? 

 hill stonewall countries of Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. When winter frosts and rains have 

 cleared leaves from hedges, and the rank growth of weeds from the ditches, then sport in 

 the flying countries can be enjoyed in the utmost perfection with the least danger. In a 

 damp spring, fine sport is to be had even up to the second week of May, in a country of 

 pastures and woodlands. But not only crops have to be considered, but lands. Drainage is 

 supposed to be hostile to scent, but it makes fields rideable that previously brought the best 

 horses to a walk. " In that fifty-acre field," said the late Lord Berners at Keythorpe, to 

 the writer, " I have seen five hundred horsemen brought to a standstill. Now you may gallop 

 over it." Wire-fencing and the increase of sheep-feeding are the greatest obstacles to fox- 

 hunting. More than forty years ago, at Wentworth House, the American Sumner "sat at 

 dinner with Earl Spencer. We talked about hunting, which is now just beginning. He said 

 he used to keep a pack of hounds formerly, and that the relations into which it brought 

 him with his neighbours and the county had taught him more of human nature than he had 

 learnt in any other u-ay. The whole affair of fox-hunting, lie added, zvith all its trespasses upon 

 property, could not be maintained if the ivhole neighbourhood did not take as great an interest 

 in it as the owner of the hounds." 



THE FOX-HUNTERS' CLUB. 

 Boodle's, in St. James' Street, was until 1880 the fox-hunters' club par excellence. A 

 dingy-looking establishment outside and in, as little like such modern clubs as the Travellers' 

 or the Carleton, as the Cock in Fleet Street is like the Criterion in Piccadilly. Boodle's was 

 established about a hundred years ago as a resort for country gentlemen who liked better 

 dinners than the taverns of that day supplied. All Masters of established packs of fox-hounds 



