NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



whipped off towards afternoon, jogged homewards, 

 and after a hearty dinner, washed down by sound claret 

 — port was a much later introduction — more often than 

 not devoted the whole evening to a bowl or two of 

 punch and much conviviality. Poor Somervile himself 

 seems to have fallen a victim to good cheer and the 

 careless and too hospitable keeping of open house. 



Towards the end of the eighteenth century this most 

 pleasant, but somewhat intermittent and informal, style 

 of hunting began to be supplanted by more systematic 

 and organised methods. Large packs of carefully bred 

 hounds, devoted solely to the chase of the fox, were set 

 on foot ; districts were marked out and assigned ; and a 

 little later hunt clubs came into vogue. Mr. John 

 Warde, Mr. Hugo Meynell, and Mr. John Corbet are 

 famous among the forerunners of the modern style of 

 fox-hunting. In Warwickshire, where for many years 

 past the late Lord Willoughby de Broke provided 

 some of the best sport in England, the first organised 

 pack seems to have been established by Mr. Wrightson, 

 a Yorkshire gentleman, in or about the year 1780. 

 Mr. Wrightson had kennels at Stratford-on-Avon and 

 Swalcliffe, and managed his pack with the aid of a 

 huntsman and two whips, each of whom was provided 

 with four horses. John Warde, sometimes called "the 

 father of English foxhunting," also hunted in Warwick- 

 shire before 1791. This great sportsman maintained 

 hounds in various parts of England for close on sixty 

 years. He patronised his own county of Kent, Berks, 

 Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire — the 

 present Pytchley country — and Hampshire. He died in 

 1838, at the age of 86. 



Mr. John Corbet, of Sundorne Castle, Shropshire, 

 another of the pioneers of hunting, succeeded John 

 Warde in Warwickshire in 1791. He was universally 



128 



