CHAPTER XXII 



WILLIAM SOMERVILE : THE FATHER OF 

 MODERN HUNTING 



John Warde — Somervile as an authority — Temporary eclipse of his fame 

 — Birth, ancestry, and education — Edstone House — The heart of 

 Shakespeare's country — A rare portrait — Somervile's marriage — 

 His hunting establishment and country — His huntsmen — Old hunt- 

 ing days — Literature — The Chace — Scarcity of hunting lore — 

 Picture of a hound — Hare-hunting described — The fox — A royal 

 stag-hunt — Flattering portraits — Maids of honour and their woes — 

 Declining years. 



JOHN WARDE, who hunted many packs and in 

 many counties, has often been called the *' Father 

 of the Chase," That title, it seems to me, belongs 

 much more of right to William Somervile, the Squire 

 of Edstone, who was not only one of the most accom- 

 plished and enthusiastic huntsmen that this country has 

 ever seen, but was, in addition, a poet and a scholar, 

 the distinguished author of The Chace, a classic which 

 will assuredly live long after fox-hunting has fallen into 

 decadence in these islands. Warde flourished at a later 

 era than Somervile — he was in his prime towards the 

 end of the eighteenth century — and although he un- 

 doubtedly had much to do with the organisation and 

 development of fox-hunting as it is now practised, he 

 cannot be said to merit the title bestowed upon him 

 so completely as does Somervile. He reaped where 

 Somervile and Peter Beckford (the author of that other 

 classic of the chase, Thoughts on Hunting) had sown ; 



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