BEAUFORT HUNT: PAST AND PRESENT. 49 



since that day shown us capital sport, and wc earnestly hope he may 

 live for many a year to direct our sport and to continue the happy 

 hunting days which his beautiful pack of hounds is quite sure to 

 provide for us. We thank him heartily, and gratefully acknowledge 

 our good fortune in having had the 8th and 9th Dukes of Beaufort 

 to preside over our country and for all their generosity in their manner 

 of doing so. 



Contributed by Colonel Napier Miles, C.B. 



Dear Frank, 



You ask me to give you reminiscences of my father, the late 

 Colonel Peter Miles. I must tell you he was always rather reticent 

 about his* exploits in the hunting field, though he occasionally 

 opened out with regard to his experiences during the seasons he 

 hunted in Leicestershire, when Sir Richard Sutton was Master of 

 the Quorn. He never quite liked the verses, flattering though 

 they were, written by Davenport Bromley about him in the " Lays 

 of the Belvoir Hunt," as he said they were not fair to Little Gilmour.* 



When in the 17th Lancers, and quartered in Dublin, during the 

 forties, he used to buy all his horses from one Red Smith, who I 

 take it was the Captain Steeds of that day, and who knew every horse 

 hkely to make a hunter in the whole country round. Many a time 

 he took my father to out of the way places where they sometimes 

 would find a horse tied up in a sort of hovel surrounded by pigs ! 

 Those were the days when every horse in Ireland had good blood 

 in him, and such an animal as a '' Hackney " had never been heard of. 



In 1852 he had a black horse called the " Priest," a wonderful 

 wall jumper. One day the late Duke of Beaufort saw him 

 jump the wall at the bottom of Chavenage Park, which he thought 

 was out of the way big for one who rode 17 stone, and had it 

 measured ; it was found to be 5ft. 8in. This led to a bet being made 

 with the late Mr. Robert Chapman that the horse would clear a 6ft. 

 wall. The wall was built up for the purpose on the Westonbirt 

 estate, just off Bowldown Wood on the Boxwell side, and can be seen 

 now, it having always been kept up by the late Mr. Holford and his 

 son after him. It was a capital place to choose, the turf being 

 beautiful and springy, but unfortunately for my father he lost the 

 bet as at each attempt the horse knocked a stone off with his hind 

 toe. The horse was ridden by his second horseman, a light weight. 



He told me of a curious thing once happening to him which 

 occurred not long after he had been in this country, when hunting 

 with the V.W H, in the Cricklade district. Hounds were running 



* A copy of the verses referred to appeare at the end of the book 



