CHAPTER VI 



Early Spaniels and Setters 



O give a complete history of the English Setter, without 

 mixing with it a great deal of information regarding the 

 various family connections of the breed, is so impossible 

 that we have decided to give one comprehensive intro- 

 ductory chapter regarding the spaniels, beginning with 

 their earliest history and concluding with the splitting up of the family into 

 the various sections of setters and spaniels. This will embrace a period of 

 some four hundred years, during which the dog first known as the spaniel 

 subsequently, in one branch, became the setting spaniel, then the setter, 

 and finally became divided into the three breeds of setters as we know them 

 to-day. 



The Duke of Northumberland, son of Queen Elizabeth's favourite 

 courtier, the celebrated Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and his second 

 wife. Lady Douglas Howard, whom he is said to have married in 1578, is 

 erroneously credited with having been the first person "that taught a dog to 

 sit in order to catch partridges," as we shall show very clearly. Even those 

 who have in late years given this authoritatively, at the same time quoted 

 from "Of Englishe Dogges," written six years after the duke's parents were 

 married, in which the netting of partridges is fully described, showing but 

 little investigation on the part of the editors, who permitted this and kindred 

 errors to receive their endorsement. Caius, who wrote this old book, called 

 them setters, but they could not have been so styled in common, and setting 

 spaniel and setting dogge they continued to be called until the net went out 

 of fashion about 1800. 



The Spaniel 



Our first knowledge of the spaniel is obtained from the work of the 

 French count, Gaston de Foix, who in 1387 wrote his book called "Livre 



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