6 PREFACE. 



but Lord March's book well repays the trouble of 

 reading. 



If the Charlton Hunt Club could claim to be 

 the first one established in England we in Kilkenny 

 can claim that ours was the first to exist on this side 

 of the Irish Se;ai, and we have the added satisfaction 

 in the circumstance that ours still remains and 

 flourishes, though robbed of its former convivial char- 

 acter, whilst the Charlton glories have long departed. 



But we cam carry back flar beyond the Charlton 

 or any other pack, for the inception of British fox- 

 hunting. Old Chaucer, writing in the 14th century, 

 graphically describes a foxhunt, when the whole 

 community, armed with staves, turned out, assis- 

 ted by "Coll, our dog, ana T'albot, and Grerlond," as 

 well as old "Mallun, with her distaff in her hond," 

 when cow and calf and hog were put on the run by the 

 racket, and reynard was pursued by the varied music 

 of this very "mixed pack." 



Now we have evidence that foxhunting was 

 carried on more than 260 years atgo in Kilkenny. Lord 

 Castlehaven in his history of the Irish Wars in the 

 reign of Charles I., several times mentions his hunt- 

 ing, and relates that being in Kilkenny just after the 

 peace of 1648, went "early one morning a foxhunting 

 as I was accustomed all the winter," and he was 

 accompanied by the Lord Deputy. This would show 

 that foxhunting was a winter sport here in the first 

 half of tihie 17th century. Since that time it is prob- 

 able that it has never been discontinued, though 

 carried on by private packs, until near the end of the 



