HISTORY AND LITERATURE. 17 



hounds when they were at fault. After the fatigues of the day, 

 which were generally crowned with the brushes of a brace of foxes, 

 he entertained those who would return with him, and which was 

 sometimes thirty miles' distance, with old English hospitality. 

 Good old October was the liquor drunk ; and his first fox-hunting 

 toast was All the brushes in Christendom. At the age of eighty 

 years this gentleman died as he chiefly lived, for he died on horse- 

 back. As he was going to give some instructions to a friend who 

 was rearing up a pack of foxhounds, he was seized with a fit, and 

 dropping from his old favourite pony, he expired ! There was no 

 man, rich or poor, in his neighbourhood but lamented his death, 

 and the foxes were the only things that had occasion to be glad 

 Squire Draper was no more. 



Though hunting was, as we have seen, in its early days the 

 exclusive amusement of the noble classes, an exception was 

 always made in favour of the citizens of London from almost 

 immemorial times. Strutt quotes a charter granted to them by 

 Henry I. which contains the following clause : ' The citizens 

 of London may have chases, and hunt as well, and as fully, as 

 their ancestors have had ; that is to say, in the Chiltre, in 

 Middlesex and Surrey.' According to ' Cecil,' the Lord Mayor 

 himself kept hounds from a time vaguely specified as ' many 

 centuries ago ; ' and Lincoln's Inn Fields, St. James's, and 

 May Fair were the favourite places of meeting. The privi- 

 leges granted by Henry were confirmed by all succeeding 

 kings. In the reign of George I. we find 'riding on horse- 

 back and hunting with my Lord Mayor's hounds when the 

 common-hunt goes out,' reckoned by Strype among the 

 favourite amusements of Londoners. This 'common-hunt' 

 was, no doubt, the origin of that * Epping Hunt ' which has 

 been the butt of so many wits from the time of D'Urfey 

 down to our own. In the ' Sporting Magazine ' for 1795 there 

 is an account of a run with the Lord Mayor's hounds, de- 

 signed to show how unfounded were the jests cut at the good 

 citizens' expense, and that the sport was a serious and a 

 legitimate business. A stag is turned out, and it is particularly 

 noted that his antlers had been sawn off, a practice which has 



c 



