176 THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



expenses of it, keeping a complement of hounds and horses 

 for four days a week, and occasionally a fifth ; having two 

 kennels, one at Stratford-on-Avon, and another at Minden, 

 near Coventry, whence the country called " The Mereden " 

 was hunted at two different periods in the season, but 

 chiefly in the spring, for which it is eminently adapted. 

 He soon obtained an introduction to the members of the 

 Stratford Hunt Club, whom he found living together on 

 the best possible terms Mr. Corbet joining them at 

 dinner on every Thursday in the week, and commonly 

 entertaining some of them on the other six days. He 

 found a man hunting these hounds, whom, although he 

 was too young to give an opinion on his merits as a hunts- 

 man, he pronounced to be the finest horseman, in the form 

 of a servant, he had ever hitherto seen ; and it was told of 

 him that, during his service with that eminent sportsman, 

 Mr. Childe, of Kinlet Hall, in Shropshire, as whipper-in, 

 he was the only man in his establishment that he would 

 ever suffer to mount the horses he himself rode. His 

 name was William Barrow, commonly called Will Barrow, 

 and his brother Jack, also good in his place, acted as his 

 first whip. He saw a month's very good sport with these 

 hounds, and he saw some right good sportsmen in the 

 field ; but what surprised him most, was the fact that the 

 two leading men over this strongly fenced and, in parts, 

 very deep country, weighed, with their saddles, good 

 seventeen stone. The name of these eminent horsemen 

 and sportsmen was Canning, the elder possessing a large 

 property in the country, and the younger also in posses- 

 sion of a very considerable income. But the most extra- 

 ordinary part of the history of these gentlemen as sports- 

 men, is the fact of their having by reason of being 

 Catholics been educated abroad, and never seeing a fox- 

 hound in the field until past their twenty-fifth year. The 

 younger, Mr. Robert Canning, was the finest horseman of 

 the two ; but their knowledge of fox-hunting, and their 

 judgment in riding to hounds, were not inferior to those 

 of the most experienced sportsman of the day. Mr. 

 Hawkes, so celebrated as an amateur jockey, and a con- 

 spicuous man with Mr. Meynell's hounds in Leicester- 

 shire, also then resided in Warwickshire, and was occasion- 

 ally seen, and, as it fell out at this identical time, by our 

 hero, gallantly crossing its large grass enclosures on his 

 thorough-bred nags, delighted with the cheering voice of 



