CHAPTER X 



A HUNT WITH THE EARL OF LONSDALE, VISITING 

 THE WOODLAND PYTCHLEY COUNTRY 



Visiting hunts tone up the sport— Laxton Park, Northamptonshire — 

 The field out, Feb. 1896, to meet the Earl of Lonsdale— The 

 Brocklesby dog-pack — The dawn of the science of breeding hounds 

 — Brocklesby Rallywood — The three best fox-hound sires in the 

 Rev. Cecil Legard's experience — Will Dale's career — Lord Lonsdale 

 and his hunt stafif— A hunt in Wakerley Forest — Houghton Park — 

 Over the Park wall— The Kill— The Pytchley at Owston Wood, April 

 1909 — The field out : Cottesmore and Pytchley followers — A hunt and 

 kill from Owston Wood — Lord Lonsdale has a day in the Grove 

 country — Lord Lonsdale's purchase of hounds for the Cottesmore 

 kennel, 1907-8 — A story of the Southwold in a strange country. 



" Oh ! give me the man to whom naught comes amiss, 

 One horse or another, that country or this ; 

 Thro' falls and bad starts who undauntedly still 

 Rides up to the motto : Be with them I will." 



— G. J. Whyte-Melville. 



Never do we remember seeing a more representative 

 gathering of the fox-hunting clans than the field 

 which assembled at Oakley Hay, on the borders of 

 Northamptonshire, in February 1896. The occasion 

 was a memorable one, Mr. Austin Mackenzie, master 

 of the Woodland Pytchley, having issued an invita- 

 tion to the Earl of Lonsdale, master of the Quorn, 

 asking him to bring his private pack and have a 

 hunt in the forest. Lord Lonsdale was no stranger 

 to the country, having served his first mastership 

 with the Woodland Pytchley from 1881 to 1885, 

 Ben Capell, the present Belvoir huntsman, being his 

 second whipper-in. There was a great air of ex- 

 pectancy about the gathering, which numbered 

 representatives from nearly a dozen different hunts, 

 making up a field of about two hundred, besides a 



