HARE-HUNTERS OF THE PAST 21 



good farmers, great judges of stock and agriculture ; 

 and they had time and leisure to cultivate those 

 domestic virtues which ensure pleasant homes and 

 cheerful families. Some of them — by no means all — 

 drank, it is true, more than was good for them. But, 

 it is to be remembered, before the great French wars and 

 the era of port-wine, the country gentleman, and 

 especially those of the minor sort, drank ale for the 

 most part, varied by claret and punch, and were not 

 likely, therefore, to be so afflicted by gout and other 

 ailments, as the three- or four-bottle men who came 

 after them and drank the strong wine of Portugal. 

 It will be, I think, not unprofitable to place before the 

 reader one or two pictures of the hunting squires of 

 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Here is one, 

 taken from the life, by Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury, 

 in his memoirs of the Honourable William Hastings. 



" In the year 1638," says Lord Shaftesbury, " lived 

 Mr. Hastings at Woodlands, in the County of South- 

 ampton. By his quality, son, brother, and uncle to 

 the Earls of Huntingdon.* He was, peradventure, 

 an original in our age, or rather the copy of our antient 

 Nobility in hunting, not in warlike times. He was very 

 low, strong, and active, with reddish flaxen hair. His 

 clothes, which, when new, were never worth five pounds, 

 were of Green cloth. His house was perfectly old- 

 fashioned ; in the midst of a large Park, well stocked 

 with Deer and Rabbits, many Fish-ponds, a great store 

 of wood and timber, a Bowling-green in it, long but 

 narrow, full of high ridges, never having been levelled 

 since it was ploughed ; round sand Bowls were used, and 

 it had a Banquetting house like a Stand, built in a tree. 



* It is curious to remember how devoted to hunting are 

 members of the Huntingdon family — the present Earl and 

 Lady Ileene Hastings to wit — in our own time. 



