244 THE BROCKLESBY HOUNDS. 



Grosvenor. He used to send his mares to Lord Fitz- 

 william's and Lord Egremont's best horses, and a Driver 

 mare was one of the best they have had in the Brocklesby 

 stables. Old Driver, the " old, old hat " of Lord Palmer- 

 ston's Tiverton speech, stood at Lord Egremont's stud 

 farm between York and Beverley. Quicksilver, a small 

 blood-like horse, was the first noted sire that Lord Yar- 

 borough had, and his stock were all chestnuts with duck- 

 noses — wide nostrils — and the proverbial " skin like a 

 mouse," and they were as good to tell as if they were 

 labelled. At one time the country was full of his stock, 

 and later on with Sir Malagigi's, but they were all funny- 

 tempered ones. This latter horse came from Holderness, 

 and was very loosely built, and his owner used to say that 

 a season in North Lincolnshire was worth four hundred 

 guineas in two-guinea fees. Nailer was one of the best of 

 Quicksilver's stock that old Will Smith ever rode ; but a 

 reference to that horse is made in the chapter which deals 

 with that fine old huntsman. Ploughboy, a son of Hippo- 

 menes, one of Will Smith's favourite horses, was bred by 

 Mr. Richardson, of Limber, and he carried the huntsman 

 some eight seasons. A Devising mare, whose Eclipse 

 sire had been imported into Lincolnshire by Lord Yar- 

 borough, had the honour of throwing to Pilgrim, the mare 

 of Mr. Frank Isles's on which Mr. Tom Brooks won his 

 historic steeplechase against Mr. Field Nicholson in 1821. 

 It used to be said that a Leicestershire hack was a 

 pretty good hunter for other countries, and the same may 

 be said of the farmer's hack of the Lincolnshire Wolds. 

 His master, farming anything from three hundred to 

 fifteen hundred acres, has no time to lose crawling about 

 on a half-bred cart mare ; the farm has to be visited 

 before hunting, and the market towns lie wide for a five- 

 mile-an-hour jog-trot to suit. It used to be the fashion 

 on the wolds, and is still in many cases, to ride round 

 farming at a good pace, and to fly the fences if the gates 

 a-re at the wrong end of the fields. 



