HISTORY OF THE KILDARE HUNT 



sportsmen. The fox indeed was esteemed as vermin, 

 a marauder to be smoked out of his den, killed and 

 exterminated if possible, by the easiest means at 

 hand. Such hounds as were employed were used in 

 tracking him from one earth to another, from 

 which, if he could not be bolted, he was dug or 

 burned out. So late as 1611, Gervase Markham 

 rates the fox with the badger, and classes both as 

 " chaces of a great deal less use or cunning than any 

 other," and at the end of the same century Richard 

 Blane in the Gentleman's Recreation regards the 

 chase of the fox *' as not so full of diversity as that 

 of the hare." It is improbable that foxes were 

 hunted on horseback until the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century either in England or Ireland. 

 Parish records in England prove that in many parts 

 of the country a price was put on his head, and re- 

 wards given for masks and brushes, which were 

 nailed to the church door. In any case, the notable 

 sportsmen of Anne and the first Georges hunted 

 either stag or hare. Somerville in the Chace places 

 hare-hunting before fox-hunting, and Sir Robert 

 Walpole was a hare hunter who kept a pack of 

 beagles in Richmond Park, and hunted on Satur- 

 days, which is still a reason for the House of Com- 

 mons not sitting in ordinary circumstances on that 

 day. 

 There seems indeed every reason to believe that 

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