INTRODUCTORY 



the merits of the fox as a beast of chase were first 

 discovered by the smaller country squires and yeo- 

 men who until the end of the seventeenth century 

 had been accustomed to hunt the hare, stag-hunting 

 then and earlier having been the exclusive sport 

 of the greater gentry. It was the smaller men, as I 

 say, who first discovered the superior merits of 

 the fox; their discovery was later shared by the stag- 

 hunters, and before a century had passed all 

 classes of sportsmen, aristocrats, gentle and simple, 

 were brought together in the enjoyment of the 

 sport which we now know as a national institu- 

 tion. 



Many gentlemen have claimed for their families 

 the credit of establishing the first pack of fox- 

 hounds in England. The tenth Lord Arundel of 

 Wardour contended that a pack which an ancestor 

 of his hunted in Hants and Wilts between 1690 and 

 1700 was the first pack of foxhounds ever seen in 

 England. These hounds were eventually sold to 

 Mr Hugo Meynell, the founder of the Quorn, and 

 the accepted father of the sport in England. A 

 similar claim is made by the Boothby family for 

 their ancestor, Mr Thomas Boothby, who certainly 

 hunted a pack from Tooley Park near Leicester. 

 His horn with the inscription " With this horn 

 he hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in 

 England fifty-five years " is still in existence. 



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