HISTORY OF THE KILDARE HUNT 



" If your business would permit you to give me 

 the pleasure of your company about this day se'n- 

 night, we might have the whole week following 

 without interruption. The gentlemen in my neigh- 

 bourhood are anxious to see you and enjoy the fox- 

 chase in its perfection, but I hope you will make 

 your visit here at your own time, as I shall always 

 be happy to see you and your friends." 



From this I infer that Lismullen was one of the 

 places to which Mr Conolly periodically took his 

 hounds, following a custom which was universal in 

 those days, by which the owners of packs exchanged 

 a week's hunting in a strange country with each 

 other. 



With Mr Conolly 's death near the end of the 

 eighteenth century passed one of the last and the 

 most prominent of the Irish sporting gentlemen of 

 the pre-Union days. Although we are more inter- 

 ested in him as one of the pioneers of fox-hunting in 

 the Kildare country, he was a very notable sports- 

 man in other directions. I find in the Sporting 

 Magazine for 1792 the following, dated Dublin, 

 March 7, 1792: 



" The Rt. Honable Mr Conolly makes a present 

 of a Gold Cup value 200 gs. to be run for at the 

 next Spring Meeting at the Curragh. The terms of 

 the cup are that it shall always be liable to Chal- 



30 



