CHAPTER III 



SIR FENTON AYLMER AND MR A. HENRY 



1798-1814 



IN the absence of any information to the con- 

 trary, I should have been incHned to accept the 

 generally received tradition that the Kildare 

 Hunt is the result of a continuous development of 

 the hunting establishment which v^e have seen 

 established at Castletown by Mr Thomas Conolly 

 at least as early as 1764, and that the present pack 

 was descended from progenitors who owed much 

 of their blood to the great pack at Belvoir. Subse- 

 quent inquiry rather pointed to the probability 

 that the Kildare Hunt of to-day owed its origin to 

 a fusion of the Castletown and Bishopscourt Hunts 

 somewhere about the date of Squire Conolly's 

 death, but a letter written by Sir Fenton Aylmer 

 to the second Duke of Leinster, which is among 

 the papers so kindly placed at my disposal by Capt. 

 E. N. Conolly, gives pause to such speculations. 



57 



