HISTORY OF THE KH.DARE HUNT 



manners made him a universal favourite with all 

 who followed the Kildare hounds. It is little 

 wonder, therefore, that the provisional period of 

 four seasons during which he undertook to hunt 

 the country was extended again and again, until it 

 eventually stretched to more than a quarter of a 

 century. It is no disparagement to the other able 

 masters who have led Kildare fields, both before 

 his time and since, to accept his title, unquestioned 

 in the Kildare country, of " Father of the Kildare 

 Hunt." 



The country which Mr Kennedy took over from 

 Sir Fenton Aylmer was in many respects much 

 then as now. It is, as is well known, on the whole 

 an open country, with very little woodland, and 

 depending almost entirely upon rented gorse 

 coverts for the holding of foxes. As hunting dis- 

 tricts were reckoned even in those days, it was 

 extensive, though, of course, it did not compare 

 with those vast tracts in England which went by 

 the name of hunting districts in the early days of 

 the sport, like that of the Berkeley Hounds, for 

 example, which nominally stretched from Bristol 

 to Kensington Gardens, in which pleasaunce they 

 once killed a fox. But a country extending from 

 Oak Park, near Carlow, on the south, to Lough- 

 crew, in Meath, on the north, a distance as the crow 

 flies of well over forty-five miles, and westward 

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