HISTORY OF THE KILDARE HUNT 



This letter, as will be seen, contains valuable 

 information and for a brief moment, at least, sup- 

 plies the loss of any official annals at this period. 

 In the first place the terms upon which Mr La 

 Touche took the hounds manifestly surpass in 

 modesty the generous arrangement carried out for 

 so many years by Sir John Kennedy, who, as we 

 have seen, ran the Hunt on a subscription beginning 

 at j(^ 5 GO a year and increased towards the end of his 

 Mastership to ;(^8oo. It is clear from this letter that 

 Mr La Touche took the hounds on a guarantee of 

 no more than £300 a year. Sir John Kennedy was 

 obviously a difficult man to succeed in any case, but 

 to take up the Hunt where he left it and to show 

 continuous sport on a subscription of £300 a year, 

 as Mr John La Touche undoubtedly did, seems 

 to me to prove conclusively his devotion to the 

 welfare of the Hunt and his sterling qualities as a 

 sportsman. His huntsman was a man named Jim 

 Burne, and Mr George Mansfield, a very hard 

 rider of the period, honorary secretary to the Club. 



For the rest, I note with interest that the older 

 system of dividing the country into districts, each 

 under the charge of a member of the Hunt, was 

 revived, and that in the absence of all records of 

 the ballots, the letter introduces to our history the 

 names of some few of another generation of Kildare 

 sportsmen. 



154 



