32 HUNTING. 



so fast that they would ' run away from everybody,' which was 

 pretty well what that excellent sportsman and rider did do. 

 The Prince had been entered to fox in his father's lifetime, and 

 for a few seasons hunted the Hambledon country from Moor 

 Critchell, solacing himself on by-days with a pack of rabbit- 

 beagles, seven couples of which could ride to the meet in a 

 couple of panniers. But, despite the ' Druid's ' loyalty, one 

 can hardly suppose him ever to have been very keen about 

 hounds. The turf suited him better than the chase ; and 

 Carlton House and Brighton better, probably, than either. 



No pack of hounds in England could show a cleaner or 

 more direct pedigree than could the staghounds of North 

 Devonshire up to the year 1825. Exmoor was a royal hunting- 

 ground in the time of the Conqueror, and from that day down 

 into the present century there has always, we believe, been a 

 Ranger of Exmoor holding office under the Crown. The 

 history of the Devonshire hounds can be traced in a straight 

 line back to the year 1598, when Hugh Pollard, Elizabeth's 

 Ranger, kept a pack at Simonsbath. From that time down to 

 1825 the sport flourished exceedingly under a goodly roll of 

 masters, particularly under Sir Thomas Acland, the second of 

 the name, and the late Lord Fortescue, who kept the hounds 

 at Castle Hill in 1802 and again from 1812 to 1818. 'Those 

 were glorious days,' sighs the historian of the latter's master- 

 ship : ' When a good stag had been killed, the custom was for 

 James Tout, the huntsman, to enter the dining-room at Castle 

 Hill after dinner in full costume with his horn in his hand, and 

 after he had sounded a mort, "Success to stag-hunting" was 

 solemnly drunk by the assembled company in port wine.' ^ In 

 1825 the pack was sold, but two years later another was formed, 

 and, with one or two short intervals, the North Devon stag- 

 hounds have continued to show what is in many ways the finest 

 and most genuine sport in England. 



The twelfth Earl of Derby, great-grandfather to the present, 

 also kept a pack of some note in his day, with which he 



1 See CoUyns's Notes o?i the Chase of the Wild Red Deer. 



