402 HUNTING TOURS. 



repute, and from that time till 1805 much 

 blood from his kennels was introduced. 



The name of Tom Smith is singularly 

 identified with foxhunting qualifications of 

 the highest distinction. There was Mr. 

 Thomas Assheton Smith, whose renown has 

 a world wide fame. Another Mr. Thomas 

 Smith gained great celebrity as a gentleman 

 huntsman in the Hambleton, Craven, and 

 Pytchley countries, and there was also a Mr. 

 Tom Smith of Worcestershire origin, who 

 though never a master of hounds was a 

 capital judge of hunting, a fine horseman, 

 and possessed of wonderfully clear concep- 

 tions of the qualifications of a hunter, which 

 in his quaint language he was wont to express 

 with great volubility ; but the Tom Smiths of 

 whom I have now to speak were in connec- 

 tion with the Brocklesby Hunt. 



Coeval with the confederacy which was 

 former in the year 1713, between Mr. Pel- 

 ham, Sir John Tyrwhitt, and Mr. Vyner, it is 

 recorded that Thomas Smith, the great grand- 

 father of the present generation, was their 

 huntsman, and he entered his son, whose name 

 was also Thomas, as whipper-in ere he had 

 seen fifteen summers, to whom the paternal 



