FAMOUS MASTERS 67 



In 1816 Tom Smith moved to the Burton country, 

 which he hunted till 1824, and in 1828 he went to 

 Panton, near Andover. On October 29, 1827, he 

 married Maria, second daughter of Mr. William 

 Webber, of Bingfield Lodge, Berkshire. He is re- 

 ported to have said that his sport in Hampshire not 

 only equalled, but far exceeded any that he had had in 

 Leicestershire. This statement has been much cavilled 

 at, and it has been insinuated that he was beginning to 

 lose his nerve. But Smith never lost his nerve till the 

 hour of his death, and nervous insufficiency was to him 

 an unknown quantity which he could not understand. 

 The truth is, that when he moved to Hampshire he had 

 completed his fiftieth year, and would in the ordinary 

 course of nature soon bear upon his shoulders the 

 responsibilities, which it would be impossible for him 

 to attend to in Leicestershire. Besides, it must be 

 remembered that he was a comparative stranger in 

 Leicestershire, while in Hampshire he was the heir of 

 the Squire of Tedworth. On the death of his father 

 he moved to Tedworth Hall, which he restored and 

 enlarged. From that date the future of the Tedworth 

 Hunt was an assured fact. The Squire continued to 

 hunt the country till his death, which took place at his 

 Welsh seat, Vaynol, near Bangor, in August 1858, at 

 the ripe age of eighty-two, when he had been an M.F.H. 

 for fifty-two years. 



During his career as an M.F.H. his best-known 

 Hunt servants were Jack Shirley, ex-huntsman to 

 Lord Sefton, Dick Burton, Joe Harrison, and Tom 

 Wingfield ; but the Squire invariably carried the horn 



