86 THE MASTER OF HOUNDS 



by Charles Payne, of Pytchley celebrity, who remained 

 with the Wynnstay Hounds till 1883, which was the 

 last season that Sir Watkin was seen in the hunting- 

 field on horseback, his last appearance being at Gres- 

 ford on April 7, 1883, when his friends could not help 

 but notice what ravages disease had made in him. His 

 clothes hung about him, and to a large extent his 

 spirits, hitherto good, had left him. For the last four 

 or five years he had but seldom seen his own hounds. 



Just a few words of Sir Watkin Wynn as a Master of 

 Fox-hounds. Though never a flyer, he had an extra- 

 ordinary knack of getting over the country. He would 

 creep through blind places, drop his horse into a road, 

 jump the Aldersey Brook at a stand, and never lose 

 the line of his hounds. In his heyday he always rode 

 big horses, but latterly he had ridden strong cobby 

 horses, and tested their understandings pretty well 

 down all sorts of roads, that younger and lighter men 

 would have shuddered at it, with a loose rein at full 

 gallop. Mr. T. H. G. Puleston writes of him : " Sir 

 Watkin had a strong seat, a light hand, good nerve, 

 and a quick eye to hounds ; he never pulled his horses' 

 mouths about, and, therefore, though he courted one 

 very often by galloping down all sorts of lanes, and 

 cramming his horses through blind places, he seldom 

 had a fall, and never, we believe, a serious one. He 

 seldom, if ever, ' flew ' a fence, but trained his horses 

 to jump the widest ditches, and even the Grafton and 

 Aldersey Brooks at a stand, to creep through a thick, 

 blind fence with a big ditch on the other side ; then, 

 when he dropped his hand, his horse jumped, and 



