CRITICISMS OF HIS FOLLOWERS 143 



when we deliver a verdict upon the season of our 

 discontent. Since the abolition of the Royal Buck- 

 hounds, there is not a pack of hounds in the United 

 Kingdom, which is not supported, if not openly, in 

 some small degree, by subscriptions. In 1874 there 

 were only eleven non-subscription packs of foxhounds 

 out of the one hundred and thirty-seven packs in 

 England and Scotland. These packs were the Belvoir, 

 the Brocklesby, the Badminton, the Berkeley, Duke 

 of Grafton's, Earl Fitzwilliam's, Earl of Coventry's, 

 the Cottesmore, Lord Leconfield's, Lord Tredegar's, 

 and Sir Watkin William Wynn's. The first genuine 

 subscription pack of hounds, of which we have any 

 reliable record, was founded in 1796 by Sir Peter 

 Warburton, under the style of "The Cheshire County 

 Subscription Hounds." In 1762 Boodle's Club was 

 founded, as a London eating-house, for members of 

 Hunt clubs, though it was not till 1770 that the famous 

 Tarporley Hunt Club became a fox-hunting club. The 

 members of these various Hunt clubs had, for all hunt- 

 ing intents and purposes, the same position as is now 

 held by the members of a Hunt committee. It must 

 be admitted that the Hunt club possessed a certain 

 social significance which the modern Hunt committee 

 does not possess. But what was the value of that 

 social significance ? At the commencement of the 

 nineteenth century, Masters of Hounds were either 

 large landowners, or else hunted a country in order to 

 live out of the hounds. 



There were many men, who, like Mr. Facey Romford, 

 regarded the Mastership of Hounds as a commercial 



