THE SHIRES. 229 



places are on the Market Harboro' side. Leicester way, 

 Thurnby Spinney, Glen Gorse, Norton Gorse, Noseley, and 

 Sheepshorns, are all famous places for good foxes, and almost 

 certain to grant a run over a glorious country. The Saturdays 

 are generally spent in dusting the woodlands on the Cottesmore 

 boundary, from which runs may come, and if they do they will 

 probably be over a very stiff country. 



'For the truest sport, the straightest foxes, for perfection 

 of country, for long runs and fast runs, commend us,' says 

 'Brooksby,' 'to the wild pastures of the COTTESMORE.' This 

 establishment seems to have owed its origin to Sir William 

 Lowther, first Earl of Lonsdale, who kept a pack of harriers at 

 Uffington in the last quarter of last century, which about 1790 

 he turned into foxhounds. When his hounds were sold, their 

 pedigree went back 130 years, which would presumably carry it 

 into the seventeenth century. According to Dick Christian, 

 who was born at Cottesmore, a Mr. Noel, of Exton, was the 

 oldest accorded master of this country. He kept the hounds 

 at Cottesmore, and his huntsman was Arthur Abbey, 'a big 

 heavy man, with a rasping strong voice.' He was with Sir 

 Gilbert Heathcote afterwards, and is famous, if for nothing 

 else, for his saying to a parson who had just subsided into a 

 muddy ditch : 'You can lie where you are, sir : you won't be 

 wanted till next Sunday,' a happy thought subsequently ap- 

 propriated, as everyone remembers, by John Leech. Lord 

 Gainsborough took the hounds after Mr. Noel's death, and 

 after his own they passed to Sir William Lowther. Sir Gilbert 

 Heathcote's mastership seems to have lasted about ten years, 

 from 1799 to 1809, during which time Dick Christian was with 

 him as whip and occasional huntsman, and general breaker 

 and trainer of young horses. Then the hounds went back to 

 Sir William, who had blossomed into the Earl of Lonsdale, and 

 in that family they stayed some time. Indeed the Lowthers 

 have always been more or less connected with these hounds. 

 When Mr. Tailby took the lower p^rt of the Quorn country in 

 1856-7, he was also given, as has been said, a slice of the 



