CHAPTER III 



MR. EGERTON WARBURTON 



ROWLAND EYLES EGERTON WARBURTON of 

 Warburton and Arley in the county of Cheshire 

 succeeded in the year 1813 to the estates, but not 

 to the title, of his great-uncle. Sir Peter Warburton, fifth 

 baronet of Arley. He was born in 1804 and died in 1891, 

 and is known to posterity as the Poet Laureate of the Tar- 

 porley Hunt, and indeed of the county of Cheshire, for in 

 addition to his ' Hunting- Songs ' he published ' Cheshire 

 Ballads y' a kind of Ingoldsby Legends of his own part of 

 the world. He also wrote a book of ' Poems, Epigrams, and 

 Sonnets,^ which probably has to-day very few readers. But 

 his ^Hunting- Songs ' have survived. To reduce Fox-hunting 

 to verse is a doubtful operation. But on the whole Mr. War- 

 burton performs it as well as any other bard of the nineteenth 

 century, and probably better than most of them. He has 

 also preserved for posterity the convivial atmosphere of the 

 Tarporley Hunt Club, founded in 1762. The home of this 

 club is the Swan Inn at Tarporley, where much claret 

 has been drunk by many generations of Smith - Barrys, 

 Warburtons, Herons, Mainwarings, Davenports, Chol- 

 mondeleys, Leghs, and many other Cheshire families. 

 They must have been jolly fellows, those Cheshire 



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