The Sport of Our <iAncestors 



or yeomen, who could afford the expense, and they joined 

 packs. Such were called trencher hounds — implying that 

 they ran loose about the house, and were not confined in 

 kennel. Of their breed it would be difficult to speak at 

 this distance of time ; but it is conjectured that they re- 

 sembled the large broken-haired harriers now to be met 

 with in the mountainous parts of Wales, which, on good 

 scenting days, are nearly a match for anything by their 

 perseverance and nose. Slow and gradual must have been 

 the transition to the present elaborate system ; but let us 

 wave the minutiae of sporting antiquarianship.^ 



In no one instance has the modern varied from the 

 ancient system of hunting more than in the hour of meeting 

 in the morning. With our forefathers, when the roost cock 

 sounded his clarion, they sounded their horn ; throwing 

 off the pack so soon as they could distinguish a stile from a 

 gate, or, in other words, so soon as they could see to ride 

 to the hounds. Then it was that the hare was hunted to 

 her form by the trail, and the fox to his kennel by the drag. 



1 In a letter, dated February 1833, from the late Lord Arundel to the 

 author of these papers, is the following interesting passage to sportsmen : — 

 ' A pack of foxhounds were kept by my ancestor. Lord Arundel, between the 

 years 1690 and 1700 ; and I have memoranda to prove that they occasion- 

 ally hunted from Wardover Castle, in Wiltshire, and at Brimmer, in Hants, 

 now Sir Edward Halse's, but then the occasional residence of Lord Arundel. 

 These hounds were kept by my family until about the year 1745, when the 

 sixth Lord Arundel died, when they were kept by his nephew, the Earl of 

 Castle-Haven, until the death of the last Earl of that name, about the year 

 1782. The pack were then sold to the celebrated Hugo Meynell, Esq., of 

 Quorndon Hall, Leicestershire ; and hence it is possible they may have, in 

 part, contributed to the establishment of that gentleman's fox-hunting 

 fame.' 



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