THE HOUSE OF MANNERS AND THE CHASE 



soon began to overshadow and perhaps to absorb the smaller 

 packs in their neighbourhoods, as they extended by degrees 

 the limits of their hunting grounds, until by the end of the 

 eighteenth century fox-hunting was established in its present 

 form in many places. With the rise of the great hunts came 

 the throwing open of the sport to all. The masters, for the 

 most part men of wealth and influence and often with the 

 additional advantage of high rank, kept the hounds. The 

 landowners preserved the foxes, and the farmers welcomed 

 all and sundry to ride over their land. They mended the 

 gaps and fences with honest timber, and bore as best they 

 might the reproaches of the goodwife for the loss of her hens 

 and turkeys. No one profited more by the altered state of 

 things than the foxes, which, paying a ransom in the form of 

 the sacrifice of a few of their number, henceforth lived in 

 plenty, and for some months of the year in perfect safety. 



As soon as matters reached this point, the natural advan- 

 tages of Leicestershire and Lincolnshire as hunting countries 

 were recognised, and the situation of the Belvoir Hunt 

 brought it into prominence. If we compare the Belvoir 

 Hunt with the Quorn, we shall see that the former had 

 many advantages over the latter. Fox-hunting at Belvoir is 

 indigenous, being the natural recreation of the inhabitants 

 of the country, for the gentlefolks and farmers have for the 

 most part an hereditary devotion to the sport. On the 

 other hand, hunting in Leicestershire is an exotic. Very few 

 of the resident gentry in Leicestershire have ever taken part 

 in it, and the hunt has been supported by the crowds of 

 strangers who come down to Melton every year to ride over 

 its unrivalled pastures. The Belvoir has more territory than 

 the Quorn and would stand six days a week easily, while 

 the resources of the Quorn are strained by four days, of 

 which but two are in what a Melton man would call a good 

 country. Then the Quorn has changed its masters with 

 bewildering rapidity and frequency, and the hounds almost 

 as often, while the Belvoir masters from 1 720-1 896 have been 

 men of one family — for Lord Forester was the nephew of the 

 Duke for whom he acted — or their nominees, while the pack 



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