THE HISTORY OF THE BEL VOIR HUNT 



the former are found plentifully in most parts of the Vale, 

 and the latter, of a very fine kind, at the foot and along the 

 declivity of the hill which leads from the castle to the parish 

 of Stathern. 



" This and the neighbouring hill country are celebrated for 

 hunting, and many foxes are found here ; a few years since 

 two very beautiful ones of the black kind were turned off 

 from Croxton Park by the Duke of Rutland with a view to 

 their associating with the common kind, and they did so ; 

 but it does not appear to have added anything to the variety 

 or pleasure of the chace. 



"In the river Devon is sometimes found the otter, but this 

 happens rarely ; and badgers have been taken, but not often, 

 in the woods of Barston and Stathern." ^ 



The second Duke had but a short reign, succeeding to 

 the family honours in 1711 and dying of small-pox in 1721. 

 The third Duke is the first of the family who comes within 

 the scope of this history, since it was in his time that it 

 is definitely known the Belvoir hounds began to hunt the 

 fox, a sport to which this nobleman and his more dis- 

 tinguished son, the Marquis of Granby, were devoted. Two 

 actions of the life of this Duke were particularly note- 

 worthy as having had a great influence on the fortunes of the 

 hunt. It was he who finally migrated from Haddon Hall, 

 the cradle of his race, to Belvoir, which latter place came 

 into the family by the marriage of Sir Robert Manners, 

 knight, sheriff, and M.P. for Northumberland, with Eleanor, 

 the eldest sister and co-heiress of Edmund, Lord Roos. He 

 also built a lodge in the deer park at Croxton, to which the 

 family retired from time to time in order to escape from the 

 stately splendours of Belvoir to a simpler mode of life. The 

 third Duke, like his ancestor, married an heiress, Bridget, the 

 only daughter of Lord Lexington, who inherited all her 

 father's estates, which descended first to her son Robert, who 

 added the name of Sutton to that of Manners, and when 

 Lord Robert died childless, to her next son George, who also 



^ History of Antiquities of the County of Leicester, by John Nicholls 

 F.S.A., Edinburgh and Perth, 1795, vol. i., part i., p. 191. 



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