THE GENEROUS GRANBY 



ing, and of sport ; and in the present work I may be 

 pardoned if I dwell on the usefulness of the last-named. 

 It is with some diffidence, however, I suggest that the 

 graver historians of England, either from want of sym- 

 pathy with, or lack of understanding of, the subject, 

 have not given enough weight to the love of sport in- 

 herent in the British mind when tracing the development of 

 the national character. It is only necessary to begin to 

 pick up the threads for a book like the present to become 

 convinced of two things, viz., that sport touches on and 

 affects English life in every department, and that historians 

 are silent about this far-reaching influence to a surprising 

 degree. As a matter of fact, each period of our history has 

 had its own sport and its peculiar pastime, which has helped 

 to form the character and mould the manners of the age. 



Fox-hunting was just beginning to rank as an acknow- 

 ledged sport when Lord Granby was a boy. The pursuit of 

 the fox had only then begun to pass from the stage of the 

 legitimate slaughter of a noxious vermin to the carefully- 

 regulated hunting of a privileged beast of chase. It was but 

 a few years before Granby's birth that the third Duke left 

 the chase of the stag and the hare, and steadying the old 

 Belvoir hounds from both, settled them on the fox ; so 

 that Granby was one of the first of a long line of English 

 soldiers, statesmen, and judges whom the chase of the fox 

 has helped to form. I have already noted the silence of his- 

 torians on sport, and this may in a measure be accounted for 

 by the curious contempt and dislike shown for it which the 

 men of fashion of the time of the Georges bequeathed to the 

 middle-class town populations. County gentlemen, soldiers, 

 and clergymen only could hunt without discredit, for they 

 belonged by birth or profession to the upper classes ; but a 

 solicitor who hunted was regarded with suspicion, a doctor 

 did his practice no good by being seen with hounds, and a 

 tradesman who hunted was regarded as being on the high 

 road to bankruptcy. Slowly but surely fox-hunting broke 

 down this prejudice. Its sociability, its equalization of 

 classes for the time being, the connections formed in the 



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