THE PATRON OF CRABBE 



reader cares to know that he proved worthy of the trust the 

 great minister reposed in him, an excellent article in the 

 Quarterly Review ^ will tell him much, and Lord Ashburne's 

 recent life of William Pitt will tell him more. 



But the Duke, with Thoroton as his secretary, passes out 

 of these pages, and we have to consider questions of more in- 

 terest in the history of the Belvoir Hunt. Who managed the 

 pack at this time, and who ruled the field, which for those days 

 was a large and fashionable one ? Who too was the huntsman ? 



It is generally said that Lord George Cavendish and Sir 

 Carnaby Haggerston were masters, or, as is sometimes stated, 

 managers of the pack during the minority of the fifth Duke. 

 But if so, they would each have reigned for two seasons only, 

 as the fourth Duke died in October, 1787, and in 1791 Mr. 

 Perceval took the hounds and remained in command till the 

 fifth Duke came of age and took the pack himself There 

 remain, therefore, three seasons, 1784 to 1787 when the Duke 

 left for Ireland, to be accounted for. What I should suggest 

 is — and this opinion has the support of Mr. John Welby, of 

 Allington, the oldest member of the hunt, to whose assistance I 

 cannot pay too great a tribute — that at the time of the Duke's 

 departure for Ireland a committee was formed to carry on the 

 hunt, under the control in financial matters of Mr. Thomas 

 Thoroton, and that Lord George Cavendish, of whom we 

 know but little save that his manners were somewhat stiff and 

 cold, and Sir Carnaby Haggerston, who is only a name to 

 us, were at different times field masters, with authority to 

 keep in order the members of the hunt during the period 

 1784-91, between the departure of the Duke and the acces- 

 sion to power of Mr. Perceval. No doubt the divided rule 

 was unsatisfactory, for there never has been a committee 

 which has managed a hunting country with success, and Mr. 

 Surtees has sketched forcibly in Hundley Cross the difficul- 

 ties of doing so under such conditions. During the years of 

 which I am speaking the pack made but little progress, and 

 I gather from the amount of fresh blood which Mr. Perceval 

 brought in (1791) that it had even somewhat deteriorated. 

 ^ Quarterly Review^ vol. Ixx., p. 289. 

 67 



