THE HISTORY OF THE BELVOIR HUNT 



Foxes were destroying the lambs to a great extent in 1726, 

 when he began his operations, and Sir Mark Constable was one 

 of his chief supporters. He had only ^700 a year wherewith 

 to keep up his old Hall, and was blessed with three daughters 

 and eleven sons. Kickshaws he eschewed, and once a month 

 he killed an ox for roasting and salting. ' All the brushes in 

 Christendom ' was his chosen toast after he had drunk ' King 

 and Constitution ' ; and a leathern girdle round his drab coat, 

 and a rusty velvet cap, were his royal insignia of office. The 

 general effect could not have been impressive, as a tailor who 

 had come over from York to measure the Miss Drapers for new 

 hunting habits did not guess him at his front door, and he 

 most rigidly exacted twopence for holding the horse." ^ 



But the squires of the eighteenth century had comparatively 

 few calls on their purse. They killed their own beef and 

 brewed their own beer, nor were their wives and daughters 

 above domestic economies and labours that would be scorned 

 in our less prosperous days. They enjoyed field sports and 

 read few books, and they were perhaps as happy and as useful 

 a class of men as have ever lived. Their sons were a manly 

 race, who became soldiers or sailors, or did not disdain the 

 honest trading of their county town. Below the rank of the 

 great noblemen there was no sharp distinction of classes, and 

 what there was rested on claims of birth, for gentle birth was 

 accepted as a distinction, be the occupation what it might. 



Below the Draper class again came the farmers, whose 

 manner of life in its simplicity and rude plenty was not 

 dissimilar from that of the lesser squires. These were as 

 keen sportsmen as any in the land, and the description of a 

 certain Matt Horsley may be taken as typical of many of his 

 class. 



" A short time since was carried to his grave the celebrated 

 farming fox-hunter of the East Riding of Yorkshire, at the 

 advanced age of nearly ninety. It would be a kind of treason 

 against sporting not to rescue in some sort his memory from 

 oblivion, for if ever a man loved hunting ' with all his soul 

 and all his strength,' and died game at the last, Matt Horsley 



* Scott and Sebright, p. 331. 

 76 



