Chapter VIII 



THE GOOD DUKE 



1825-1857 



THE death of the Duchess EHzabeth stopped hunting 

 for a month in the early autumn of 1825, and was no 

 doubt the immediate cause of the retirement of the Duke 

 from the management of the hounds some Httle time 

 afterwards, in favour of Lord Forester, who was the son of 

 his sister, the Lady Katharine. 



The fifth Duke was still a young man, but many duties 

 began to press upon him, and like the other great noblemen 

 of his party, he was stirred by the coming of reform. 

 Although the apprehensions of the Tories were somewhat 

 lulled as time went on, many among them saw clearly enough 

 that with reform the balance of power would pass to a new 

 section of society. Excitement swept through all classes, 

 and whether it was to be attributed to this or not, the period 

 was marked in the Belvoir country by a lessening of interest 

 shown by the Duke in the hounds. 



He kept the pack up, for he would not have had a single 

 person deprived of their sport, and he was proud of the magnifi- 

 cent establishment which had already won a world-wide fame. 

 But on January 9th, 1829, closes the long series of carefully 

 kept diaries in which from day to day had been recorded the 

 doings of the pack, the conduct of each individual hound, 

 and occasionally the exploits of the riders. The accounts 

 of the runs I have not quoted from very largely, for the 

 narrative would not add anything to our knowledge of the 

 history of the pack. They do indeed tell us of the care that 

 was expended on the hunt, and as we turn over the carefully 



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