THE HISTORY OF THE BELVOIR HUNT 



rashly promised. But we know that the social condition of 

 the towns and the manufacturing districts was terribly bad, 

 and that Lord Ashley had begun his great work, and that 

 the burning social questions of the day had excited the 

 interest and the sympathies of the younger men of all parties. 

 The present (seventh) Duke, then Lord John Manners, was 

 vividly sketched by Disraeli in Coningsby, as Lord Henry 

 Sydney, and those who have met him will not fail to 

 recognise the truth of the portrait. Just in the prime of 

 life. Lord John was carrying on the family traditions of 

 service, though at this time he was but on the threshold of 

 his career as a statesman. Lord John loved hunting, and 

 went well, when he could spare time for it ; but his life was 

 to be one of hard work and long service to a country which 

 has not been ungrateful. 



The members of the Belvoir Hunt mustered in great num- 

 ber when it was announced that the Prince Consort would 

 hunt with the hounds at Croxton Park on the 5th of Decem- 

 ber, 1843. There seems to have been a kind of idea that 

 the Prince, being a man of scholarly tastes, would not care 

 for hunting, but as a matter of fact he was a fair horseman, 

 and so far as we can pierce the veil that, even after reading 

 Sir T. Martin's five volumes, hangs over the Prince's real 

 tastes in these matters, he liked hunting with the stag-hounds 

 and his own harriers. Probably the Prince enjoyed the sport, 

 but disliked the bustle and crowd which the presence of 

 Royalty at a meet always brings. The Prince had Lord 

 Wilton as a pilot, and this is enough to tell us that he would 

 see all that was to be seen. No man ever saw more sport 

 than Lord Wilton, or made so little fuss about it. " Oh dear, 

 oh dear, where do they find these terrible places ? I never 

 come across them," he is reported to have said after patiently 

 listening to a party of Meltonians, fighting their battles over 

 again across the mahogany, and living twice in the pleasure 

 of hunting by recording their own " heroical " deeds. The 

 Prince went well, though not we may be sure clearing " five- 

 barred gates with utter indifference as to what might be on 

 the other side," as a contemporary chronicler puts it. We 



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