THE HISTORY OF THE BELVOIR HUNT 



the run. When we turned down into the vale below 

 Fulbeck and Leadenham, Cooper came galloping past me 

 and observed as he passed, " Why, what a pity we have not 

 got the Meltonians with us to compete over this country ; 

 they would soon find out that it takes some doing." Soon 

 after Sir Hugh Cholmeley's fall I came to grief myself, by 

 a stirrup-leather breaking as my horse landed me over rather 

 a bushy kind of fence. However, this did not delay me more 

 than a minute or two, as, when I had picked myself up and 

 discovered the broken stirrup-leather, I found by riding a hole 

 or two shorter I could make it do very well. Fortunately, 

 there was nothing very big to jump until quite the end of the 

 run, when we came to rather a large fence with a ditch on 

 the taking-off side. I had turned my horse's head, and was 

 in the act of riding it, when I heard a voice behind hallooing 

 out, " Don't have it, there is a double ditch, it is a nasty place." 

 This turned out to be Mons. Roy, who evidently knew the 

 fence well, as he rode off into the corner of the field, jumped 

 off his horse, and commenced preparing a place by pulling 

 out the thorns to enable a horse to see the ditch on the far 

 side. He was not long in doing this, so the huntsman and 

 all those who were up followed though the gap he had made, 

 with the exception of the Rev. J. Parkinson Younge, who rode 

 boldly at the fence and cleared the whole thing in fine style, 

 and went on alone with the hounds for two fields. At the 

 end of the second field the hounds pulled the fox down in 

 the open, and, when the huntsman and the rest of the hunting 

 field came up, the rev. gentleman had already secured the 

 fox, and was surrounded by the baying pack ; of course he 

 afterwards received the fox's brush, as well as numerous 

 congratulations from his friends, and went home rejoicing. 



Although I have no intention of describing at length any 

 more of the runs in Cooper's time, I must not pass over 

 without mention his celebrated run from a covert near 

 Gipple, called Ancaster Gorse. On this occasion the hounds 

 ran far into the fen country, killing their fox near Haconby. 

 The latter part of the country they ran over was perfectly 

 unrideable, owing to the magnitude of the fen dykes, also the 



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