LOYAL GRANTHAM 



enduring memorial than any tablet. If, instead of placing 

 expensive brasses or statues, which scarcely ever remind us 

 of the original, to the memory of our minor poets and second- 

 class statesmen, we bought land in their native county, and 

 planted a good gorse covert, how much longer would they be 

 remembered ! Indeed, if such memorials of the literary and 

 political celebrities of the day were scattered over the country, 

 might they not be an indirect means of conveying culture to 

 sportsmen ? Thus Freeman's Gorse would remind us of the 

 great historian who so faithfully reproduced the barbarous 

 manners of that great Nimrod, William Rufus, and Cobden's 

 Covert of the repealer of the Corn Laws, perhaps even more 

 certainly than the books of the historian or the parliamentary 

 reports of the politician. 



Another very remarkable group of men were the clergy of 

 the Belvoir country. In Lincolnshire the hunting parson 

 survived long, and, indeed, still does so with the respect and 

 approbation of his parishioners. I have already said some- 

 thing of the good side of having a clergy who are not living 

 secluded in a narrow world of their own, and thus entirely 

 cut off from the interests of their parishioners, nor have I 

 any doubt that the prejudices about clerical recreation, which 

 were the result of a now decaying school of thought, will 

 gradually die out. The faults of the hunting clergy did not 

 arise from their sports, but were the failings of their class and 

 of their age, and the general esteem and respect for the clergy 

 thirty or forty years ago was at least as great in country 

 districts as it is now. 



One of the most original figures in our gallery of clerical 

 sportsmen was the Rev. J.' Houson, whose portrait is given 

 above, and who was one of the best horsemen of his day. 

 For many years his means were not large, for he began life as 

 a minor canon of Lincoln on iS"ioo a year. Later he became 

 Rector of Brant Broughton and Great Coates in Lincolnshire. 

 The two livings were then worth over ^1,500 a year together. 

 This preferment he held for upwards of fifty years. He 

 married Miss Chaplin, of Riseholme, who brought him a 

 fortune. Parson Houson was a remarkable man and a grand 



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