106 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



Ferrers, in order that lie may there work his young hounds in 

 autumn, and this has, with a few intermissions, been the head- 

 quarters of the Quorn ever since. 



Charnwood Forest was, however, celebrated as a hunting 

 country ages before Mr. Meynell, with his sixty couple of hounds, 

 awoke its sylvan echoes, as we learn that the monks of Quorn- 

 don Abbey complained of one, John Comyns, killing a hundred 

 wild hogs in the forest, that being more than his lawful due. 

 A trial took place according to the Druidical laws, and the jury 

 gave a verdict against the monks, after which the rights of the 

 chase were divided. Comyns must have been a clever fellow 

 to get over the priests in those days, and well deserved all the 

 pork he got. Old Michael Drayton, in his " Poly Albion," 

 thus speaks of sport within the bounds of Charnwood, and 

 descants on its beauty : — 



O Cliaruwnod ! be thou call'd the choicest of thy kind, 

 The like in any place what flood hath hapt to find ? 

 No tract in all this isle, the proudest let her be. 

 Can show a sylvan nymph for beauty like to thee ; 

 The Sytars and the fauns, by Dian set to keep, 

 Eough hills and forest holts were sadly seen to weep. 

 When thy high palmed harts, the sport of boors and hounds. 

 By gripple borderers' hands were banished thy ground. 



Eut we must return to the better country to be found on the 

 other side of the Wreake, for all on the west of it is inferior 

 to that on the east, and we may say that from Six Hills to the 

 country hunted by Sir Bache Cunard is the cream, the Wid- 

 merpool side, beyond Six Hills, and adjoining the Bel voir Yale, 

 being deep and stiff. Sir Bache Cunard's, which was part of 

 the Quorn, is some of it very good indeed, but parts are almost 

 unjumpable, so that the hardest men are at times forced to ride 

 for gaps and gates ; and I have heard one of the finest men I 

 ever saw over a country complain of it on that account, though 

 Assheton Smith said of it, " there was nothing you could not 

 get over with a fcdl" The first master of the Quorn was Hugo 



