160 COVERT-SIDE SKETCHES. 



CHAPTER XVIL 



THE 9INNINQT0N. 



O Happy ! if ye knew your happy state, 

 Ye Rangers of the Fields : whom Nature boon, 

 Cheers with her smiles, and every element 

 Conspires to bless. 



jN"o description of hunting in Yorkshire would be complete with- 

 out an account of the Sinnington, which claims- — and no doubt 

 justly — to be the oldest regularly established country in England ; 

 and although both the country and their manner of hunting it 

 are such as would make the hair of a Meltonian stand on end, 

 they manage to have a great deal of sport at very little expense ; 

 and, if they have not the spreading pastures of the Midlands, 

 they occasionally get a run over the moors, which would satisfy 

 the greatest glutton that ever existed. As may be surmised, 

 their records have not been very strictly kept, and the earliest 

 master that I can learn anything about is a Mr. Wells, of 

 Pickering, who hunted the Sinnington for some time, in con- 

 junction with a part of the old Hambleton country, alone I 

 think. Then came a Mr. Marshall, with George Brown as his 

 huntsman, for sixteen seasons, when he left, and John Atkinson 

 succeeded him. Mr. Kendal was then master, and after him 

 Mr. E. S. Wormald, who was succeeded in 1866 by Mr. Tom 

 Kendell, of Sinnington Park. A few years since, Mr. E. Ellerby 

 took the command. For a description of the country, and the 

 mode of hunting it, I shall turn to what I wrote in " Country 

 Quarters," " Baily's Magazine," March, 1872 : — 



