THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT's HOUNDS. 1G9 



faced with buff — the servants wearing dark green, as they do 

 unto the present time. Early in the century, soon after the 

 accession of the sixth duke, Philip Payne, who had already 

 earned a name with the Cheshire, the Cottesmore, and under 

 Lords Darlington and Thanet, came to Badminton, and from 

 that time forth the hounds began to acquire fame in the land. 

 No man knew more about breeding, or was more energetic in 

 endeavouring to procure sires with good noses, and noted for 

 work, and he cared not how far he sent bitches when he coidd 

 hear of one. " The Beaufort Justice," as he is now termed, 

 though he came originally from the New Porest, was one of 

 Payne's ventures, and never did one turn out more successfully, 

 for he became quite the patriarch of the pack, and report says 

 that the badger-pied hounds, which are as noted at Badminton 

 as the Belvoir tans at Belvoir, were introduced through him. 

 Tradition asserts he was a coarse-hound, as many others cele- 

 brated for their nose have been. Payne had a whip working 

 for him seventeen years, who was destined to eclipse even his 

 fame ; that was Old AVill Long, who came to Badminton in 

 1808, to succeed Jack Woods, and worked on until he took the 

 horn in 1826. He took a little of the coarseness off the pack, 

 breeding them nicer and smarter than Payne had done ; and he 

 was lucky enough to have men under him equally celebrated, 

 for his first whip was Will Todd, who afterwards hunted ]\Ir. 

 Harvey Coombes' hounds, and his second no less a man than the 

 renowned Jem Hills, who appeared to have an intuitive know- 

 ledge of where a fox was going, as soon as he was found, and, 

 whether there was a good scent or none, was sure to give his 

 field a gallop over the Heythrop walls, when hunting that 

 country in later days. 



The seventh duke, on coming to the title in 1835, still kept 

 on Will Long as huntsman ; Will Stansby turned them to him, 

 and the thing was as well done as ever, for this duke, like all his 

 race, thoroughly understood fox-hunting, and was a capital judge 

 of horses and hounds, though, before his death, Captain Somerset 



