HER majesty's STAG-HOUNDS. 273 



immense interest in tlie kennel, and, after the removal to Ascot 

 Heath, was often riding across and giving Sharp a fillip as to 

 his kennel duties. Eefore closing the scene on the old stag- 

 hounds, I must borrow one more anecdote from the Druid, 

 in which he tells us how " Bill Bean (who was hunting six 

 years before the present century) once begged permission to 

 tell it to the late Prince Consort, when they were taking a deer 

 in a cellar, that a rustic of that Georgian era believed his 

 sovereign to have a lion for one arm and a unicorn for the 

 other ; or how the ' old workhouse dame,' when quite a girl, 

 had seen the deer taken at Leatherhead, and years having 

 created a little confusion in her mind, ' between the gayer dress 

 of the huntsman, and the simple insignia of the king,' said, 

 * His Majesty had a scarlet coat and a jockey cap, with gold 

 all about ; he had a star on his breast, and we all fell on our 

 knees.' " 



A change, however, came over the whole establishment when, 

 in 1815, the Goodwood pack was given to his Majesty, and 

 the celebrated Colonel Thornton bought the whole forty couple 

 of the old stag-hounds to go to France. Another and still 

 greater change followed in 1821, when Sharp resigned the 

 horn to his son-in-law, Charles Davis, who, from being whip to 

 his father, who hunted the king's harriers, was promoted to 

 carrying the pistols, with which the yeomen prickers guarded 

 the king home of a night after a run with the stag, and having 

 had altogether twenty-one years' probation in the royal service, at 

 length found himself with the horn. Here, most emphatically, 

 was the right man in the right place. And the Prince Eegent, 

 who, although long before forced to decline the pleasures of 

 the chase, except as taken in the mildest way with beagles 

 on the Brighton Downs, was a first-rate judge of sport as 

 well as human nature, wrote to him on his appointment as 

 follows : — " It delights me to hear that you've got the hounds ; 

 I hope you'll get them so fast that they'll run away from every- 

 body." Truly the first gentleman of Europe had notions of 



