28 HISTORY OF THE BR AM HAM MOOR HUNT. 



have caught the king's deer; his success in this matter being 

 due, doubtless, to the staunchness of his hounds. 



When the Duke of Buckingham hunted the wild moors 

 of Bilsdale, Farndale, and the neighbourhood, and by so 

 doing practically founded the Sinnington Hunt, we may well 

 imagine that it was rather a rough-and-ready establishment. 

 Tradition in the dales tells us that he hunted fox and stag 

 as they might chance to turn up, but in all probability there 

 was not much choice in the matter, for deer had become 

 very scarce in the Royal Forest of Pickering many years 

 before that, and it was disafforested in the early days of 

 Charles I. because of the scarcity of the deer. Hunting would 

 doubtless suffer during the wars of King and Parliament, 

 and the sport, as well as the material advancement of the 

 nation, would feel the effects ot the internecine struggle. 

 But the spirit of sport always has, and it is to be hoped 

 it always will, overcome all difficulties, and when the country 

 once more was settled, hounds bci^an to be kept all over 

 the country. That there was something of the modern 

 style about the Duke of Buckingham's hunting is pretty 

 evident from the fact that his death was the result of a 

 chill incurred whilst digging out a fox. 



Whilst the Duke of Buckingham was hunting the wild 

 foxes of north-east Yorkshire, there were other noblemen 

 and gentlemen who recognised the value of ' the little red 

 rover' in a sporting sense. The Charlton Hunt, at Good- 

 wood, of which the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth was a 

 member, was the fashionable Hunt of the day. The master 

 was Mr. Roper, who cast in his lot with the duke, but made 

 his escape to Holland, whence he returned with William HI., 

 once more to resume the mastership of the pack with which 

 his name is so closely associated.* 



* It is, I believe, a fact that Mr. Roper lived to the extreme old age of 

 eighty-two, and he died in the hunting-field, though, I believe, it was not from 



