PREFACE. vii. 



that they loved, loud and long, over their port ; they 

 showed the best of sport with the good wild foxes which 

 were then to be found in the unenclosed parts of the 

 country, but they never wrote about what they did, or only 

 rarely and to private friends. Even hunting diaries seem 

 to have been kept but seldom till the commencement of 

 the present century, and indeed it is only by a rare chance 

 that one comes across any reliable hunting history which 

 dates back more than a hundred years. That this is a 

 great loss to the present hunting community must be 

 admitted. The ways of our forefathers were often wise 

 ways, and it would be interesting to know how much we 

 are indebted to those good old sportsmen who, ' with their 

 ' broad-lapped coats, top boots, black cap, and their pigtails 

 'sticking out,' roused the echoes in the early days of the 

 .Georges. This want of information with respect to the 

 Bramham Hunt is especially unfortunate, as it is one of 

 the oldest of the Yorkshire Hunts, nearly, if not quite, 

 co-existent with the Sinnington, which owes its existence to 

 the Duke of Buckinoham, who doubtless found his roueh 

 moorland country and the sport he enjoyed thereon a more 

 satisfactory way of spending his time than in ' Clievden's 

 ' proud alcove,' or amidst the intrigues of corrupt politicians, 

 and a still more corrupt Court. 



Anything like a continuous History of the Bramham 

 Moor I have found to be impossible, and the difficulty of 

 the task has been added to by the fact, that many papers 

 relating to the Hunt were lost when the house was burnt 

 down at Bramham Park in 1828. But then there is the 

 fact that for at any rate one hundred years they have only 

 been in the Lane Fox and Lascelles families, and this 

 certainly facilitates matters as regards the later history. 



