PREFACE, 



*T Y III HEN Sir Walter Scott reviewed Colonel Thornton's 

 ^r\rV Sporting Tour in the Edinburgh Review, he took 

 occasion to handle the oallant colonel pretty severely for 

 going into such minute detail respecting his sporting 

 adventures. ' To stuff a quarto with his personal exploits 

 'of shooting and fishing,' says Sir Walter, 'all detailed with 

 ' the most unmerciful prolixity, is a tyranny surpassing that 

 ' of William Rufus, who, though he turned his liege subjects 

 'out of their houses to make a park, did not propose that 

 'they should pay ^i 15^". for the history of his hunting, — 

 'a proceeding which, in our opinion, would have justified an 

 'insurrection against Nimrod himself It is on the score 

 of want of detail that I would find fault with Colonel 

 Thornton. A Yorkshire Master of Foxhounds, whose 

 hounds were famous and who won many large bets by. 

 their prowess, might at any rate have left us something 

 more than the mere record of these bets ; and had he 

 done so, my task of writing the history of the Bramham 

 Moor Hunt would have been much easier. For though I 

 cannot say with certainty that Colonel Thornton hunted 

 the Bramham Moor country, there is little doubt but what 

 he occasionally, at any rate, hunted some of it. 



This reticence on the part of Colonel Thornton was by 

 no means singular. Masters of Hounds all over the 

 country hunted and bred hounds, and talked of the sport 



