2 FOX-HUNTING IN THE SHIRES 



superior, to the countries about which there is no 

 doubt at all. The fact that their hunting-grounds are 

 on old turf for at least two days in the week, and that 

 they can be reached from one of the centres above 

 mentioned, is sufficient to entitle them to a place in 

 this book. Rightly or wrongly, then, they are so 

 accounted in these pages. 



Of course, as soon as we begin to define limits, there 

 must be exclusions, and in the case of fox-hunting 

 countries we leave out, of necessity, such famous hunts 

 as the Grafton, the Duke of Beaufort's, the Vale of 

 White Horse, and many others that yield sport as 

 good as any that the Shires can show. Old Oxford 

 men, too, will never be quite content to speak of the 

 Bicester, the country of Mostyn and Griff Lloyd, and 

 of Drake, and, in later times, of Lords Valentia and 

 Chesham, as provincial. 



To many who came from Kent, Surrey, or Hamp- 

 shire to hunt with the Bicester, the experience opened 

 out to them a bright vision of a flying country. The 

 first gallop over such country lives indeed in our minds 

 with the thrills of first love and any other delightful 

 epoch of our lives. Yet in these pages we must leave 

 this and other good countries on one side, not because 

 their foxes are not as stout and straight-necked, or 

 their hounds as keen and brilliant, or the men who 

 follow them as resolute and as well mounted as any 

 in Leicestershire, but because in this, as in all other 

 undertakings, we must draw the line somewhere. 



The countries, then, of which this book treats lie in 

 the great grazing districts of the Midlands, in Leicester- 

 shire, Northamptonshire, Rutland, and parts of War- 

 wickshire and Lincolnshire. But within these 

 boundaries there is a narrower limit still, for when 

 we speak of the Shires, to many who have hunted in 



