HUNTS AND THEIR HISTORY 175 



Lord Anson bought Mr. Mytton's hounds, which 

 were well bred, but as wild as their master. In ad- 

 dition to this Lord Anson is said by contemporaries 

 not to have been a very first-rate horseman. But 

 when he became a Master of hounds and hunted them 

 himself, thus, as Nimrod puts it, being " an honour 

 to his country," he developed a great gift for making 

 a pack of hounds. 



Starting with an unpromising lot, as we have seen, 

 in a few seasons he had a level pack with plenty of 

 power, and the Master rode up to them taking his 

 place in a desperately hard riding field. He had as 

 first whipper-in Robert Thurlow, who was a man of 

 parts, for when in the service of Mr. Assheton Smith 

 he whipped-in to hounds in the winter, but in the 

 summer doubled the parts of cook and boatswain 

 on the yacht. There was among the hard riders of 

 the hunt a certain Mr. Peel, whose manner of riding 

 to hounds as narrated by Robert Thurlow may be 

 given here for the obvious moral it contains : " He 

 rides as near to hounds as any man need do, but 

 never rides over them. If every gentleman was to 

 ride like Mr. Peel, hounds would not so often lose 

 their foxes, and we should have much better 

 sport." 



When Lord Anson retired, there was a rapid suc- 

 cession of masters and each one seems to have formed 

 his own pack. At all events there were many changes, 

 until at last Mr. Oakeley took the hounds, first with 

 Colonel Anstruther Thomson in 1870, and from 1871 

 to 1891 by himself. His huntsman, George Castleman, 

 was justly noted for the sport he showed, and this 

 proved to be the beginning of a long period of pros- 

 perity to the hunt which has lasted to the present 

 time. Mr. Oakeley was an admirable Master and he 



