lo The Pytchley Hunt, Past and Present, [chap. i. 



longisli look at a fence^ he called out to him *'' Come 

 along, my lord, the longer you look afc it, the less yoa will 

 like it/' The line of hills facing Marston and Thed ding- 

 worth village being neutral, a good deal of jealousy arose 

 between the '^ thrasters ^' of the respective hunts ; and 

 Mr. Assheton Smith (father of Tom A. Smith) used to 

 try and cut down Dick Knight. Hence the motif of 

 the picture, by the same talented hand as the others before 

 spoken of, in which the Pytchley Huntsman, mounted 

 on his famous horse "Contract,^' is supposed to be 

 saying that " he would show these d — d Quornites a 

 trick. '' 



In the following year, 1797, the country was taken by 

 the well-known sportsman and M.F.H., Mr. John WARof; 

 a gentleman, who at the termination of his hunting career 

 was able to boast that he had been a Master of Hounds 

 for fifty-seven years. Not approving the system of 

 dividing the country into two parts, he established 

 himself in the old Hall at Boughton, near Northampton, 

 built kennels there, and made that village his place of 

 residence. During the eleven years of his Mastership, 

 the Club at Pytchley was closed, and it seemed as if 

 " Ichabod ^^ were written on the portals of this fashion- 

 able seat of hunting. Another member of the Spencer 

 family, however, as will shortly appear, restored it to all 

 its pristine glory. For three generations, the care and 

 management of the Club in all its domestic arrangements 

 were in the. hands of the family of Lane, a member of 

 which, himself born in the old Hall, still survives to tell 

 the tale of other days. Nearly fourscore years having 

 constituted him the oldest tenant on the Wantage 

 estate, he w^as called upon at the audit dinner of 1886, 



