52 The PytcJiley H^int, Past and Present, [chap. n. 



some years continued to form, the component parts of a 

 " Pytchley meet/^ Place aux ctrangers. 



Remarkable for liis weight, and for his success 

 in riding to hounds, in spite of that disadvantage 

 was the well-known Norfolk squire, Dick Gurney. 

 Favouring, as it suited him, either Quorn or Pjtchley 

 with his company, good nerve and a thorough 

 knowledge of what hounds were doing, and a quick 

 eye for the right spot in a fence, enabled him to hold 

 at defiance the handicap of ^' too, too solid flesh/' The 

 fame of his leap over the Canal Bridge near Heyford, on 

 his famous horse '' Sober Robin,'' is still an incident of 

 note in Pytchley history; and old Quornites love to tell 

 how, after warning Tom Assheton Smith not to go 

 into a canal after a hunted fox, he plunged in himself, 

 fetched the animal out, and on reaching the sloping bank 

 laid with his head downward aiid his legs upturned to 

 allow the water to escape out of his boots ! Riding 

 nineteen stone, Mr. Gurney was fain to put up with 

 horses that could carry the weight, without being too 

 particular as to quality ; and the best animal he ever 

 possessed was, in his appearance, nothing less than a 

 cart-horse, — a brown bay with a blaze down his face, with 

 coarse vulgar quarters, and a rat-tail of a peculiarly 

 aggravating type. He could go alongside of ^' Benvolio '' 

 or " Sir Mariner," with Sir Charles Knightley on them; 

 and he greatly distinguished himself on the hardest and 

 best day that had been seen in the country for many 

 years. Another horse in his stud, totally lacking in 

 quality, and nothing but a machiner to look at (a bay 

 with black 'egs, and with plenty of hair about the fet- 

 locks), helped to falsity the notion that without blood no 

 horse could go the pace and last. 



