50 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



deer upon liis way when first uncarted, and enlivened all 

 concerned when he was taken. One way and another, says 

 the sporting magazine of the day, a meet of the Boyal hounds 

 graced by ' the condescending affability and kindness of the 

 Sovereign to the loyal subjects who love and surround him, 

 may be candidly considered a repast too rich, a treat too 

 luxurious, for a meeting at the side of a fox-hunting covert 

 to be brought into a successful competition with.' But these 

 ceremonies were now dispensed with, and the term ' yeoman 

 pricker ' gradually fell into disuse. Only the huntsman now 

 carried a horn of the present bugle shape, and a fast fox- 

 hound pack cram-full of the stout Goodwood and Egremont 

 blood — Jaspers and Dromos, Ledgers and Jumpers — took 

 the place of the old Magpies and were entered to deer. ' It 

 delights me,' George IV. writes to the ' gentleman hunts- 

 man,' as he always called Davis when, on Sharpe's retirement 

 in 1822, he was appointed to that post, ' to know you have 

 got the hounds. I hope you will get them so fast that 

 they will run away from everybody.' 



The purport of his son's good wishes on Davis's appoint- 

 ment would have made George III.'s flesh creep. But 

 George IV.'s hunting notions and sympathies, even during 

 his father's lifetime, were so entirely with the new school of 

 stag-hunting that I have purposely made no mention of him 

 in the chapter I have devoted to the Georgian period ; this 

 seems to be the right place to do so. 



On New Year's Day, 1828, Davis notes in his diary that 

 Dom Miguel of Portugal hunted an untried Windsor havier 

 from Salt Hill. The Dom was attended by a distinguished 

 company, including the Duke of Wellington, Lord Mary- 

 borough, who was Master of the Buckhounds at the time, 

 and Lords Mount Charles and Albert Conyngham. The 

 king himself had made verj^ proper preparations to accom- 

 pany this grandee out hunting, although he did not actually 



