32 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



patience with the Duke of Grafton, who also wanted to be 

 off fox-hunting. The king told him it was a pretty occupa- 

 tion for a man of quality and of his age to hunt a poor fox. 

 The duke said he did it for his health. Upon this, the 

 king asked him why he couldn't ride post for his health, 

 adding pertinently that, with his ' great corps of twenty 

 stone weight,' no horse could carry him within hearing, much 

 less within sight, of his hounds. 



This period marks the commencement of a radical change 

 which was gradually taking place in the relations between 

 town and rural society in England, and which could not but 

 have an important effect upon country sports. Hunting, and 

 especially fox-hunting, was now beginning to attract the 

 attention of the ancestors of the men who were later on to 

 inspire ' Nimrod's ' pen and Ferneley's and Aiken's pencil. 

 In the earlier years of the eighteenth century hunting was 

 the business of the smaller gentry and of the parsons, and 

 a rough, boisterous sort of affair. ' There he goes,' says 

 Diana Vernon of her cousin Thorncliffe Osbaldistone, ' the 

 prince of grooms, and cock-fighters, and blackguard horse- 

 coursers.' Here and there a great nobleman or consider- 

 able squire kept hounds, especially harriers.' At Badminton 

 and Brocklesby and Berkeley, at Bel voir and Goodwood, a 

 pack of hounds was part of the apparatus of the estate which 

 went on from father to son. But it is doubtful whether 

 the sort of people who hunt most now hunted much then, 

 and it certainly was never the serious occupation of the 

 Court in England as it was in France. During the last two 



' ' I am very sorry,' writes Somerville to a friend. ' I must deny myself the 

 pleasure of your good company to-morrow. I was to-day with my Lord 

 Coventry's harriers, and I know Ball will not hold out two days together. I 

 meet them again on Thursday morning in Wilmcote Pasture, near Stratford ; 

 and should think myself very happy in your good company. I must be there 

 at six in the morning. It may be that a little variety may please you, and 

 induce you for once to condescend to hunt Xwlyg.^— Records of the Chase, p. 15(). 



