154 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



Miss Headington gave them a very capital run, he says : ' This 

 day I consider a most extraordinary good one. Out of a field of 

 400, thirty-eight showed their faces at the finish, including 

 the noble master [Lord Hardwicke] on his good horse, White 

 Boy, who carried him from start to finish in the front.' And 

 he adds : ' My horse Cardinal carried me well, although he 

 began to go at last very, very politely.' Goodall had ridden 

 one horse all through. They left off thirty-two miles from 

 kennels.' ' il/«rcA 22, 1875. — Meet— Denham Court. Un- 

 carted in a field close to the fisheries, and had a most capital 

 two hours and forty minutes, and took at Bushey, near Wat- 

 ford. I got a regular ducking riding over a wooden bridge '^ 

 at Hamper Hill. My horse Eosslyn slipped on one side and 

 came upon his back on the top of me, and in the struggle 

 my spur got caught in the stirrup, and he dragged me down 

 the brook for fifty yards, and luckily my spur leather broke 

 and let me at large. Although I felt very much shaken I 

 went on and did my duty, and rode home twenty-four miles 

 in wet clothes.' He enters under date November 27, 1877 : 

 ' The Prince Imperial was out to-day ; he rode my favourite 

 mare, Countess, and I fed the hounds and left them at Lord 

 Salisbury's, at Hatfield, for the night. I came home by train, 



' The deer was taken three fields from Scratchwood. This was a celebrated 

 fox-cover in the old Berkeley country in the beginning of the century. Lord 

 Berkeley found a fox in Scratchwood and killed him in Kensington Gardens. 

 Lord Berkeley's country extended from Scratchwood to Thornbury, in Glouces- 

 tershire, and he had a kennel at Gerrard's Cross, where the Queen's Hounds so 

 often meet, as well as at four or live other places. ' The tawny coats ' hunted 

 over 120 miles of country, and at one time thirty hunt horses were located in 

 the village of Charing, now Charing Cross. 

 . -' The same thing happened to me some years ago with the Queen's Hounds. 

 Lord Suffield, at that time Master, had mounted me. He led his horse, The 

 Dunce, across. I stupidly thought I could ride across it. There was a little 

 rail about two feet high at the far end, and when my horse — a very free but most 

 intelligent animal by Bass Bock— saw The Dunce arch over, he began to trot. 

 I shall never forget the disagreeable sensation of going off the planking. I was 

 hardly hurt, and we got out the right side without the loss of a moment, but 

 rather wet. 



