i 4 THE QUORN HUNT 



for the morrow, take forty winks and be off to bed, 

 rising early in the morning in order to be present at 

 some distant fixture. 



The Melton men always boasted that they set the 

 fashion to the hunting world, and that when they increased 

 or decreased the depth of the coat collar, the length or 

 width of the skirts, or discarded tight breeches for looser 

 garments, the provincials followed suit. Among other 

 things, they claimed to have introduced the custom of 

 dining in scarlet coats. 1 It is, we know, the case that 

 in the Squire Western days men sat down to dinner in 

 the red coats which they had worn during the morning ; 

 but the red dress-coat may be distinctly traced to Melton, 

 and it is on record that an eccentric Scottish laird, Jamie 

 Johnstone, who hunted from Melton in the long ago, 

 startled his friends by appearing at dinner, not only in a 

 red coat, but in a pair of scarlet leggings as well, which 



1 How or why the scarlet coat first came to be used for hunting I have 

 never been able to ascertain. Many years ago there was an article in one 

 of the London magazines about red coats, and it was therein stated that 

 Henry II. or III., I forget which, was so pleased with a fox-hunt that he 

 ordained it should be a royal sport and that red should be the colour of the 

 coat. This was obvious nonsense, because it is by no means clear that red 

 had, at that time, anything to do with the royal livery. Among the ques- 

 tions propounded by Tit Bits at a later year was one asking why scarlet 

 came to be the recognised colour of the hunting-coat, and the answer in a 

 following number was the same as that given above, viz , that it was due to 

 the order of one of the Henrys. I therefore wrote to the editor asking for 

 further information ; but none was forthcoming, the correspondent who 

 answered the question having apparently been content to copy out what 

 had been inserted in the magazine or what appeared in " The Noble Science" 

 by Mr. Delme Radcliffe. At page 144 (fourth edition, Nimmo, 1893) tne 

 author says : "The custom of wearing scarlet in fox-hunting is supposed to 

 have had its origin in the circumstance of its being a royal sport, confirmed 

 by the mandate of one King Henry, who organised and equipped, in the 

 royal livery of scarlet, a corps for the destruction of foxes, not after the 

 manner which we should recognise as legitimate in the present day. This 

 is at least a plausible and, at all events, right royal way of accounting for a 

 habit rather of martial than sylvan import, were it not otherwise sufficiently 

 recommended by the cheerfulness which it imparts to the aspect of the 

 field." Then I wrote to the editor of Notes and Queries, who courteously 

 inserted my question as to the origin of the scarlet coat for hunting, but no 

 reply was ever made, 



