MR. THOMAS BOOTHBY 37 



to the Mayor's door, that functionary was expected to 

 entertain all comers. 



The Quorn country, with which alone I am con- 

 cerned, came into notoriety all at once owing to the 

 skill and measure of success which attended the forty- 

 seven years' mastership of the famous Hugo Meynell, 

 of Bradley, Derbyshire, who has been called the " Pri- 

 mate of the Science." He had, indeed, a predecessor, 

 for Mr. Thomas Boothby was master of a pack of fox- 

 hounds in Leicestershire for fifty-five years ; but of the 

 sport enjoyed during this long period we know less than 

 we know of any single day at the present time. It is, 

 however, improbable in the extreme that the sportsmen 

 who lived before Mr. Boothby were unappreciative of 

 the merits of this, the par excellence hunting ground, 

 though at that time popular appreciation may have run 

 more in favour of Charnwood Forest than of the open 

 country. Charnwood Forest was a royal preserve as 

 long ago as the time of William the Conqueror, who 

 being a keen sportsman, as the term was then under- 

 stood — that is to say, an intensely selfish one — forbade 

 the peasants to feed their pigs within its boundaries ; 

 and this is about the first historical fact we hear of in 

 connection with it. The monks of Alverscroft Priory 

 kept hawks and an establishment of hounds up to the 

 year 1539, when the Priory was surrendered to Henry 

 VIII., at which time its glades are said to have sheltered 

 the wild red deer. The "Cowering hills of Charnwood," 

 wrote another chronicler, " once so famous in olden 

 times, when the renowned Earls of Leicester, Winches- 

 ter, and Bogham, and other great people, with their 

 high-born dames and numerous retinues, made those 

 hills and vales resound to the music of horn and hound, 

 which attract the villagers to this all-exhilarating sport." 

 Quorndon Abbey was not far from Charnwood, and its 

 monks once laid serious complaint against one John 



