38 THE QUORN HUNT 



Comyns "for that he did once kill a hundred wild hogs 

 in the Forest of Charnwood," that being, it was alleged, 

 considerably in excess of the number he was entitled to 

 slay. This was one of the earliest hunting disputes on 

 record, and after the matter had been made the subject 

 of a trial, the sporting rights over Charnwood Forest 

 were divided. 



Charnwood, however, kept up its reputation for 

 sport, and in this wise does Drayton speak of the forest 

 and its surroundings — 



Oh Charnwood ! be thou called the choicest of thy kind, 

 The like in any place what flood hath hapt to find ? 

 No tract in all this isle, the proudest let her be, 

 Can show a sylvan nymph for beauty like to thee ; 

 The Satyrs and the Fauns, by Dian set to keep 

 Rough hills and forest holts were sadly seen to weep, 

 When thy high palmed harts, the sport of boors and hounds, 

 By gripple borderers' hands were banished thy grounds. 



In the year 1805, the year in which Mr. Meynell 

 died, the Act of Enclosure was passed. 



Such was the Quorn Hunt of antiquity. The harts 

 and hogs no doubt found plenty of sport for successive 

 generations of boors and others, and in due time, we 

 may take it, the marten, cat, and the fox came to be 

 pursued ; but we have no definite information concern- 

 ing Leicestershire fox-hunting until we find Mr. Thomas 

 Boothby at the head of an establishment at the latter 

 end of the seventeenth century. The date at which this 

 gentleman was born, hunted, and died would probably 

 have not been generally known were it not for the fact 

 that in the Field for the 6th of November 1875, there 

 appeared an engraving of Squire Boothby's hunting-horn 

 — a perfectly straight horn. The sketch was sent to the 

 paper by Mr. Reginald Corbet, of Adderley, Master of 

 the South Cheshire Hounds. The lower portion of the 

 horn is of silver, and the upper part towards the mouth- 



