MR. THOMAS BOOTHBY 39 



piece is of some greenish material, and the whole instru- 

 ment must be about eighteen inches long. This old 

 horn bears the inscription : "Thomas Boothby, Esquire, 

 of Tooley Park, Leicestershire. With this horn he 

 hunted the first pack of foxhounds then in England 

 fifty- five years. Born 1677; died I 75 2 - Now the pro- 

 perty of Thomas D'Avenant, Esquire, County of Salop, 

 his grandson." If, by the way, Mr. Boothby himself 

 hunted his hounds, there is at once a contradiction of 

 the statement that Assheton Smith was the first amateur 

 huntsman in Leicestershire. 



Since the engraving of the horn first appeared, it has 

 sometimes been thought that " the first pack of fox- 

 hounds then in England " meant the first pack ever 

 started ; but this we know cannot be the meaning in- 

 tended, as one or two hunts, the Charlton (afterwards 

 the Goodwood) were in existence before Mr. Boothby 

 could have kept hounds. As he died in 1752 and hunted 

 his country for fifty-five years, he must, assuming that 

 he kept hounds until the day of his death, have taken 

 the country in 1697, when he was no more than twenty 

 years of age. Tooley Park, Mr. Boothby's residence, is 

 now in the Atherstone country, not far from the fixture 

 Peckleton, in which place the name of Boothby is still 

 respected, and it is said (in a letter from the Honour- 

 able and Reverend Augustus Byron, printed in Mrs. 

 Chaworth Muster's " Hunting Songs and Sport ") that 

 the old M.F.H. gave to the parish a peal of bells, which 

 were so tuned " as to resemble the cry of a pack of 

 hounds." How to accomplish this would, nowadays, 

 probably puzzle the most skilful campanologist. In the 

 same communication the writer states that Mr. Boothby 

 is credited with having altered the pattern of the hunt- 

 ing-horn, instituting a straight instrument for that seen 

 in old pictures, and slung round the body. In the year 

 1885 there was an interesting correspondence in /Votes 



