MR. MEYNELL 45 



made in no other place. 1 Moreover, it is in the highest 

 degree improbable that he could have combined the 

 two masterships, while we have nowhere the slightest 

 hint that he ever suspended his own hunt or found a 

 substitute for the years during which he is said to have 

 ruled the buckhounds. 



Before Mr. Meynell came of age, that is to say in 

 1754 (one year after taking the country), he married as 

 his first wife Miss Anne Gell of Hopton Hall, Derby- 

 shire, 2 by whom he had one son, Godfrey ; and she 

 dying there in 1757, he next married Anne, daughter 

 of Mr. Thomas Boothby Scrimshire or Scrymshire, of 

 Tooley Park, this lady being grand-daughter of Mr. 

 Thomas Boothby, his predecessor in the Ouorn country, 

 and sister of " Prince " Boothby, who lived with Mr. 

 Meynell at Langton Hall when he first took the hounds. 

 By his second wife Mr. Meynell had two sons, Hugo, 

 born in 1759, and Charles, born in 1768. 



The situation of Ouorndon Hall no doubt first 

 attracted Mr. Meynell's attention, since it is near 

 Charnwood Forest, a place not loved by the Leicester- 

 shire fox-hunter of to-day, but which must have appeared 

 quite a paradise in Mr. Meynell's eyes as a schooling 

 ground for his younger hounds ; moreover, his country 

 extended nearly from Nottingham to Harborough. 

 According to the anonymous author of " Memoirs of 

 the Belvoir Hounds," Mr. Meynell had some dispute 

 about country boundaries ; so a very business-like docu- 

 ment was drawn up between Mr. Noel of the Cottes- 

 more and himself, and the affair was settled without 

 difficulty. At page 10 of the book, which was published 



1 If Mr. Meynell ever did hold this office it appears strange that nothing 

 should have been known of it ; but it is a coincidence that Mr. J. P. Hore, 

 who compiled a list of masters from authentic sources, is unable to say with 

 certainty who was master between 1770 and 1772. 



2 Now the residence of Mr. Chandos Pole Gell. 



