74 THE QUORN HUNT 



property of a Leicestershire gentleman, were sold, one 

 for 750 guineas, the other for 650 guineas. 



Heavy weight though he was, Lord Sefton was a 

 capital hand at getting over a country ; he was a rare 

 hand at galloping between his fences, and had the knack 

 of making up lost ground, while he took the fullest 

 advantage of every turn of the hounds. Like a later 

 master, Mr. Osbaldeston, he very much disliked timber ; 

 but if he occasionally shirked a stiff rail, he turned away 

 from nothing else ; and his weight, which eventually 

 caused him to give up fox-hunting altogether, enabled 

 him to bore his way through the thickest blackthorn 

 fences in his country. 



Mr. Edward Goulbourn, the author of " The Epwell 

 Hunt ; or, Black Collars in the Rear," written some- 

 where about the year 1807, wrote a burlesque descrip- 

 tion of a run he saw in Leicestershire, but which was 

 never published, and he makes mention of Lord Sefton 

 in these words : — 



Earl Sefton came next, and for beef on the rib 

 No Leicestershire bullock was rounder ; 



A wonderful weight at a wonderful rate, 

 He flew like a twenty-four pounder. 



In all departments the Hunt was most ably adminis- 

 tered, for Lord Sefton was an admirable man of busi- 

 ness, seeing himself to the details of kennel and stable, 

 much as Mr. Meynell had done. Unlike some of his 

 successors, he did not land himself in difficulties by over 

 expenditure and extravagance. He was a fine coach- 

 man, kept a fine stable of coach horses, and his drag 

 or landau 1 was often seen at the covert side. In 



1 Amateurs who kept their own conveyances drove four horses in a kind 

 of barouche more often than in a coach. In the sixties an old gentleman 

 whose name was, I think, Box, and who lived at Cookham, used to drive 

 four horses from the box of a landau. 



