86 THE QUORN HUNT 



After Lord Foley had presided for but a single 

 season over the fortunes of the Quorn Hunt, he was 

 succeeded by Mr. Assheton Smith in 1806. He had 

 occasionally made Leicestershire his headquarters, and 

 hunted in the county, for he was in the famous Billesdon 

 Coplow run of 1800, and is favourably mentioned in 

 Mr. Lowth's verse, as well as in one or two other songs 

 which the run suggested. Mr. Smith was just thirty years 

 of age when he became master of the Quorn, having 

 been born in Queen Anne Street, London, in 1 776. 

 Though, as mentioned just now, he hunted with the 

 Quorn, he was evidently not well known to the followers 

 of that pack at large, for on one occasion, when out with 

 them, he was seen riding a refusing horse several times at 

 a flight of high rails, and people asked one another who 

 this determined horseman might be ? Little did they 

 think that in the rider of this refuser they saw the re- 

 doubtable Tom Smith, their future master. Mr. Smith 

 was undoubtedly a fine and bold horseman, but he could 

 not work miracles on horseback any more than could 

 any one else. "Nimrod" tells a story of how when 

 galloping over a field, and looking behind him to see 

 how his hounds were coming, his horse galloped into a . 

 pond rather than turn a foot out of the straight course. 

 In making Mr. Smith out a great horseman, his eulogists 

 strike one as having rather overdone it. For example, 

 in Sir John Eardley Wilmot's " Life of Mr. Smith " it is 

 stated that after a long run with the Ted worth the 

 Squire, who had to leave his beaten horse at an inn, 

 borrowed a Shetland pony to carry him home, and, says 

 his biographer, " his masterly hand persuaded the little 

 animal to carry him to his own door within the hour, the 

 distance being a dozen miles, good measure." The hand 

 may have been " masterly," but to ride a Shetland pony 

 twelve miles in an hour is trying him tolerably high, and 

 no amount of "hands" can get over the fact. Then, 



