Introduction 



and the Earl of Tankerville, as to the hunting of the 

 country, explains itself. But as an instance of the punc- 

 tilious care with which matters connected with the " Sport 

 of Kings " were usually conducted in the good old days, I 

 may add that this Agreement is recorded upon a roll of 

 parchment of no less than seven feet in length, signed, 

 sealed, and delivered by both parties in the presence of four 

 witnesses 



And so we pass to the ' Charlton Congress,' a curious 

 old manuscript book, on the fly-leaf of which the Duke has 

 made a note to the effect that " this was brought to me by 

 a Porter in the beginning of February 1737." 



The writer appears to have remained anonymous ; but it 

 was undoubtedly the work of some local sportsman with a 

 pretty turn for poetry ; and notwithstanding the pomposity 

 of the little book, there are passages which must commend 

 themselves to many an M.F.H. and " hound-man " of the 

 present time, for they go to prove that with all his 18th- 

 century grandiloquence the writer possessed an intimate 

 knowledge of hound breeding and kennel management ; so 

 much so, in fact, that we incline to suspect the Duke of 

 having had a fairly shrewd notion as to the identity of the 

 poet, even though he would not give his friend away I And 

 then, in choosing extracts from the Duke's * Hunting 

 Journal,' arose my chief difficulty. For to me the account 

 of each day's doings proved so engrossing that I was sorely 

 tempted to hand it over in toto to the printer ; but the 

 result would have been so excessively bulky that wiser 

 counsels prevailed, and I have confined myself to selecting 

 only a few days out of each of the eight hunting seasons 

 which are recorded so fully in the Duke's handwriting. 



xii 



