334 ^^^k ^^^ ^^^^ ^<^^- 



Will Todd ^'^^ had, however, been pretty well 

 used to hardships, as when he had ridden 

 for five years in London after Lord Scarborough, he 

 helped to take a shipload of horses to Russia, and 

 might have been seen struggling across the ice at Cron- 

 stadt, with his portmanteau on his head, to reach a 

 tirn.ber ship bound for England. Then followed six- 

 teen years as whip under Philip Payne and Will Long, 

 at Badminton, which he inaugurated by cheeking a 

 fox for a mile and a half on Ramsden Heath, and 

 effectually preventing him from getting into the 

 Forest. The Sixth Duke, who had been watching 

 him with great delight, might well say, " If your 

 young hounds, Philip, enter as well as the new 

 whip, they'll do well." His most favourite recollec- 

 tions with -the Furriers, is of a day when they found at 

 Islip Woods, and killed him after an hour in the wood- 

 lands. His horse over-reached and split his hoof 

 nearly to the shoe, and when he had got on one of 

 Tilbury's, they found again near Harefield, and came 

 away at a tremendous pace over grass to Batcher 

 Heath, by the corner of Moor Park to Oxey, up to the 

 Marquis of Abercorn's, and then straight to the reser- 

 voir on the Edgeware Road. Near the metropolis, 

 Will's horse tired, and Mr. Combe gave him up his 

 chestnut Blunder, and he viewed his fox as he bent 

 back to Harrow, and then got among some flags, 

 beneath where they were building a ball-room. Th^ 

 school lads came out in full force, and rather 

 puzzled the hounds, and he was never found till the 

 next day. 

 The Oakley Merryman was among the four or five 

 Marmions. couplc of Castors which w^cnt in the pack 

 to Lord Southampton in 1841. This was the second 

 time his lordship had bought a pack outright, and 

 Ottoman by Pytchley Orpheus, Hannibal, Hesperus, 

 Highflyer, Hercules, and Honesty composed the cream 

 of the Oakley one, which came with Mumford and 



