The Tortworth Sale. 155 



to Major Gunter to found a second Kirklevington on 

 its banks, and to vow that eternal allegiance to the 

 Duchesses and the Oxfords which their great founder 

 had done. His Wetherby Grange estate is well 

 adapted for its new colony, which moved there in the 

 August of 1857, from Earl's Court, near Kensington. 

 It consists of 600 acres on both sides of the river, 400 

 of which are kept in grass. The house once belonged 

 to " Kit Wilson," the owner of Comus, and the father 

 of the Turf, and some of his horses were trained in the 

 Park. 



It was at Tortworth that the Major's steward, Mr. 

 Knowles, confirmed the rich experience he had gained 

 under Mr. Thomas Mason at Broughton, and gathered 

 the germs of that herd which he has so ably helped to 

 found for his new master. Tortworth, on August 24th, 

 1853, was a veritable Bunker's Hill removed. Eng- 

 land was pitted against America once more — the 

 guineas of the old country against the " almighty 

 dollars" of the new. Messrs. Morris and Becarbid by 

 their agent ; but Mr. Thorne did his own business, in a 

 cool Quaker-like style, with which it was almost hope- 

 less to cope. His first English purchase for Thorn- 

 dale was a 14-guinea bull-calf at Captain Pelham's 

 sale, which he afterwards sold for upwards of 300 

 guineas to the West of America. It is calculated that 

 he laid out at least fifteen thousand in five years on 

 shorthorns ; and he bought up fifty- two lots when the 

 Morris and Becar confederacy was dissolved by the 

 latter's untimely death, at prices which had hitherto 

 only been read of by his countrymen in the English 

 prints. But for Major Gunter and Mr. Tanqueray, 

 who upset all the wise counsels which had been taken 

 at the Gloucester caucus over-night, the Duchess tribe 

 would have departed bodily across the Atlantic* 



* Previous to the Tortworth sale, Major Gunter had only a few 

 Alderneys and ordinary Shorthorr >, and he had not made up his mind as 



