442 Saddle and Sirloin. 



hunting law, and seldom absent from the annual 

 dinner of Masters of Hounds. He had enjoyed his 

 baronetcy for just seventy years, and had taken his 

 part in the days of the Regency, when the Prince's 

 court sallied forth for their evening promenade on the 

 Steyne ; the ladies with their high head-dresses and 

 spreading " peacock tails," and the tall young York- 

 shire baronet, the two Mannerses, and Colonels Mellish 

 and Leigh as their esquires. 



He be«;an his M.F.H. career with the Badsworth, 

 and had a taste of the Atherstone and Pytchley. In 

 the latter country, from some cause or other, he be- 

 came very unpopular. His foxes were killed, and on 

 one occasion the very mail was hung with their dead 

 carcases as a sort of defiance. Still he fought on, 

 and determined to have a grand field-day ; he turned 

 down seven brace one night, but not a hound could 

 speak to it in the morning, and he drew every cover 

 blank again. A gamer man never gripped a saddle, 

 and he showed this in an eminent degree when he 

 hunted the Quorn. He had a severe fall one day, and 

 some of his friends propped him up against a stack, 

 while a local practitioner almost bled him into a syn- 

 cope, in conformity with the rude surgical view which 

 then obtained favour on that point. He was taken 

 thence to a farm-house ; but he proved a very hope- 

 less subject, and on the third or fourth day he had 

 himself lifted on to his horse, and tried, pale as a 

 ghost and hardly able to sit upright, to hunt his own 

 hounds. 



His great hunting name was made as Master of the 

 Shropshire and the Albrighton, and it was there that 

 he had Will Staples and Joe Maiden as his whips on 

 300 guinea horses, and latterly Will in command, with 

 Tom Flint and Jack Wiglesworth as his lieutenants. 

 Woodman and Virgin were his favourites in a pack, 

 which was composed of the drafts of his own, which 

 he sold to " The Squire" on leaving the Quorn, 



