Foxhunting. References to early foxhunting prove no more than that the fox was hunted, though in a manner vastly different from that which obtains at the present day. Of details there is a lack; it will therefore be sufficient to cite shortly a few excerpts from antiquity introductory to foxhunting as indulged in for amusement. To begin with, we find that William de Foxhunte looked after the six couple of foxhounds, William Blatherwick, two boys, and a horse to carry the nets, all of which constituted the foxhunting establishment of Edward I. In the Records of the Chase, 'Cecil' mentions an old treatise on hunting, ascribed to Edmund de Langley, one of the sons of Edward III., who began to reign in 1327, in which the 'flox' is enumerated as a beast of the chase. Richard II., whose reign commenced in 1377, granted permission, by charter, to the Abbot of Peterborough to hunt the fox; and at the beginning of his reign Henry IV. (1399-1413) confirmed to Henry de Popham in fee his lands at Farringdon, and granted him leave to have his braches for taking hares and foxes in the county of Southampton. Up to this time, however, and for more than a couple of centuries later, the fox was not hunted in modern style; he was simply hunted for extermination, and was driven into nets, or run to ground and dug out; and in Gervase Markham's work, entitled Country Contentment, published in the year 1615, the fox is given only inferior rank as a beast to be hunted; while about 1639 Oliver St John, in a speech against Strafford, compared him to a fox, 'a beast of stinking flight,' whose death might be encompassed by any means, fair or foul. Soon after this period foxhunting appears to have attained to greater dignity, and, at least in some parts of England, to have become a distinct branch of sport. Theophilus, fourth Earl of Lincoln, who died in 1667, hunted round about Retford; but his were no doubt staghounds, the change to foxhounds taking place at a later period. In the fifteenth volume of the Sussex archaeological collections there appears at page 74 an account of the Charlton Hunt (now the Goodwood) in Sussex. According to Mr Bennett, the writer of the article, the Duke of Monmouth and Lord Grey kept a pack of foxhounds which were managed by Mr Roper, a native of Eltham in Kent, for some time prior to Monmouth's abortive attempt to seize the crown; and when that took place Mr Roper had to flee to France; whence he returned on the accession of King William III., by which time the hounds, the management of which he resumed, had become the property of the Duke of Bolton and himself. Mr Roper died in the hunting-field at the age of eighty-four, in the year 1715. The Duke of Bolton kept the hounds for a short time longer, and then made them over to the second Duke of Richmond, and they remained in the family till 1813 or 1815, when the fourth duke gave them to the Prince of Wales, and they became the royal staghounds. At what precise date the Charlton Hunt was established is not known, but it was obviously prior to 1689, the year of William III.'s accession. The Sinnington (Yorkshire) hounds are said to be the descendants of the Duke of Buckingham's pack, which hunted the old Hambleton country in 1686; while in 1698 Mr Boothby was hunting what is now the Quorn country. The Brocklesby (Lincolnshire) were founded in 1713, though it is evident that the packs which then amalgamated were in existence earlier. In 1720 Mr Bright was hunting the Badsworth country in Yorkshire; and in 1730 Mr Thomas Fovnes of Stapleford, Dorset, hunted there, and eventually sold his pack to go into Yorkshire. The famous Belvoir pack was founded by the third Duke of Rutland about 1740; as early as 1750 Mr Noel must have had the Cottesmore; and in the same year Lord Spencer became first master of the Pytchley. Sir Thomas Gascoigne hunted a large district in Yorkshire, including what is now Lord Middleton's country, about the year 1762, and about that time the fifth Duke of Beaufort changed from staghound to foxhound. In the middle of the 18th century, too, foxhunting was carried on in the New Forest by Sir Philip Jennings; and in 1757 a certain Sir John Millar sold his hounds to the third Duke of Richmond, but in what part of England Sir John hunted cannot be discovered. Mr Gobsall had kennels at Bermondsey in 1750, and hunted a great deal of Surrey; while about the same time Mr John Elwes, the miser, kept hounds at Stoke, in Suffolk, and, in the exercise of the rigid economy which he always practised in connection with everything save the purchase of his horses, compelled his huntsman to discharge, in addition to the duties of the kennel, those of valet, cook, cowman, and farm-bailiff.
Of the details of the majority of the above-mentioned packs little is known beyond the fact that they existed. Occasionally passing mention is made of them in the papers of the date; and, if the master happened to be a man of more than ordinary note, his hunting establishment was mentioned in connection with his biography. Moreover, in early times hounds were kept in an unpretentious sort of way, and were probably deemed no more worthy of record than the possession of a brace of greyhounds or a small kennel of pointers or setters for shooting purposes. It was not until the first number of the Sporting Magazine made its appearance in October 1792 that a publication chiefly confined to sporting matters existed, and by that time foxhunting had increased in importance; there was scarcely a quarter of England at the close of the last century which was not hunted over, though the several countries were of far greater extent than at present. To give a few instances: the Brocklesby country at first took in not only that portion of Lincoln- shire now hunted by Lord Yarborough's hounds, but the district afterwards occupied by the Burton, Southwold, and Blankney as well. The Berkeley country extended from Bristol to London; the Cottesmore comprised a great deal more of Leicestershire than it does now; and the Duke of Beaufort hunted from Badminton to Chipping Norton, in Oxfordshire, where he had outlying kennels. Of the above-mentioned packs several have preserved an unbroken existence from the time of their foundation down to the present day. Among them are the Duke of Beaufort's, the Belvoir, the Cottesmore, the Brocklesby, Lord Middleton's, the Sinnington, the Badsworth, Quorn, Pytchley, New Forest, and Surrey; though in some cases the names under which they now figure on the list did not attach till a later period; while in other instances the change in the boundaries and extent of various hunts has been so great as to preclude us, on the score of accuracy, from saying that they ever had a common ancestor. It would be an injustice to the sporting spirit and liberality of masters past and present to omit mention of the fact that from the earliest times many packs have been kept up at the sole cost of the owner, the Duke of Beaufort's and the Belvoir standing out as special examples of generosity and unselfishness. Two Sir Watkin Wynns have found their friends and neighbours in gratuitous sport; and when the late Lord Middleton in 1861 found it necessary to ask the country-side to assist him with a subscription, he stated that his family had expended nearly £100,000 in maintaining the pack. The Blackmoor Vale is another hunt to which no one has been asked to subscribe, and the Fitzwilliam pack was for a long time kept up free of cost to its followers, just as Earl Fitzwilliam's are now. The majority of packs, however, are maintained by subscription, the money contributed being expended in the purchase and keep of horses, wages of hunt-servants, helpers, and kennel-men, keep of hounds, and, in hunts in which breeding is not carried out on a sufficiently large scale to maintain the strength of the kennel, in the purchase of hounds. Coverts are also rented, and the damage caused by foxes to poultry is made good; but for this purpose there is usually a special fund, called the 'poultry fund.' The cost of keeping up a pack of foxhounds in good style may be roughly set down at about as many times £600 as a pack hunts in a week—e.g. a two-days-a-week pack would cost about £1200; £1800 would be needed for one hunting three days a week, and so on. But no hard and fast line can be drawn, because in some hunts the above estimate is not reached, while in the maintenance of others it is largely exceeded.
The subdivision of countries, consequent upon the multiplication of packs of hounds, has necessarily enabled persons living at such places as Rugby, Cheltenham, Oxford, or Melton Mowbray to hunt with several packs of hounds; and, as pretty nearly every country has its good and bad side, the result often is that the same faces are seen out with each of the packs on the good days. Then again railways convey persons from convenient hunting centres and from towns at comparatively small cost, so that in one way and another fields sometimes attain to such proportions as to threaten sport and to cause infinite damage to those whose land is ridden over. In the Whaddon Chase Hunt (Mr Selby Lowndes's) it has long been the custom to expect every one coming out with the hounds to contribute at least £25; but so far as those living beyond the confines of the hunt are concerned the Essex were, it is believed, the first to legislate. In 1886 a rule was passed providing that every stranger should subscribe at least 30 guineas to the funds; and in the course of the season 1888-89 the committees of the Bicester and Pytchley hunts enacted that all not living in those countries or in the immediate neighbourhood should subscribe a minimum of £25; and these examples will no doubt be largely adopted in the future in countries which attract strangers.
At the commencement of the season 1888-89 there were in England 154 packs of foxhounds; in Scotland, 9; and in Ireland, 17. Exclusive of those which had not been entered, there were 11,612 hounds in England, 584 in Scotland, and 1166 in Ireland; and the number of hunting fixtures in each week were: in England, 447; in Scotland, 25; and in Ireland, 44. If, then, each of these days be estimated to cost £600, as an approximate way of arriving at the total expenditure, it will be found that masters of hounds in England spend, roughly speaking, £268,200; in Scotland, £15,000; and in Ireland, £26,400. To these large sums must be added the amount expended on rent, stabling, horses, forage, harnessmakers, blacksmiths, and others by those who follow the different packs of hounds, and it will then be seen that foxhunting causes the circulation of a great deal of money, while it also finds employment for a large number of men in the capacities of hunt-servants, feeders, and helpers in the stables.
When hunting first came to be regarded as an amusement for country gentlemen, the hounds met early in the morning, soon after daylight in fact, and found their fox by tracking him to his kennel by means of his 'drag'—that is to say, the line he had taken in the small hours of the morning on returning from his search after food; and this custom still obtains in some of the moorland countries like those of the Coniston and Border hunts, where hounds hunt over open ground, and where there are scarcely any regular coverts for foxes. In countries like these it might take two or three days to find a fox in the ordinary way; but as the pack traverse the open in the morning they generally come across the drag, which they hunt until they come up to their game. In more fashionable hunts, however, the hour of meeting is at 10.30 or 11 o'clock, and the hounds are at once taken to draw the various woods, spinnies, or gorses of the district, whither the fox will have retired after his night's prowling. When he is found, the time which elapses before he 'goes away' depends partly upon the size of the covert, and partly upon his own inclinations. When, however, he does break covert he is allowed to travel some little distance before the whipper-in, or whoever may happen to see him, announces the fact by hallooning, the reason being that if he were not permitted to get some little way from the covert the noise would certainly cause him to turn back again. The huntsman and hounds with all speed make their way to the spot whence the halloo proceeded, and what subsequently happens is to a great extent a matter of chance. There are several circumstances which combine to bring about a bad run. The first is the absence of scent; and of the laws which govern scent we know no more to-day than our grandfathers did. It frequently happens that hounds will run well in the morning, and cannot, in foxhunting parlance, 'run a yard' in the afternoon, or vice versa; while sometimes scent fails suddenly in the course of a run. On days which appear highly favourable for hunting hounds are often unable to follow their fox; and, per contra, excellent runs are often enjoyed under what would seem to be highly adverse conditions. The poet who wrote 'a southerly wind and a cloudy sky proclaim a hunting morning' could not have been a practical foxhunter, as in almost every country in the United Kingdom sport is best when the wind has some east in it. Secondly, the fox may 'run short,' as it is termed—that is to say, instead of at once making for some distant point, he may be ignorant of all except the country immediately surrounding the covert in which he was found, and may keep turning and twisting, with the result that the hounds are often baffled. Or, again, the fox may be headed and turned back into the mouths of the hounds; while another fruitful cause of bad sport is the overriding of the hounds by the field.
A hunting establishment comprises, in the first place, the master; or, if it be found impossible to induce one gentleman to undertake the duty, the hunt is managed by a committee. Next comes the huntsman, who may be either a professional or an amateur; in the latter case he is almost invariably the master. When an amateur hunts the hounds, the first whipper-in usually discharges the duties of kennel huntsman—that is to say, he supervises the management of the pack in kennel. Some packs have one whipper-in, others have two. With a few packs there is a third hunt-servant, whose duty commonly consists in riding the master's or huntsman's second horse. In addition to the above there are feeders, a stud-groom to supervise the stable, and the helpers who do their work under him. In former times an earth-stopper or two was on the strength of every hunt, but the modern practice is to delegate this duty to the gamekeepers on the different estates, and they are paid a stipulated sum, usually £1 or £1, 10s., for each fox found in the coverts of which they have charge; but this reward is forfeited should the fox get to ground in an earth or hole which ought to have been stopped. The earth-stopping takes place in the small hours of the morning, while the fox is abroad in quest of food. Notice is sent to the gamekeepers a few days in advance, and so much of the country is stopped as is considered likely to suffice for the day's draws. The time for cub-hunting varies in different countries, and is governed by the time of harvest. In the course of September, however, all packs make a commencement, and regular foxhunting dates from about the 1st of November. In some countries the season is prolonged into May, but in the majority of places the farmers are glad to see hounds confined to kennel after the end of March.
Although the United Kingdom is the chief home of foxhunting, the sport is followed with the utmost zeal in other quarters of the globe. In Montreal a pack have preserved an unbroken existence since 1826; in Manitoba Englishmen have introduced their favourite sport; and in Florida a new departure is taken by foxhunting by moonlight. At the Cape and in Bechuanaland packs of foxhounds have been established. In New Zealand is a pack which hunt foxes and run a drag; military enterprise has transplanted foxhunting to Alexandria and Cyprus; and wolf-hunting is pursued in Dakota. In India the Peshawur Vale hounds are as famous as the Quorn or the Belvoir in England; the Maharajah of Mysore devotes no little money to the maintenance of a pack of hounds. Foxhunting has long been pursued with zeal in Virginia and some other parts of the United States.
See works by 'Nimrod' (1837; new ed. 1871); Radcliffe (1839; new ed., by the present writer, 1892); 'Scrutator' (1865); 'Stonehenge' (new ed. 1876); Hunting, in the Badminton Library (1885); and Vyner's Notitia Venatica (7th ed., by the present writer, 1892).