Drag Hunting, Cambridge University, 1879
From a sketch by C. M. Newton.

V

“Hunting is the sport of kings, the image of war without its
guilt, with only five-and-twenty per cent. of the danger.”

SO John Jorrocks felt and said; but in his oratorical effort to glorify hunting he both over- and under-did his figures of rhetoric—for though stag-hunting, so long as we have the buck-hounds, may yet be a royal sport in Old England, the whole line of crowned heads that have done us the honour of sitting on our throne would repudiate fox-hunting as the sport of kings, while the people would claim it for their own. It is the privilege of no class; its constitution is republican, founded and living on liberty, equality, and fraternity. Fox-hunting has grown out of ill-repute during the last two centuries, and has long been placed first in popular affection. Good Queen Bess, [1] by a statute (8 Eliz. cap. 15) “for killing of verming as foxes and such like,” gave expression to her people’s wishes, and provided a machinery of rewards for the head of every “fox” or “gray” (badger); whilst St. John, in his speech on the trial of Strafford, makes the blood of the modern sportsman run cold as he cries out: “It is true we give law to hares and deer because they be beasts of chase. It was never accounted either cruelty or foul play to knock foxes and wolves on the head as they can be found, because these be beasts of prey.” Mr. R. B. Turton, the editor of The North Riding Quarter Sessions Records (from whom I quote), truly remarks that, however shocking to our feelings, fox-hunting seems to have occupied somewhat the same position in this period that rat-catching does now. The statute of Elizabeth just referred to remained on the Statute-Book till 1863, and was actually in operation in Cleveland at least as late as 1847. There are in the Register and Churchwarden accounts for Lythe many entries of the rewards paid by the parish for “werment,” from 1705 to 1847. A few extracts will suffice for my object, which is to find some excuse for the illegitimate proceedings that have been continued even to my own day in certain outlying districts of the Cleveland Hunt.

1706.—Ugthorpe quarter—for 14 fullmor[2] heads 0 04 8
Newton—for 11 fullmor and 3 fox heads0128
Barnby—6 fullmor heads0020
Lythe—3 fox heads and 6 fullmor heads0110
1787.—To 10 fox heads, 2 at Kettleness, 1 at
Mickleby, 1 at Ugthorpe, 3 at Goldsbro’,
and 3 catched in a trap at Mulgrave Castle200

(We still know of the trap in which these foxes were “catched”!)