Vulpicide in South Nottinghamshire in 1865
John Fisher
Vulpicide.
`The action of killing a fox otherwise than hunting by hounds.’
`One who kills a fox otherwise than by hunting it with hounds.’
Oxford English DictionaryOnline, Oxford University Press, 2000.
`Lo-ook here sir. Do – do you shoot foxes? Because, if you don’t, your keeper does.
We’ve seen him! I do – don’t care what you call us – but it’s an awful thing. It’s the ruin
of good feelin’ among neighbours. A ma-man ought to say once and for all how he
stands about preservin’. It’s worse than murder, because there’s no legal remedy.’
M’Turk to Colonel Dabney in Rudyard Kipling, Stalky & Co., chapter 1.
M’Turk’s anguish evoked a potent convention of nineteenth century country life,
one that first emerged in the 1820’s. Simply put, foxes have always been vermin; anyone
had and has the right to kill them by whatever means. For much of the century, foxes
were also, in some areas at least, in short supply. If the sport of hunting foxes by hounds
was to be maintained it was necessary to restrain the killing of foxes by any other means.
The social convention that vulpicide was a reprehensible act developed in the absence of
any possible legal sanction. By the 1860’s, it was widely accepted that vulpicide was a
despicable act. `There are but few offences which can justify a man in shooting a fox in
the heart of a fox-hunting country’.1
However, the convention was not universally
observed, despite the prevailing orthodoxy of the century that foxhunting was supported
by all rural classes. Indeed it was by no means unusual in the early 1860s to judge by the
attention given it then in the Field, the leading weekly of English sportsmen.
Concerns over vulpicide had mounted during the 1850’s and 1860’s, even in the
hunting Mecca of Leicestershire,2 coming to a head in December, 1864. What had been
sporadic reports of fox deaths were replaced by assertions of `wholesale destruction’ as
claims of `a famine of foxes’ were heard from a wide range of hunting territories.3 By
the season’s end, one writer thought it `the worst season for sport in the memory of the
oldest foxhunter’. Bad weather and bad scent provided minor reasons, but the major was
`fox scarcity’.4 From early December through to the end of the season, not a week went
by without at least one reported case of vulpicide in the Field. At the same time, fox
killing and fox scarcity were discussed and analysed in its editorials, feature articles and
reports from various regions.
Beyond the frequency with which vulpicide occurred, these cases and the
discussion they aroused served to demonstrate the complexities that underlay the simple
rhetoric of antagonism to the killing of foxes by means other than hounds. In the first
place there were different motives for vulpicide. Beyond simple personal antagonism,
these were related to the perceptions of the two chief perpetrators, farmers and
gamekeepers, of the harm inflicted on their livelihood, either by foxes or the hunt itself.
The motives and behaviour of farmer vulpicides were fairly straightforward. As will be
seen below, despite the indignation their actions aroused, some were prepared to be quite
open in what they did. As far as the hunt was concerned, the solution to vulpicide by
farmers was also straightforward. It was the other form of vulpicide that caused most
tension in rural society and among sportsmen in particular.
Gamekeepers killed foxes because the latter were a major threat to the game that
the former sought to preserve. They were likely to be more covert in practicing vulpicide
than farmers but this was not the only attendant problem. Rather, gamekeepers were the
servants of landowners, the ruling elite in the countryside, whose co-operation was as
essential to successful hunting as was that of farmers and to whom, as M’Turk
emphasised, the convention on vulpicide principally applied. Even those landowners
who did not hunt themselves were supposed to pay more than lip-service to hunting as
the premier rural sport. Questions then arose as to why or how far they were deliberately
flouting the convention and - most difficult of all – what could be done about this. These
questions are explored in the main part of the account below, although their delicate
nature means that definitive answers cannot necessarily be given.
It is convenient to begin here with cases of vulpicide perpetrated by farmers, the
first of which came in the territory of the Belvoir hunt. In early December, 1864, a fox
was found poisoned in Coston Covert, while two hounds died later.
The Duke of
Rutland, as Master of Fox Hounds, subsequently offered a £50 reward for information on
the culprit.5 There is no further information on whether the reward was ever claimed but
the episode is of interest on two counts. In the first place, the location of the vulpicide
must have raised memories of a case two seasons earlier, together with the suspicion that
the same offender was involved. In the second, there was nothing that the Duke could
have done, legally at least, about the poisoning.
The previous case, also at Coston Covert, came in January, 1863. The Duke of
Rutland, who had only recently assumed the Mastership in the Belvoir territory (it came
as an hereditary right), drew the covert, finding quickly with the pack getting away well
over two fields. They were then headed and, while casting about, the Duke was informed
that the fox had been shot by a man who had `concealed the carcase in a hovel hard by’.
The man refused the Duke’s request for the body and `a short struggle took place
between the two, which ended in both rolling over, with the Duke on the top’. He then
retrieved the fox and gave it to the hounds.6
To a modern eye, the Duke would appear to have been both the aggressor and to
have invited ridicule by his actions. Evidently, however, public sympathies, locally and
more generally, lay with the Duke. An address `signed by nearly every farmer in the
Belvoir Hunt, expressing their regret and indignation at such unsportsmanlike conduct in
shooting a fox’, was presented to the Duke.7 Further, despite his highhanded and even
ludicrous actions, Punch, which habitually mocked aristocratic pretensions but was
usually a reliable barometer of (upper and middle-class) public opinion, took his side.
The Duke was defended, on the grounds of `live and let live’, against `The Gushers’ who
decried his `tyranny’.8
At the same time, the Duke could do nothing about the
`unsportsmanlike conduct’.
The vulpicide at Coston Covert has echoes of that in Trollope’s foxhunting novel,
The American Senator. The motive for vulpicide in the fictional case was a mixture of
personal idiosyncrasy and vindictiveness and this could have been the case in the Belvoir
territory. However, farmers also had good reason to resent hunts, especially those with
high numbers, as was always the case in Leicestershire, when their newly sown crops
were ridden over.
One member of the hunt raised this theme in 1863, when he
commented that the actions of the vulpicidal farmer had actually caused more damage
than if he had left the fox alone.
The Duke’s grappling with the fox killer was presumably a reflection of his
frustration. Farmers had a perfect right to kill foxes by any means while they could also
take the hunt to court for any damage done when riding over their holdings.9 They did
face major difficulties in pursuing the last course of action, in the face of what were
likely to be either unsympathetic landlords or magistrates. If tenants, this was a further
inducement to kill foxes overtly or covertly according to circumstances. The status of the
Duke’s opponent was not given although a surprising number of tenant farmers were
open in their vulpicide. Further, as in another episode that came to a head at the end of
1864, not every landlord was entirely unsympathetic.
In late December, 1864, Lord Fitzhardinge, the Master of the Berkeley Hunt,
announced suddenly that he would resign his position if nothing was done to counter the
depredations of a local farmer, who had been systematically shooting foxes and setting
traps against hounds.10
Fitzhardinge’s threat was the sort of melodramatic gesture
characteristic of a man who, like his brother, Grantley Berkeley, was used to achieving
his own ends at the expense of others, especially his social inferiors.11 In this case,
however, he had met his match. The local farmer in question, James Cox, readily
admitted his guilt. Surrounded as he was by coverts, he had long nurtured a whole series
of grievances against the Hunt, including damage to his winter wheat, gates left open,
stock dispersed and the usual poultry losses.12
The case ended reasonably amicably, with Cox expressing his gratitude to the
Hunt for a generous payment to compensate for the damage done. 13 Whether or not the
generous compensation paid to him by hunt members was also stimulated by their desire
to retain Lord Fizhardinge as MFH, they had little choice.
The famous string of
imprecations from Mr Jorrocks confounding unco-operative farmers14 serves mainly to
demonstrate how important that co-operation was. Farmers could destroy foxes with
little chance of detection if they so desired. The hunt also depended on them merely to
leave their prey undisturbed and to provide information and a variety of valuable
services. As the Field put it, `few counties in England could be hunted without the
assistance… (of) our good friends the farmers’.15 Further, by the 1860’s, concern was
also growing over their use of wire in fences and hedges. And if farmer co-operation was
to be ensured, generous compensation for injuries to their interests was a necessary if by
no means a sole precondition.16
Cox was not alone in the openness of his vulpicide. The Field featured other
reports of fox-killings by farmers during 1865, some `in broad daylight’.
They
culminated in the next season when a Worcestershire `tenant-farmer, dressed in a blue
smock-frock’, deliberately shot a fox in front of the assembled hunt. 17 Even this outrage,
however, never achieved the prominence of Cox’s because what gave the Berkeley
episode a special piquancy was the attitude of his landlord. That the Reverend Sir
Edward Colt openly supported his tenant’s actions was as disturbing as the vulpicide
itself.
As the Field put it indignantly, it was `difficult to imagine a gentleman, above all
a clergyman, should have countenanced and admits his indifference to the outrageous
proceedings of his tenant’.18 This was not just or even primarily because the Reverend
Colt was best placed to prevent the vulpicide. Rather, it was because he had violated the
secondary convention, as potent as that on vulpicide itself, that held that all landowners,
whether they hunted or not, should support foxhunting. It was this sentiment that M’Turk
evoked in upbraiding Colonel Dabney, and it figured strongly in 1865. Vulpicide by
farmers was almost to be expected. Perpetrated by others, it raised more complex and
delicate issues for the leaders of rural society, even if few landowners were likely to be as
intransigent as the Reverend Colt, in view of the implications for their standing, either
among their peers or in rural society as a whole.
Landowners were well aware of the conventional expectation and that not
meeting it could have negative consequences. At the extreme, as in a case in Essex in
1865, one landlord was prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to counter accusations, if
not of vulpicide then of practices close to it. In February, a letter in a local newspaper,
from `A Tenant Farmer’, accused Charles Du Cane, then MP for North Essex, among
other offences, of shutting up foxes in a cave on his estate to protect his game. The
potency of feelings over such a topic led Du Cane, with an election due that year, 19 to
mount a concerted response. As a subscriber to the East Essex hunt, he induced its
Master to wrote in his defence, acknowledging knowledge and approving of Du Cane’s
treatment of the fox in question. The Field was also able to welcome letters from Du
Cane’s tenants and his gamekeeper in response to the accusations – unaware that he had
orchestrated and even written some of these, as David Itzkowitz has demonstrated,20 in
his determination not to run foul of local sensitivities.
Few landlords would have gone to such lengths.
However, the sensitivities
involved were alluded to in the course of an account of Lord Galway’s Hounds (which
had also had problems in the previous season21) in the north of Nottinghamshire in 1865.
That the hunt drew several coverts without success led on to a discussion of the reasons
for the `singular scarceness of foxes in a district said to abound with the animal’. This
led on, inexorably, to the role of `the gentlemen who preserve game, and their keepers’, 22
the central issue raised during the season and one examined in greater detail below
through a review of yet another incident of vulpicide in the same county in the same year.
It is clear from his scrapbooks23 that all these cases were followed closely by
Henry Smith of Cropwell Butler in Nottinghamshire. Smith was a country gentleman
who, while achieving a national reputation as a stockbreeder, was also active in county
and national agricultural organisations, in local Poor Law administration and in church
and parish affairs (see Appendix). He was also a keen foxhunter, who had had little
opportunity to indulge his inclination in a local hunt for several years prior to the season
of 1860 to 1861.
The South Notts territory has never been considered the equal of its famous
neighbours, the Quorn and the Belvoir to the south in Leicestershire.24 Squire
Osbaldeston, who took it for a couple of seasons in the early century, considered it `a
very bad country and very inconvenient for hunting’. This was for a whole series of
reasons. The river Trent divided the territory into two halves, requiring the hounds to be
ferried across from his base at Thurgarton. For Osbaldeston, there were too few gorse
coverts south of the river, and too much woodland and gorse to the north.25 Arable
predominates over pasture and, north of the Trent the land is hilly, south of the river it `is
inclined to ride heavily, especially after rain’. It was `perhaps not the best scenting one
[territory] in the world’.26 At best, it was only a poor relation, especially in the rank of
members of the hunt, even to the Rufford and Grove in the north of the county.27
It did achieve a degree of reflected glory in the early century under the father and
son Masters, John and John Chaworth Musters, of Annesley Park.28 Although their
greatest exploits were in Leicestershire, they spent many seasons in the South Notts.
Their domination was such that, after the death of Chaworth Musters in 1845, the South
Notts ceased operation, even losing territory to the Rufford Hunt to the north.29 The
situation was only saved when his son, the second John Chaworth Musters, announced
his intention of taking on the Mastership in 1860, gathering together a well-bred pack of
some thirty couples of hounds.30 He began modestly enough, in the season beginning in
1862 still hunting only two days a week,31 while subscribers like Henry Smith did their
part to remedy the lack of gorse coverts by extensive planting. Smith’s contribution to
the Hunt was acknowledged by the frequency of meets at his house, The Grove, at
Cropwell Butler.32
Smith was not overly impressed by the early efforts of the new young MFH. `Mr
Musters has a great deal to learn before he makes a good huntsman’, he noted towards the
end of 1864. He also pasted (anonymous) letters to the Nottinghamshire Guardian in his
scrapbook accusing Musters of impetuosity and lack of control over both riders and footfollowers.33 However, these were minor sins, in the context of the overriding concern of
the day.
On the 14th April, 1865, the Nottinghamshire Guardian published a tragic tale of
the `lamentable wholesale destruction of foxes by poison’. Two vixens, together with
their litters of cubs, had been found poisoned, within one week and one mile of each
other, on the boundaries of the estates of the Earl of Chesterfield at Shelford. The story
was not formally attributed to Henry Smith and nor did the article give a specific
location. However his role as a source was evident, as was demonstrated the following
week when the Guardian published a response from one of the agents clearly held
responsible.
John Perren, later identified by Smith as one of the estate under-keepers, wrote to
suggest that the problem was not on the estate but of Smith’s own making. Every effort
had been made to keep foxes from traps on the estate and, if they were dying, then Smith
should look to his own employees, who had been observed `snaring his hares, if such I
may call them’. The letter was an insolent gesture; as the Guardian remarked, `the list of
offences against his lordship’s servants is a long one’. Certainly, it provoked Smith, not
usually either a speaker at meetings or a correspondent in newspapers, into an indignant
and lengthy reply. This gave a detailed history of his grievance, and the strength of his
feelings was reflected in the fact that he put three copies of his letter in his scrapbook.
Smith wrote that he had had to lay down snares for hares (and those trapped went
to the poor) because of the sheer number originating from the estate. For four years, he
had tried to raise a litter of fox-cubs; in each year, the cubs had died of poison, in the
latest episode together with the two vixens. The litters had been in an earth on Spellow
Farm, in a covert sown on land he owned at Radcliffe-on-Trent, adjoining the Bingham
estate of the Earl of Chesterfield at Shelford. As for who was responsible, he recounted
his experience when shooting on the Bingham estate. `A fox had been put up and Mr
Dawson [the head keeper] instantly discharged two barrels at him.’ Among other fox
deaths, a vixen had been found poisoned on the estate, only 300 yards from its earth.
Most damningly, `Mr Musters’ Hunt had never yet to have found a live fox at
Shelford’.34
Despite appearing after the end of the season, the story was of sufficient moment,
in the context of the prevailing concerns, to warrant publication later in the Field and
even other national papers.35 More than some of the other incidents, it exhibited the
symptomatic tensions of rural sport at the time.
While the pursuit and killing of wild
animals and birds for sport was of great antiquity, by the nineteenth century, such
activities had become highly formalised, in part perhaps as a function of restraints arising
out of the greater complexity of society,36 but as much in response to changes in the
natural environment. As the intensity of agricultural production grew, the constraints on
the movements and actions of sportsmen increased. The hunting of foxes and the taking
of game became highly stylised and bound by conventions and rules. This did not
prevent and perhaps even enhanced the growth in their popularity, and the supply of
animal and bird victims could only be maintained - `preserved’ as it was termed - by
human intervention. In fact, foxes were so scarce in some areas in the early nineteenth
century as to lead not only to their preservation but also to a widespread trade based on
domestic captures and imports from France.37
The position could only become worse as a surge in popularity of both the major
field sports in England from the 1850s exacerbated an inherent conflict of interest
between the sporting interests of landowners. The number of hunts was increasing; there
were five new packs in 1862. Existing hunts gained in members and hunted more days
each week in the season over smaller territories. This was one reason for a scarcity of
foxes but the more important arose out of developments in shooting. Improvements in
guns, with the breechloader first coming into extensive use in the early 1860s, meant that
shooters increasingly vied in maximising the size of their `bags’ of game. The numbers
of victims began to be measured in thousands each day during the 1850s. In turn, this
was only possible through heavy investment in the preservation of game against human
and other predators – including foxes.38 The latter were the chief predators of both
winged and ground game,39 thus raising what Trollope later described as the `well-worn
dispute among sportsmen, whether foxes and pheasants are or are not pleasant
companions to each other’.40
The imperatives of shooting made this convention increasingly hard to hold to in
the 1860s – or so at least many foxhunters thought. The motives of a farmer vulpicide
were explicable even if reprehensible. The suspicions that the dearth of foxes was a
result of game preservation, however, led on to delicate questions concerning where the
ultimate responsibility for vulpicide lay.
However, despite M’Turks openness with
Colonel Dabney, it would have been unpleasant or unseemly to accuse a landowner,
especially a great one, directly of perpetrating or even encouraging such an outrage.
Fortunately, there was an alternative.
The gamekeeper was the chief figure directly responsible for game preservation.
He reared the birds and sought to protect them against predators of any type.
Gamekeepers were thus logical suspects in cases of vulpicide, especially when, as on the
Chesterfield estate, poison or trapping was involved. As the Field editorialised, although
personal malice might sometimes be involved, `nine times out of ten [the blame lies] with
the keepers.’ Reviewing events after the end of the season, it considered that `it has been
pretty clearly proved that the gamekeepers are the chief engines of destruction to the
foxes’.41 John Mills, writing a special feature on `The Preservation of Foxes’, alluded
darkly to an `all-powerful body of head-keepers’ who were at the root of the problem.
Killing foxes made their life easier while their traps were indiscriminate. The problem
was compounded where they were allowed to sell rabbits as they had a further reason to
destroy the main predator. `In many places, rabbits abound, and foxes do not abound.’42
There was much to support such views. Foxes kill more pheasants than they
consume, and sitting birds are especially vulnerable. `Whatever they may say to the
contrary, all [gamekeepers] hate foxes’,43 while the hunt itself was also an irritation. The
shooting and hunting seasons overlapped; cubbing could interfere with shooting while the
hunt would be looking to draw coverts at much the same time that the potential game bag
ought to have been at its peak. Some game preservers refused to allow their coverts to be
drawn until the shooting season finished in February.44 Such actions emphasised the
conflicting imperatives of the two sports; even if gamekeepers were convenient culprits
for vulpicide, it remained a fact that they were merely servants.
Nevertheless, `we have too high an opinion of country gentlemen… to believe in
a malicious intention’.45
Starting from this premise, the debate was over what
landowners could do, either to restrain the vulpicidal tendencies of their keepers or to
promote a larger population of foxes.
Various solutions were proposed to the
incompatibility problem, including netting pheasant preserves and leaving freshly killed
rabbits outside the earths. However, the first remedy did not work and the second
resulted in `short-running brutes’ that gave no sport.46 In later years, the best policy was
found to be to pay gamekeepers a retainer for such services as ensuring undisturbed
coverts.47 In 1865, however, the emphasis was on the duty of landlords to give clear
directions to keepers to ensure that foxes were left undisturbed.48
It is probable that keepers frequently ignored such instructions. The Dukes of
Rutland, despite the priority given to fox hunting in the Vale of Belvoir, also preserved a
large head of game. His keepers were told not to shoot foxes but, at least in the next
century, they ignored such instructions, seeking to leave `just enough foxes to keep the
hunt happy’.49 It is less clear what the position was on the Shelford estate in the 1860s.
When the Nottinghamshire Guardian first raised the topic of vulpicide, it did so
with a `confident assurance that a nobleman of his lordship’s rank and reputation could
not sanction so ruffianly a proceeding’. It was hard to imagine that such `a wholesale
system of destruction [could exist] on the estate of a nobleman whose blue blood should
boil in his veins at anything so ungentlemanly… We trust it is only necessary to mention
the matter in order to remove the cause of complaint for the future.’ The Guardian was
wrong, for reasons that remain speculative but probably reflected a mix of factors
deriving from the particular characteristics of the Shelford estate and its owners in the
context of the general problems of reconciling game and fox preservation.
The estate of the 6th Earl of Chesterfield (1805-1866) amounted to some 13,000
acres, lying at the centre of the territory of the South Notts Hunt. It was the largest in
South Nottinghamshire after that of Earl Manvers centred on Holme Pierrepont.
Together they commanded a great deal of influence and the eldest son of the former, Lord
Stanhope, had followed the eldest son of the latter, Lord Newark, as M.P. for the division
in 1860. The sixth Earl, however, was also an absentee owner, despite the long Stanhope
connection with Shelford,50 and although his seat was not far distant at Bretby in
Derbyshire. He had been a notable Master of the Pytchley Hunt in the 1830’s, with a
stable of fifty hunters and a good huntsman gaining a reputation for offering excellent
sport.51 His commitment was such that, when accompanying his wife to Rome for her
health in 1836, he took his hounds with him.52 However, notoriously a wastrel, his tenure
at the Pytchley ended abruptly when the hounds were seized for his debts. 53 Towards the
end of his life, he gave up racing, gambling and hunting, among other expensive pursuits,
and lived almost exclusively at Bretby.54
The Earl’s heir, Lord Stanhope, also had a reputation as a sportsman. A cricketer
and reputedly a foxhunter, his chief interest was in shooting. The same age as the Prince
of Wales, he was a member of his set and to be found at Sandringham as the latter began
to preserve game on a massive scale from 1862.55 Although described by Lady Dorothy
Nevill as `a most interesting young man’,56 his public career gave no hint of this. He
never spoke during his six years in the Commons and was frequently absent from his
duties as Captain of the Bingham Troop of the South Notts Yeomanry. And both father
and son showed interest in their Nottinghamshire estate only for the game.
John Bright’s select committee on the Game Laws had canvassed the reputation
of the estate for strict preservation, and for summary dealings with poachers, in 1845.57
The reputation for game preservation continued afterwards, attracting the attentions of the
notoriously violent professional game-stealing gangs, most notably in 1859 in `one of the
most fearful affairs we (the Newark Advertiser) have yet had to record in connection with
poaching’.58 The gangs were usually in pursuit of game birds to be sold on the urban
market although a curious feature of preservation on the estate was the massive number
of hares that Smith complained about. That hares rather than pheasants were the chief
beneficiaries of preservation, abounding throughout the estate, north of the Trent as well
as at Spellow Farm, is confirmed from other sources.
Smith was not the only victim outside of the estate. In 1862, Thomas Huskinson,
conducting a valuation for Earl Manvers, noted that game was not excessive over most of
his estate, `except on the two farms at Stoke Bardolph, where the number of Hares is so
extraordinary that the Tenant must certainly sustain no inconsiderable loss.’ However, he
recommended against a lower rent on the grounds that `the compensation should be made
to the Tenant by Lord Chesterfield, to whom, as I understand, the Deputation has been
given.’59 In the same year, the Guardian recorded the official bag for a day’s shooting by
the Earl and his son at Shelford. It included 406 hares but only 54 pheasants and 13
partridges.60
There was a preponderance of ground over winged game in other recorded bags in
the early 1860’s,61 although hare numbers fell markedly due to disease later in 1865.62
There is no evidence that hares were deliberately preserved for coursing; their abundance
presumably reflected, among other factors,63 the absence of their chief natural predators
in foxes. This must have had as adverse an impact on estate tenants as it did on the
neighbouring farms. However, this could be mitigated by compensation or lower rents;
there is no evidence of discontent on this score while the Earl’s land agent, John Hassell,
had been a much-respected figure in the region and an associate if not a friend of Henry
Smith until his death in 1859.64
At the same time, the Earl had a reputation for
highhanded dealings with the tenantry, as during a bitterly contested by-election of
1851.65 Neither he nor his son supported the local hunt and, in 1865, made no public
response to the accusations of vulpicide.
In the charged atmosphere at the end of the hunting season, there was evidently
some indignation at this outcome, or lack of outcome. In June, the Guardian was moved
to protest against the rudeness exhibited to the Earl’s heir, Lord Stanhope, and his `muchrespected’ agent, George Hassell (son of John), at a dinner of the South Notts
Yeomanry.66 This took the form of hisses and was unprecedented in an institution that
mirrored the social hierarchy of the countryside. There seems little doubt that local
feeling ran strongly against the Stanhope family at the time. Nevertheless, the public
display of such feelings remained an isolated incident.
It could hardly have been
otherwise. John Mills might recommend the `shunning of vulpecides’67 as a sanction
when the usual convention was flouted. However, and whatever the feelings of Smith
and others over the vulpicides at Shelford, it was a difficult strategy to sustain in the face
of the obduracy of a landlord who outranked them and who, despite being an absentee,
was necessarily a major figure in county affairs.
In the absence of direct evidence, the further implications of the Shelford
vulpicides for local relationships must remain speculative at best. The extracts from
Henry Smith’s diaries for this period do not mention the incident, being more concerned
with familial tensions (see Appendix). Nor is there any evidence from the Chesterfield
side (attempts to locate estate or private papers of the family have been unsuccessful.
What is known of the situation at the time, however, serves to demonstrate the difficulties
of taking any further action. The nature of a variety of local relationships militated
against this.
The nature of relationships within the South Notts Yeomanry serves to illustrate
the point. Henry Smith had become Regimental Sergeant Major of the Bingham troop in
1861, after many years of faithful service. This was the highest non-commissioned rank
in a body where the gentry and aristocracy provided the officers. Lord Stanhope had
been gazetted as a lieutenant in 1863, to be made captain, also of the Bingham troop, on
the 5th April, 1865,68 at almost the same time as the accusations of vulpicide first
appeared. Any degree of personal embarrassment was avoided by Stanhope’s sickness at
the time, and his consequent absence from exercises.69 Nevertheless, it would seem that
both men were in an invidious position.
Despite his righteous indignation, and the evident culpability of the estate, Henry
Smith was in the more difficult situation. As had been demonstrated in his letter of
accusation, Smith had himself shot on the estate. This had not been with the owner or his
son, but presumably with their tacit approval and at the invitation of the gamekeepers he
later condemned. Further, and whatever Smith’s relations with the estate owners, he was
part of a social group which included the agents, the Hassalls, father and son, and leading
tenants at Shelford, that dominated farming and other rural organisations in the locality.70
Pursuit of a vendetta against vulpicide could only strain or injure what were otherwise
congenial relations.
The suspicion arises that Smith’s accusations had only been made publicly as a
result of the inflamed atmosphere at the end of the 1864 to 1865 hunting season. There
was nothing to be gained and much to be lost by any further attempt to penalise the
Stanhope family for the bad behaviour of its gamekeepers. Despite du Cane’s concern at
much the same time in Essex, there were no political repercussions arising out of the
vulpicides in South Nottinghamshire. Lord Stanhope was re-elected without a contest at
the general election of 1865. Further, on the hustings in June his nomination was
seconded by John Marriott, a friend and neighbour of Smith at Cropwell Butler, who paid
tribute to the `high and noble character of his (Stanhope’s) father’.
71
The electoral
compact between great and small landowners, whereby they had shared the
representation of South Nottinghamshire after 1851,72 held good in June 1865.
The heightened concern with vulpicide diminished progressively after the end of
the hunting season. As far as immediate issues of note were concerned, locally and
nationally, it was replaced by the much more serious threat of the cattle plague during the
following autumn.73 The next season began with the Field predicting `foxes in plenty, as
a general rule’, on the basis of experience during cubbing.74
When the Earl and his son did not respond stood condemned by his social
inferiors. Small landowners, like Henry Smith, and farmers held most fervently to the
informal convention on preservation. This is evident in Trollope’s hunting novel, where,
to continue from the quote earlier: `Every one was agreed that, if [foxes were] not
[compatible with pheasants], then the pheasants should suffer, and that every country
gentleman who allowed his gamekeeper to entrench on the privileges of foxes in order
that pheasants might be more abundant, was a “brute” and a “beast” and altogether
unworthy to live in England.’ The reasons went beyond the difficulties involved in
combining the two forms of preservation.
On the one hand, shooting was an exclusive sport, maintained by heavy private
investment in measures designed to counter the community belief that wild animals
should not be reserved to any particular group. On the other, foxhunting, despite being
dominated by the upper classes, and with full participation also being expensive, was an
inclusive sport. When the Earl of Chesterfield planted a covert, it was for the private
enjoyment of himself and his fellows. When Henry Smith planted his, it was akin to a
social amenity. The enjoyment of shooting could only be achieved by keeping the rest of
the community at arm’s length. The pleasures of foxhunting, however, could be shared
by and required the active support of the rural community. Only the most affluent MFH
could afford to hunt entirely at his own expense; most required subscriptions, the unpaid
exertions of subscribers and the active support of many others.
Above all, as was noted above, the hunt required the support of farmers. That this
was overwhelmingly given with enthusiasm, despite the frequent reported cases of
vulpicide, amazed contemporary observers and has impressed historians.75 The support
owed something to tact and generous compensation, but also probably reflected the
extent to which the largest farmers, emerging as an important group in their own right in
rural society, welcomed the inclusiveness of the meet and the chase.76 Conversely, in the
1860’s, as had been demonstrated over the 1862 Night Poaching Act,77 they were
overwhelmingly hostile to game preservation. While shooting as well as hunting was
accessible to gentlemen like Henry Smith, or to large farmers in general, there was a
major difference for the latter, if a tenant, in their right of access. Shooting, even of
rabbits on their own farms, was circumscribed by a host of restrictions. In the hunt,
however, while Mr Sponge exaggerated in claiming that `all men were equal’ 78, the
conventions were the same for all participants. And an unfashionable hunt like the South
Notts may have been the more appealing in the absence of the great landowners and
wealthy outsiders who patronised the Quorn, Belvoir and Rufford.
There were never likely to be direct accusations against the Earl, however
unpopular he might be.
As a non-resident landowner, he probably saw no reason to
respond in any fashion to those made against his gamekeepers. In fact, perhaps the most
surprising feature of the episode was that the repercussions of the vulpicides on Spellow
Farm did not go beyond the rudeness evinced at the Yeomanry dinner.
Sporadic accounts of vulpicide continued to appear but the highly charged
atmosphere of the 1864 to 1865 season was not repeated.
Likewise, in South
Nottinghamshire, there was no repeat of earlier unpleasantness although the problem at
Shelford remained unresolved for some years.
The Shelford estate remained a game estate and there was no evident change in
policy towards foxes. In 1868, a shooting party that included the Dukes of Cambridge
and St Albans took over 200 hares a day on the estate.79 A year later, Smith found traps
and spring guns close to the covert he had planted at the Harlequin, again on the edge of
the Shelford estate.
In 1870, it was reported that foxes were still dying on the
Chesterfield estate, and that Mr Musters had only found one there in the past six years.80
Even so, any remaining antagonisms seem to have been assuaged; Smith had dined at
Shelford Manor, with George Hassall and other Shelford tenants at the beginning of the
year.81
One factor was possibly the continuing prosperity of the South Notts hunt, despite
losing John Chaworth Musters in 1869 to the Quorn for three years. Henry Smith
continued to support the hunt, although he had as many reservations as to the competence
of the new Master, John Francklin, as he had had on Musters. Nevertheless he served on
the committee established to make up the £800 required by Franklin before he would take
the hounds.82 He was also there in 1871 to welcome the return of Musters who, after
rescuing the Quorn from the depredations wreaked by the Marquis of Hastings, found
hunting in the shires too taxing on health and purse.83 Smith later recorded his pleasure
at a find in the Harlequin Gorse covert, a pleasure that must have been enhanced after
`The Great Run with John Chawarth Musters’ Foxhounds’. This took place after a meet
at The Grove, the hounds finding in the Harlequin Gorse before a run of thirty-five miles
and lasting three hours and twenty-six minutes.84 It induced his son, Henry Smith junior,
to write a poem `to Mr Musters’ hounds’ which Smith duly pasted into his scrapbook.
The illnesses of both the 6th Earl and his successor also served to cloud the
question of responsibility for fox deaths. The former died in 1866 and the latter was
evidently sick on the hustings in 1865, surviving his father as seventh earl for only five
years. The estate then passed to the Earls of Carnarvon while remaining dedicated to
game preservation for the rest of the century, being visited by some of the great shots,
including the Maharajah Duleep Singh,85 of the age. The new owners, however, did
invest more in the local community than had the last of the Stanhopes while Shelford
began to figure, as it had not done previously, as a scene for local meets. 86 From 1881,
the Earl of Harrington, from another branch of the Stanhope family, made the South
Notts one of the great hunts of England, going out six days a week with three packs over
what became a much-extended territory. Shelford Manor and Shelford Vicarage became
familiar meeting places for the bitch pack based at Cotgrave.87 The contention that the
preservation of pheasants and foxes was compatible had at last been satisfactorily
demonstrated in South Nottinghamshire.
Conclusion
The concern over vulpicide in the nineteenth century seems almost
incomprehensible in the third millenium. On the one hand, foxhunting itself, as a blood
sport, attracts fierce opposition from some and is disapproved of by a majority of the
population. It thus seems likely to follow bearbaiting and cockfighting to be outlawed in
the near future. On the other, while, legally, foxes remain vermin, they are hardly scarce,
having adapted successfully to life in the suburbs while consolidating on their more usual
niche in the countryside.
Even so, something of the old convention lingers on. Farmers in the Belvoir
valley, for example, are reputed to be more sympathetic towards the needs of the hunt
than others in the south of Nottinghamshire. Contemporary farmer vulpicides, of whom
there are many, find it convenient to be discreet; there is still some stigma attached to the
activity. As for preservation, as late as the 1970’s, the Masters of Foxhounds Association
and the Game Conservancy found it convenient to develop a mutual code of conduct and
to issue a pamphlet, Covert Story, outlining how both sides could act to avoid conflict.
The critical difference today is that foxhunters can no longer count on the support of the
general community. Their need to accommode with game shooters has been enhanced by
the relationship of both with, in the words of Covert Story, `those who do not understand
country sports and the ways of country life’.
Appendix
Henry Smith (1828-1915)
Henry Smith occupied an interesting place in the rural society of the Victorian
age. He was the son of a distinguished clergyman, a Cambridge Wrangler in 1790, who
made Cropwell Butler his home, building a residence called `The Grove’. Henry did not
follow his father into holy orders, although taking a close interest in Tithby church, where
he was a sidesman. Rather, his considerable abilities and energy were centred, in his
private capacity, on farming and landownership, in his public on a range of local and
county affairs.
According to the Return of Owners of Land in England and Wales, conducted in
1873, Henry Smith owned 411 acres worth 720 at Cropwell Butler in Nottinghamshire.88
By his own reckoning, however, at much the same time, he owned more than three times
as much land, although not all in Nottinghamshire. John Bateman’s categories 89, Smith
owned enough land, over 1,300 acres according to his own reckoning at the time of the
second Domesday survey, to qualify as a squire. However, although he was lord of the
manor at Cropwell Butler, he was not a member of the gentry. His lands were not a
compact estate but scattered over fourteen parishes in Derbyshire as well as
Nottinghamshire, the result of piecemeal acquisitions. Some of his property was in
housing and he also lent money on a commercial basis. Smith was not a magistrate and
perhaps the best indication of his social standing was the height of the rank he achieved
in the South Notts Yeomanry. He became Regimental Sergeant Major in 1861, the
highest noncommissioned rank in a body where the gentry and aristocracy provided the
officers.90 He was, however, a captain in the Robin Hood Rifles, a less exclusive body,
after their formation in 1863.
Henry Smith seems to have been acutely if naturally conscious of status. He was
at odds with others in his family at various times, and at least in part because his brother
and sister married beneath them. His sister married a widowed wine merchant while his
brother did even worse, marrying the daughter of a veterinary surgeon. His friends, like
John Marriott and the Parr family at Cropwell Butler, and William Sanday at Holme
Pierrepont, came from the group immediately below the level of the gentry, being
yeomen, major tenant-farmers and land agents. They were not working farmers but
shared the same interests in stockbreeding and agricultural progress generally.
While he may not have been of the gentry, Smith performed much of the role
usually taken by a local squire. The representative of Cropwell Butler for many years, he
chaired the board of guardians for the Bingham Union for many years. He was especially
active at the village level, playing a leading role in establishing the village school, and
helping to establish a Penny Bank and an insurance society for the lower classes.
Cropwell Cow Club 27 Dec 1862.
1868 buys and closes down local beerhouse, Royal Oak.
When his son became twenty-one, Smith provided lavish meals to the local poor
(strictly segregated by sex).
1
Field 14 January, 1865.
C.D.B. Ellis, Leicestershire and the Quorn Hunt, Leicester, Edgar Backus, 1951,
pp.103-4.
3
Field 10 and 17 December, 1864.
4
Field 15 April, 1865.
5
Field 17 December, 1864.
6
T.F. Dale, The History of the Belvoir Hunt, Constable, 1899, pp.232-4.
7
Field 17 February, 1863.
8
Punch 14 March, 1863.
2
9
Raymond Carr, English Fox Hunting: A History, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976,
pp.215-17.
10
Field 24 December, 1864.
11
Lord Fitzhardinge, with his brother Grantley Barkeley, was a rigid upholder of landlord
rights in relation to farmers: see the Select Committee on the Game Laws, 1846, Vol.I,
Qs.3443-65 and 16904-41; also C. Kirby, `The Attack on the English Game Laws in the
Forties’, Journal of Modern History, IV (March, 1932), pp.27-30.
12
Field 7 January, 1865.
13
Field 11 February, 1865.
14
R.S. Surtees, Handley Cross, 1843, Chapter; also cited in R.N. Rose, The Field 18531953, Michael Joseph, 1953, pp.32-3.
15
Field 11 February, 1865.
16
Carr, Foxhunting, pp.217-23; David C. Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege: A Social History
of English Foxhunting 1753-1885, Harvester, Sussex, 1977, pp.116-17; Siegfried
Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, 1st edition, 1928, Faber paperback, 1980,
pp.105-06.
17
Field, 7 January, 11 and 18 February and 2 December, 1865.
18
Field 7 and 14 January 1865.
19
Although being a noted Master did not ensure electoral success; see J.V. Beckett,
`Aristocrats and Electoral Control in the East Midlands, 1660-1914’, Midland History,
XVIII, 1993, p.81.
20
Ibid., 25 February, 11 and 18 March, 1865; Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege, pp.109-11.
21
Nottinghamshire Guardian, 18 December, 1863.
22
Doncaster Gazette; reprinted in the Nottingham Journal, 8 April, 1865.
23
All details concerning Henry Smith are taken from his scrapbook and notebook (which
is a later selection transcribed from the original) as deposited by Mrs Butler Smith of
Cropwell Butler in the Nottinghamshire Record Office and held at DD 872/24/1 and DD
872/44.
24
Together with the Pytchley, these were the greatest of the English hunts; E.W. Bovill,
The England of Nimrod and Surtees 1815-1854, Oxford U.P., 1959, passim.
25
E.D. Cuming, ed., Squire Osbaldeston: His Autobiography, Bodley Head, 1926, p.36.
26
W. Fawcett, The South Notts Hunt, Hunts Association, 1937, pp.17-18. On poor
scenting qualities, see also Cuming, Osbaldeston, p.37.
27
F. Bonnett, `Hunting’, in William Page, ed., Victoria County History of
Nottinghamshire, Vol.II, Constable, 1910, pp.383-8; see Dean Hole, The Memories of
Dean Hole, 1892, pp.270-75, for the social composition of the Rufford.
28
For the Musters family, see see L. Jack, The Great Houses of Nottinghamshire and the
County Families, Nottingham, 1881, pp.1-5. For their sporting fame, see Bovill, Nimrod
and Surtees, p.12; Carr, Fox Hunting, 96-100; Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege, p.86. For a
dissenting view on `Jack Musters’, see Cuming, Osbaldeston, pp.40-42.
29
R. Greaves, A Short History of the Rufford Hunt, Reid-Hamilton Ltd, nd, p.14.
30
He was the son of John Musters, one of the great MFHs in the formative age of
hunting, who had the South Notts at various times between 1805 and 1845;; Bovill,
Nimrod and Surtees, p.12; Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege, p.86.
31
Field, 1 November, 1862.
Entries in Smith’s notebook for an early meet outside his own house in 1861 and his
planting of gorse coverts.
33
Note book 16 December, 1864; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 18 December, 1864; 20
January, 1865.
34
Nottinghamshire Guardian, 7,14,21 and 28 April, 5 May, 1865.
35
Field, 22 and 29 April, 1865; Bell’s Weekly Messenger, 24 April, 8 May, 1865.
36
Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning, Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the
Civilizing Process, 1986.
37
The Druid [H.H. Dixon], Silk and Scarlet, Vinton & Co., 1859, pp.362-5; Bovill,
Nimrod and Surtees, pp.40-46.
38
John Fisher, `Property rights in pheasants: landlords, farmers and the game laws, 186080', Rural History, 11, 2000, pp.167-8.
39
: Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Hunting with Dogs in England and Wales
(Burns Report), 2000, pp.85-6.
40
Anthony Trollope, The American Senator, New York, Random House, 1940, p.27.
Trollope’s major foxhunting novel first appeared in 1876.
41
Field, 6 May, 1865.
42
Field, 7, 14 and 21 January, 1865.
43
Duke of Beaufort and Mowbray Morris, Hunting, Longmans, Green and Co., 1894,
p.71.
44
Richard Jefferies, The Gamekeeper at Home, Smith, Elder & Co., 1881, pp.47-9.
45
Field 4 March 1865.
46
Field 21 January 1865.
47
A.J. Stuart-Wortley, `Shooting’, in The Pheasant, Longman’s, Green, and Co., 1896,
p.208; Owen Jones and Marcus Woodward, A Gamekeeper’s Note Book, Arnold, 1910,
pp.59-60, 149-53; J. Foyster and Keith Proud, Gamekeeper, David & Charles, Newton
Abbot, 1986, pp.97-100.
48
Field 21 January, 1865; Nottingham Journal, 8 April, 1865; Stuart-Wortley,
`Shooting’, pp.209-10.
49
David S.D. Jones, Gamekeeping Tales from the Grass Family, private publication,
1994, p.7.
50
Pamela Priestland, A thousand years of Shelford and Newton, Shelford and Newton
Parish Council, 2000, pp.28-9.
51
Druid, Silk and Scarlet, pp.358-9.
52
Alistair Jackson, The Great Hunts: Foxhunting Countries of the World, David &
Charles, Newton Abbot, 1989, p.222. Left there, on his return to England in 1837, they
provided the nucleus of the Roman Foxhounds, the Societa della Caccia alla Volpe.
53
Bovill, Nimrod and Surtees, p.63. See also P.W. Wilson, ed., The Greville Diary,
Heineman, 1927, Vol.I, pp.33 and 35 for acerbic comments from Greville, dated 16th
September, 1846, on the `obstinate spoilt owner’ of Bretby, who `runs after pleasure in
whatever shape he can pursue it.’
54
Roy Christian, Notable Derbyshire Families, 1987, pp.41-2.
55
Phyllida Barstow, The English Country House Party, Wellingborough, Equation, 1989,
p.37; the seventh Earl caught typhoid fever together with the prince while staying at
32
Londesborough Lodge in 1871. The Prince survived but the Earl did not; Christopher
Hibbert, Edward VII A Portrait, Allen Lane, 1976, p.112.
56
Ralph Nevill, The Life and Letters of Lady Dorothy Nevill, Methuen, 1919, p.179.
57
Select Committee on the Game Laws, 1846, Vol.I, Qs.2342-8.
58
Newark Advertiser, 2 February, 1859. The same issue also noted the rise of game and
a decline in fox numbers. See also Priestland, Shelford and Newton, pp.73-4 and, on the
gangs, Harry Hopkins, The Long Affray: the Poaching Wars 1760-1914, 1985, and Fisher,
`Property rights in pheasants’, pp.169-72.
59
Report on Valuation of Estates in Nottinghamshire, 1862, by T. Huskinson; Manvers
MS, Ma S 13; held in the Department of Manuscripts, University of Nottingham Library.
60
Nottinghamshire Guardian, 19 December, 1862. The bag also included 58 rabbits, 14
snipe and one waterhen.
61
D. Sutherland, The Mad Hatters: Great Sporting Eccentrics of the Nineteenth Century,
Hale, 1987, p.198; Jones, Gamekeeping Tales, p.9.
62
Field, 4 November, 1865.
63
Burns Report, pp.98-101, for the uneven regional distribution of hares and the marked
fluctuations in their numbers over time. They would also have been favoured by the mix
of pasture and arable in relatively small fields which was then characteristic of the estate;
see S. Tapper, The Hare Project, Game Conservancy Trust, 2000.
64
Priestland, Shelford and Newton, p.70; R. Mellors, Men of Nottingham and
Nottinghamshire, Nottingham, 1924, p.203.
65
Nottingham Review, 21 February, 1851; see also John Fisher, 'The Limits of Deference:
Agricultural Communities in a Mid-Nineteenth Century Election Campaign', Journal of
British Studies, XXI, Fall, 1981, pp. 102-104.
66
Nottinghamshire Guardian, June, 1865 (from Henry Smith’s scrapbook).
67
Field, 21 January 1865.
68
G. Fellows and B. Freeman, Historical Records of the South Notts Hussars Yeomanry
Cavalry1794-1894, Gale and Polden, Aldershot, 1928, p.86.
69
Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1865.
70
John Fisher Deference and Thoroton
71
Newark Advertiser, 4 July, 1865.
72
John Fisher, 'The Limits of Deference’, p.104.
73
John Fisher, `The Cattle Plague in Nottinghamshire’, Transactions of the Thoroton
Society,
74
Field, 21 October and 4 November, 1865.
75
R.S. Surtees, Handley Cross, 1st edition, 1843, chapter 37; Bovill, Nimrod and Surtees,
pp.37-42; Itzkowitz, Peculiar Privilege, pp.117-23.
76
See, for example, G.E. Collins, Farmers and Foxhunting, Sampson Low, 1914?, for
the large farmers of North Lincolnshire.
77
John Fisher, `Property rights in pheasants’, pp.167-9.
78
R.S. Surtees, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour, Oxford paperback, 1982 (based on the 1852
edition), p.398.
79
Newark Advertiser, 30 September, 1868.
80
DD 872/44; Diary 19 March, 1870; Field, 26 November, 1870.
81
DD 872/44; Diary 11 January, 1870.
DD 872/44; Diary 16 March, 1869; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 2 April, 1869.
Ellis, Quorn Hunt, pp.90-1.
84
The Great Run with John Chaworth Musters’ Foxhounds of Annesley Park,
Nottinghamshire, February 16th, 1872, Nottingham, R. Allen & Son Ltd, 1876.
85
J. Ruffer, The Big Shots, Viking Press, 1977, pp.54-6.
86
Priestland, Shelford and Newton, pp.29-30, 84; Earl of Carnarvon (6th), No Regrets,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976, pp.17-18.
87
See The Earl of Harrington’s Trysting Places and How to Reach Them, Nottingham,
nd.
88
Return of Owners of Land in England and Wales, 1873, Vol.II, 1875 (C1097-1).
89
John Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, 4th edition, 1883,
Leicester University Press reprint, 1971, p.501.
90
G. Fellows, History of the South Notts Yeomanry Cavalry, 1794-1894, T. Forman &
Sons, Nottingham, 1895, pp.27-8.
82
83