Land of Liberty

Chapter 1 describes the gentry’s love of fox-hunting and how important it was to their self-image as riders and rulers. It opens by going out with Minna and Algernon Burnaby of The Quorn in 1909. Along the way, it unpicks the complex relationship between fox-hunting and land management, fox-hunting and county networks, and fox-hunting and the wider and inter-connected roles of Master of Fox Hounds and Tory grandee. From the aristocracy down to the minor gentry, devotion to horse and hound was almost a calling. To be able to ride well and look good mattered, and loaned authority. The middle and working class hardly came near a horse, except for work. Leicestershire as the prime ornament of English fox-hunting features strongly in the chapter, as does the part equestrianism played in how the landed class saw their role as English freeborn men and women. Chapter 1 also considers the part riding and hunting played in the liberation (or non-liberation depending on how you look at it) of uppity class young women.