BAILY'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE

OF

SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

SIR ALGERNON PEYTON, BART.

THE name of Peyton has been for so long a period a household word in the Sporting World, that we are quite certain a Portrait of the present representative of the family will not be unacceptable to our readers, especially those who are followers of the Chase and the Road, in and on which his ancestors have so distinguished themselves.

Sir Algernon Peyton is the eldest son of the late Sir Henry Peyton, Bart., who is described as being as near excellence as a horseman as human ability and physical energies could have placed him. Indeed Sir Henry Peyton and Lord Forester, when at Christchurch, were universally admitted to have been the two best men out of Oxford, and it was acknowledged they tried one way or another, each to eclipse his father's fame. He was also a first-rate Gentleman Jockey, both on the flat and across country, as olden records will show. With regard to his family, we may say he was an apt illustration of the old Latin saying, Fortes creantur fortibus;' for his father, Sir Henry Peyton, the grandfather of the subject of our Memoir, was quite as celebrated a performer in the pigskin and on the coachbox as his son, and was perhaps the strongest man in his saddle that was ever seen. His long experience in the hunting-field caused him to be held in the highest respect, and a wrinkle from Sir Henry was always treasured by those to whom it was addressed. One piece of advice he was in the habit of giving to young men whom he saw riding too hard at water is as applicable in the present day as in the time he flourished; and as it was based upon common sense, we cannot do better, we imagine, than give it currency in our pages. 'Whenever,' he was wont to say, 'you come to a brook too wide to 'jump over, but which you are obliged to jump into, and you suspect the bottom of it to be soft, do so as quietly as you can, if you ' wish to avoid a fall. It will enable your horse to get a fulcrum from his hinder legs before he springs to regain the opposite bank, VOL. XVI.-NO. 107.

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and he has then a better chance of landing you than if he went 'boring headlong through it.' He was always well mounted, having an eye to strength as well as blood; for Oxfordshire is not the country in which 'weeds' have ever thriven, as old Tilbury, who always horsed Sir Henry, could have vouched for. As for his drag and his team of greys, they were notoriously the most perfectlyappointed in England, for a number of years, and it was good for sore eyes' to see him thread his way through Piccadilly or come off Epsom Downs on a Derby Day. As a shot, also, he scarcely had his equal in that day, although he seldom exhibited at the Red House. Descended, therefore, from so good a stock, if Sir Algernon Peyton had not turned out a Sportsman, doubts might have been thrown upon his legitimacy. He was born at Woodstock, on the 13th of April, 1833, was educated at Eton, and only quitted Blest Henry's shades' to enter the 1st regiment of Life Guards, of which he is now the senior captain. In 1861, the Bicester hounds being in the market, and his grandfather having hunted them, Sir Algernon's love of the Noble Science induced him to take them as a stop-gap, and he was assisted in the undertaking by Mr. Richardson, of the same regiment as himself. The joint Mastership did not last long; and after having enjoyed the honours of an M. F. H. for about a year and a half, he retired into private life, and the Bicester hounds were sold at the kennels at Stratton to Mr. Drake, who hunted the country until 1866, when he gave it up, and it is now hunted by Mr. North. Sir Algernon lays no claim to the riding properties of his father, although he is very fond of the sport; but the late Sir Henry has certainly bequeathed to him a great portion of his driving lore, as may be seen by the handy manner in which he works the scratch teams in the Life Guards' coach, on the box of which he is as well known as his father was wont to be in the good old days, when a popular song used to be sung:-

'Here's to the old ones, of four-in-hand fame
Harrison, Peyton, and Ward, sir.

Here's to the young ones, that afterwards came;
Ford, and the Lancashire Lad, sir.'

In private life, Sir Algernon unites all those good qualities for which the Peytons were notorious; and if not as celebrated across country as his ancestors, he is just as much marked by the same love of sport and liberality as was their special attribute, as Oxfordshire can testify. Sir Algernon, we should also mention, is the patron of the celebrated Doddington living, which at one time was the richest in England, being computed to be worth 10,000l. per annum, but which now, by a special Act of Parliament, has been cut up into seven portions. In the distribution of his ecclesiastical patronage we should also observe Sir Algernon has been very discreet, always putting the right man in the right place. And we may sum up our description of him by stating, the Household Troops have rarely contained a better officer or a more popular member of society than Sir Algernon Peyton.