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Rh permit with John Froude, with whom I was on very intimate terms. His hounds were something out of the common; bred from old staghounds—light in colour and sharp as needles, plenty of tongue, but would drive like furies. He couldn't bear to see a hound put his nose on the ground and ’twiddle his tail.' 'Hang the brute,' he would say to the owner of the hounds, 'get me those who can wind their game when they are thrown off.'

"Froude was himself a first-rate sportsman, but always acted on the principle of 'kill un, if you can; you'll never see un again.'

"He had an old liver-coloured spaniel, a wide ranger, and under perfect command. He used to say he could hunt the parish with that dog from the top of the church tower. You could hear his view-halloo for miles, and his hounds absolutely flew to him when they heard it. Let me add, his hospitality knew no bounds."

John Froude belonged to a clever family, that produced Archdeacon Froude, rector of Dartington and father of Hurrell and James Anthony, the historian. He had been well educated, and was a graduate of Oxford University. It is said that he had met with great disappointment in love, and early in life retired into what was, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the great retirement from the world of culture and intellectual activity, Knowstone-cum-Molland.

Knowstone stands high on a bleak and wind-swept hill, reached even at this day by a narrow and arduous and often a rough road, when torn up by a descending torrent after a storm. Molland lies distant three and a half miles on a brook flowing down from bleak moors into the Yeo. A sheltered and pleasant spot, with an interesting church, containing Courtenay monuments.

Froude's church preferment was at the time