Description:Many of Sir John’s personal papers refer to his leisure activities. Letters and bills of expenses suggest that Sir John was a keen sportsman, involved in fox hunting, cock fighting and horse racing.
Sir John and Fox Hunting: Letters from MP Henry Vernon
Letters sent to Sir John by MP Henry Vernon indicate that fox hunting was a popular pursuit of many gentlemen in the early eighteenth century. Vernon begins one letter stating enthusiastically ‘I have such recovered out of a fit of sickness depending upon the air & the exercise of hunting’.
Vernon’s letters tell us that Sir John was heavily involved in local fox hunting. In one letter Vernon asks Sir John whether he will ‘be pleased to let me have all my hounds which I purpose to lend for the latter end of the next week assureing your lordship that what I have or breed shall be at your lordships service upon a days notice’. Sir John evidently kept and bred hounds for hunting which he loaned to local gentlemen for their own sport. Sir John’s enthusiasm for fox hunting is reflected in Vernon’s letters, particularly where he states in one letter that ‘seeing your Lordship so fond of Foxhunting makes me the more unwilling to leave of yet; therefore I beg of your Lordship to breed some more whelps this year’.
Click on the image on the left to see another letter from Vernon.