Col. Meysey-Thompson of Westwood Mount, Scarborough, has given me most of my knowledge regarding Charrington and the rival pack of Lawless and Hussey. He says in one letter: “I have a hazy idea that Hussey had three or four Beagles, but he did not do much with them. Nor did in fact Charrington or the Edwards’ (a third rival pack about which I know nothing). They pottered about with them, though Charrington’s pack was a little more pretentious. But they were not recognised by the Masters of Eton; only about seven or eight of Charrington’s personal friends knew that they existed.[1] It was some time before the Beagles were allowed, and I can remember conversations that took place with Balston before they became a permanent institution.” Again in a letter to the late Vice-Provost (F. H. Rawlins) in 1899 Col. Meysey-Thompson says: “Although Charrington kept a few rather nondescript hounds in 1859 (and 1858), they were not really looked upon as a school pack, and had not much more title to this description than those kept at the same time by another boy ‘Edwards,’ both packs hunting anything and being taken out just when the whim of their owners seized them. Charrington’s, however, were undoubtedly the nucleus of the present hunt. I remember one hound he had that towered over the others, and was so very much faster that he always had a short belt buckled round his neck somewhat to assimilate his pace to that of his comrades, but even then he was usually about a quarter of a mile ahead.” In another letter he writes: “The fact is that in the early years—certainly up to 1861—it was a rather scratch affair. ‘Joby’ acted very often as huntsman or whip, and those who were so called ‘whips’ scarcely received a formal appointment at first, but had the whips handed over to them at the meet.” W. T. Trench, the Master in 1862, wrote to the late Vice-Provost a letter in which he questions Charrington’s position as the first Oppidan Master. I quote from his letter, but I think his evidence is overborne, and that there is little real doubt that the Eton Beagles owe their existence to the zeal and enthusiasm of Charrington and his College contemporary, R. H. Carter (about whom more anon). He says: “The _Eton College Chronicle_ which you sent me woke up many memories of the good old Eton days. I think the _Chronicle_ is wrong as to Charrington having been the first Oppidan Master. The present Lord Cloncurry (then Valentine Lawless) and Hussey got up Beagles in 1858. I don’t think there were more than two or three couples. Charrington’s was a rival pack. He and his supporters hunted _sub rosa_. No one except a few privileged ones knew where they met. Lawless and Hussey were high up in the School then, Charrington and his lot much lower down.”