Speech to the Loriners

Every day next week there is going to be a post about a court case that took place in Dundalk in 1794. The posts are a contemporary transcription of a trial for treason concluding with the verdict delivered by the jury and my verdict.

Meanwhile this morning you can read the first section of my speech to the Loriners, delivered after lunch last Thursday.

Master, Wardens, My Lords, Aldermen, Liverymen, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is an honour to speak to this august and ancient Company. Your Ordinances were granted in 1261, making you one of the oldest  Livery Companies but the origins of lorinery stretch back into the mists of time. Last week I was in Crete and I don’t think it fanciful to say that I heard the clink of loriners’ tools among the Minoan ruins.

Thank you, Upper Warden, for your flattering introduction – I barely recognise myself but there is one gap – no mention of my equestrian credentials. I grew up in the same part of rural Ireland as the Master. Ireland and the Irish have had a long love affair with horses. They are part of the fabric of life. We were surrounded by hunts, race courses, pony clubs and point-to-points. In the summer there was even a race meeting on the beach at Laytown. One year the Aga Khan came to watch one of his horses. A high point of the year was the Dublin Horse Show, where the Master is now a judge. One of our neighbours, a High Court judge, would ask his Court to rise at lunch time on Wednesdays so he could get to Co Meath in time to hunt with the Ward Union.

Horses bring people together from all backgrounds. It was a mistake for Tony Blair’s government to ban hunting thinking that it was striking a blow in a class war.

My family have strong equestrian links. My grandfather’s uncle, George Leopold, he was called Leopold after his Godfather, the King of the Belgians, was a soldier. He was of an age to fight in the Second Afghan War; he took part in the Nile Expedition to relieve General Gordon at Khartoum; he fought in the Second Boer War and then, when he was almost sixty, served in the First World War. He was not crowned with laurels in this long military career, only reaching the rank of major.  This was because equestrian pursuits took priority. In India he won the premier pig sticking competition for three consecutive years. He played in the first international polo match against Australia in Melbourne in 1899 and whenever he wasn’t soldiering he was hunting. According to my grandfather, Uncle G used to listen with great satisfaction when the church calendar got into the Trinities – “Hunting begins in the Trinities” he’d say.

My grandfather too was a horseman, hunting two packs of hounds in Ireland and he was a successful amateur steeplechase rider. My brother whipped in to the Louth Hounds, my sister hunted two or three days a week and her husband hunted the Tara Harriers and rode in Point-to-Points and Three Day Events. Jane Holderness-Roddam may remember Simon Walford.

The closest I got to a horse was helping my sister clean her tack, that is until I had a late equestrian awakening in the 1980s.

To be continued … sometime.