There is constant record of the Mastiff having been kept and carefully bred for many generations in certain old English families.  One of the oldest strains of Mastiffs was that kept by Mr. Legh, of Lyme Hall, in Cheshire.  They were large, powerful dogs, and longer in muzzle than those which we are now accustomed to see.  Another old and valuable strain was kept by the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.  It is to these two strains that the dogs of the present day trace back.

Mr. Woolmore’s Crown Prince was one of the most celebrated of Mastiffs.  He was a fawn dog with a Dudley nose and light eye, and was pale in muzzle, and whilst full credit must be given to him for having sired many good Mastiffs, he must be held responsible for the faults in many specimens of more recent years.  Unfortunately, he was indiscriminately bred from, with the result that in a very short time breeders found it impossible to find a Mastiff unrelated to him.

It is to be deplored that ever since his era there has been a perceptible diminution in the number of good examples of this fine old English breed, and that from being an admired and fashionable dog the Mastiff has so declined in popularity that few are to be seen either at exhibitions or in breeders’ kennels.  At the Crystal Palace in 1871 there were as many as sixty-three Mastiffs on show, forming a line of benches two hundred yards long, and not a bad one among them; whereas at a dog show held twenty-five years later, where more than twelve hundred dogs were entered, not a single Mastiff was benched.

The difficulty of obtaining dogs of unblemished pedigree and superlative type may partly account for this decline, and another reason of unpopularity may be that the Mastiff requires so much attention to keep him in condition that without it he is apt to become indolent and heavy.  Nevertheless, the mischief of breeding too continuously from one strain such as that of Crown Prince has to some extent been eradicated, and we have had many splendid Mastiffs since his time.  Special mention should be made of that grand bitch Cambrian Princess, by Beau.  She was purchased by Mrs. Willins, who, mating her with Maximilian (a dog of her own breeding by The Emperor), obtained Minting, who shared with Mr. Sidney Turner’s Beaufort the reputation of being unapproached for all round merit in any period.

The following description of a perfect Mastiff, taken from the Old English Mastiff Club’s Points of a Mastiff, is admirable as a standard to which future breeders should aim to attain.

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