Members
of an Oxfordshire-based hunt that Prime Minister David Cameron has previously
ridden with have been fined for hunting foxes illegally.
Richard
Sumner and Julian Barnfield, of the Heythrop Hunt, pleaded guilty at Oxford
Magistrates' Court to charges brought by the RSPCA.
Film
gathered by anti-hunt monitors over four days during the 2011/12 season was
played in court.
Sumner
and Barnfield were the master and huntsman of the hunting group.
They
pleaded guilty to four separate counts, on four separate occasions, of
unlawfully hunting a wild fox with dogs.
Heythrop
Hunt Ltd also pleaded guilty to four counts of the same charge.
'Landmark
case'
The
presiding magistrate called the RSPCA's £327,000 costs "staggering".
He
said the public could question whether the charity's funds to bring the case to
court could have been better spent.
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