200 mms of tbe irDuntina*3fiel& 



they held' Hunter's Manor ' and the hereditary Mastership 

 of the Buckhounds. The first payment to the Master 

 recorded in the Pipe Rolls of Surrey and Sussex, bears 

 the date 1362-3, and the entry is to the effect that, 'To 

 Bernard Brocas, Keeper of the King's Buckhounds, is 

 granted by the King twelve pence a day for his wages, 

 and three farthings a day for meat for each of the " 24 

 running dogs and 6 greyhounds" which formed his 

 charge. His assistants received respectively two pence 

 and a penny halfpenny per diem as wages. If we take 

 the penny of that day as representing pretty much the 

 purchasing power of the shilling of our own time, it will 

 appear that the cost of the Hunt would be something 

 equivalent to ;^750, or possibly i^iooo per annum now- 

 adays. 



The second Sir Bernard Brocas was one of the two 

 Masters of the Buckhounds whose fate has been tragic. 

 He was Chamberlain to Anne, the Queen Consort of 

 Richard H, the gentle lady for whom Shakespeare has 

 enlisted our sympathies in some of the most pathetic 

 scenes he ever imagined. Sir Bernard's fidelity to his 

 royal mistress cost him his life, for he joined the 

 conspiracy of nobles and bishops under Lord John 

 Holland to restore the deposed King, and, being taken 

 in the act of armed rebellion against Henry of Boling- 

 broke, was beheaded at Westminster in January 

 1400. 



In the reign of Henry VIII the King's Privy Buck- 

 hounds were started, and there was a constant conflict 

 between the Masters of this pack and the hereditary 

 Masters of the old pack, which did not end until Thomas 

 Brocas sold to Sir Lewis Watson the Manor of Little 

 Weldon or Hunter's Manor in 1633, and with that sale 



