SIR BEENARD BROCAS, FIRST HEREDITARY MASTER. 7 



fortune has not frowned, whom the fame of England attracts 

 to visit her hospitable shores. From the East we see the King 

 of Cyprus, from the North the Sovereign of Denmark. The 

 reio-nins: Duke of Bavaria, the Duke of Brabant, Sir Frank 

 van Hall, Sir Henry Eam of Flanders, " and many great lords 

 and knights of Almain, Gascoigne, and other countries," are 

 also to the fore. A highly-coloured picture perchance, yet 

 withal a faithful one without exaggeration. Such a scene 

 was doubtless witnessed in the vicinity of Windsor in those 

 (then rare) piping days of peace, preparatory to the Master 

 throwing off the hounds to seek the " antlered monarch of the 

 glen " within the confines of the Forest " full of wilde dere," 

 with "homes hie," the greatest that " were ever seen with eie," 

 as old Chaucer hath it. These " grand huntings " were of fre- 

 quent occurrence, upon which the king expended, says Barnes, 

 in his "History of Edward III.," " extraordinary sums, 100/. 

 one day and 100 marks the other, and so on, while the sport 

 continued, which was both long and very diverting." 



Leaving the hunting field for the present, we must now hark 

 back, and briefly follow the fortunes of the Hereditary Masters 

 of the K,oyal Buckhounds from the reign of Edward IH. to 

 the 7th year of the reign of Charles I. (1633), when the Brocas 

 family ceased to hold the official horn of the pack. 



According to a popular tradition, in the year 1066 Sir Ber- 

 nard Brocas, a knight of high renown, came into England with 

 William the Conqueror, under whom he was a great com- 

 mander, and had, in requital for his military services, the 

 selection of lands to the then valiie of 400Z. per annum given 

 him by that king. This estate he chose in Hampshire, and 

 upon a part of it built his mansion house, calling it Beaurepaire, 

 from a place of the appellation in France, of which his im- 

 mediate ancestors were lords, encompassing it with a large 

 moat, dug by his soldiers, which cost a mark (13s. 4c?.) or two 

 of silver. In his progeny this estate continued until the 

 twenty-first year of Henry VII. (a.d. 1506), when William 

 Brocas, Esq., having only two daughters, — Anne, who died 

 without issue, and Edith, who married Sir Ralph Pexsall, — 



