SOCIAL STATE OF ENGLAND IN THE KEIGN OF HENRY VII. 33 



The king now inaugurated a new policy, and a wise one, by 

 abolishing, as far as possible, all feudal services. Such of the 

 great baronial houses as survived the Civil War were curtailed 

 of those armed retainers that had formerly constituted the 

 power of the nobility for good or for evil. As an illustration 

 of the effect of the king's new policy and the way it was 

 carried out, the following instance may be mentioned. When 

 the Earl of Oxford, Lord High Admiral and Great Chamber- 

 lain to the king, entertained Henry VII. at one of his castles 

 in 1498, with all the splendour and hospitable display of the 

 old regime, the king, when taking his departure, said, " By 

 my faith, I thank you for your good cheer ; but at the same 

 time I cannot have my laws broken before my face by you, 

 my lord ; my Attorney-General must have some serious talk 

 with you " ; and soon after the earl was fined fifteen hundred 

 marks for thus having violated the law. Now, with this 

 instance before us, we must be very circumspect in attaching 

 too much importance to the actual effect of the feudal service 

 appertaining to the Royal Buckhounds and the Hereditary 

 Mastership, held by the Brocas family in those days. Conse- 

 quently, we can only assume that those gentlemen exercised 

 the functions of the ofiice as their ancestors from the time of 

 Edward III. may have done. The privy purse expenses of 

 Henry VII. contain no reference to the pack. There are no 

 accounts or ordinance of this king's household extant. The 

 entire surroundings are so shrouded in obscurity that it would 

 be a bootless task to indulge in speculations which cannot 

 be supported by any genuine evidence. 



It is, nevertheless, apparent that even at this time there 

 was a Royal Pack of Buckhounds other than the Hereditary 

 one. Unfortunately, all we know about it consists in the 

 fact that on October 16, 1485, Henry VII. appointed John 

 Wydor yeoman (valectorum) of his dogs called Buckhounds, 

 under the Master thereof, to have and hold the said office 

 with the usual wages and fees thereunto belonging (Pat. 1, 

 Henry VII., Part 1, m. 24), The name of this Master is not 

 mentioned. It could hardly have been John Brocas, the 



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