THE ROYAL HOUNDS. 213 



it of itself no right of hunting ; the duties were solely 

 to preserve the "game of red deer." It is only 

 when we find the two offices combined that the 

 forester had any right of hunting. Whether this 

 held good under the rule of the Saxon Kings there 

 is no means of knowing, but it seems safe to affirm 

 that after the dispossession of Dodo, Ulmar, and 

 Godric, Robert d'Auberville, Lord of the Manors of 

 Withypool and Hawkridge, forester in fee of Exmoor, 

 and huntsman to William I., was the first to hold the 

 office of Master of the Staghounds on Exmoor. 



We also find the family of Lovell established in a 

 similar manner at a very early time at Hunter's 

 Manor, Little Weldon, Northamptonshire, holding 

 the lands " in capite," or direct from the King, by 

 the service of keeping up a pack of hounds to hunt 

 the fallow buck, primarily in the adjacent Forest of 

 Rockingham. The hounds are carefully described 

 as buckhounds, not as harthounds. 



The Lovells and their descendants held this manor 

 and kept up the hounds for many generations until 

 the lands and office passed, in 1395, to Sir Bernard 

 Brocas, of Beaurepaire and Clewer, in right of his 

 wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas de Borhunte, 

 who had married Mary, the heiress of the Lovells. 

 The Mastership of the Buckhounds remained in the 

 Brocas family till 1633, when the office and manor 

 were sold to Sir Lewis Watson, afterwards Lord 

 Rockingham. This pack of hounds, which for many 

 generations travelled with the Court and was that 



