4 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



with distinction under Edward III. at the siege of Calais.' 

 Such a descent is too incredible to be recorded elsewhere 

 than in that storehouse of many such apocryphal genea- 

 logies, the College of Anns, where it appears to have stood 

 without question for a long period, and whence it emerged 

 to find, unfortunately, place in the inscription, inserted 

 only in the eighteenth century, above the ancient and 

 elaborate tomb of this early Master of the Buckhounds, Sir 

 Bernard Brocas, in St. Edmund's Chapel in Westminster 

 Abbey. In fact, this Gascon origin is a matter of more 

 interest than is generally supposed ; for it was plainly in con- 

 sequence of their knowledge of breeding and training horses 

 on the turbulent marches of Gascony that so many members 

 of the family of Brocas were well fitted to have charge, as 

 Masters of the Horse, of the royal studs, and, as Masters of 

 the Buckhounds, of the royal hunting establishment. Thus 

 is furnished an early and significant instance of the obliga- 

 tions under which England has ever lain to France in all 

 matters connected with the chase, and of the striking 

 advantage which during the Middle Ages accrued to the 

 former country from the ancestral possessions derived by 

 her kings from Eleanor of Guienne, not only in the graver 

 matters of state and commerce, but in the improvement of 

 the breed of light horses. 



The cradle of the race whence sprang the hereditary 

 Masters is found on the borders of Gascony, where a con- 

 siderable tract of land was once known as ' the Brocas 

 March,' where villages still bear the name, and where still 



' Strangely different from these false legends are the real facts. For the 

 settlement in England of certain members of the Gascon family of de Brocas 

 did not begin until the reign of Edward II., and it was not until the year 1353 

 that the uncle of Sir Bernard Brocas purchased Beaurepaire from John 

 Pecche, whose ancestors had held it for several generations. The line of the 

 family that remained in Gascony is still represented there by the Comte de 

 Brocas. 



