8 STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



Spanish prince known as Pedro the Cruel. After one of 

 these embassies he brought back two Spanish jennets as a 

 gift from Alfonso to Edward. Amid all these pubHc services 

 he found time to add by degrees to his estates at Windsor 

 and in Hampshire with the caution becoming one who was 

 a Gascon and an alien. 



The career of his son Sir Bernard, to whom came by 

 marriage and subsequent direct royal grant the hereditary 

 Mastership, is so full of stirring episodes and knightly deeds 

 that it might well form the subject of an historical romance. 



Certain picturesque points can only be glanced at here. 

 As Chamberlain to the Queen, as King's Warden and 

 Ambassador, as Constable of Aquitaine and Controller of 

 Bordeaux, as Captain of Calais and Master of the Buck- 

 hounds, as a warrior at Cre9y, Poitiers, and Najara, this 

 illustrious Anglo-Gascon trod every stage of the brilliant 

 times in which he lived. Twice was he sunnnoned 

 as a witness on high matters of chivalry. From his 

 evidence given in the famous Scrope and Grosvenor Poll, 

 it appears that he was first armed as esquire on the shore 

 of La Hogue on the day when the Black Prince was 

 knighted, and ' that he had fought in France, in Scotland, 

 in Gascony, in Brittany, and in Spain, in the presence of 

 kings, princes, dukes, counts, barons, and other great lords, 

 knights, and esquires, during forty years.' On another 

 occasion Brocas is found as a witness, with such renowned 

 co-signatories as Oliver de Clisson, the Earl of Salisbury, 

 Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, Eobert Holland, and Thomas 

 de Eos, to the claim that King John of France surrendered 

 to the Gascon Bernard de Trouttes and not to the French 

 knight fighting on the English side, Sir Denis de INIorbeque. 

 The Brocas pennon must therefore have 1h>cii in \\\o tliick 

 of that final furious melee which raged on tlic liloodsiniiu'd 

 field of Poitiers round the spot where the 1^'reneh king luriied 



