INTRODUCTION 15 



is recited that Thomas Borhunte holds of the King in ca'pite 

 a chain of land in Little Weldon of the inheritance of 

 Margaret his wife, daughter and luur of John Lovel, hy 

 service of being ' Venour le Eoy des deymers ' (Master of the 

 King's Buckhounds) ; that he has charge of twenty-four hounds 

 and six greyhounds of the King's, receiving for the keep of 

 each an obol or \d. a day, and also of two under-hunts- 

 men, whose wages are \\(l. a day, with a cloth coat or a 

 mark of money by the year, and boots ; that he also has 

 charge of a ' veutrer,' or huntsman, at 'Id. a day, who is also 

 to have a coat or a mark of money and 4s. 8cZ. for boots by the 

 year ; that the Master is to keep at Ms own cost for the forty 

 days of Lent, fifteen Buckhounds and one ' berner,' or keeper 

 of the hounds, while the second 'berner,' the ' veutrer,' and 

 the rest of the hounds are to be kept at the King's cost for 

 the whole of the year ; that the Master's salary is to be l^d. 

 a day when at Court and lid. a day when absent on the 

 King's business, with two robes a year or 40,s. ; that the 

 ' seigne en malades ' is to have for daily livery Id. worth of 

 bread, a gallon of beer, a mess of ' groos,' and a mess of roast 

 from the kitchen, and that the livery of the huntsman is to 

 be at the King's will. The most important point in this 

 ancient document is the absolute acknowledgment of the 

 hereditary character of the office and of the power of its 

 transmission through females — a power which in the next 

 century was abolished by restricting the succession to males, 

 but which was revived again under the Tudors in such a 

 manner as to defeat the original object of the Mastership, and 

 to end in its being bought and sold in the seventeenth century 

 as private property, with the final result of the formation 

 of the Privy Buckhounds, the Mastership of which was free 

 from these feudal hindrances. 



To the value of the Manor of Little Weldon, or Hunter's 

 Manor, there was added, from the middle of the fourteenth to 



