STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS 



CHAPTER XIII 



PREDECESSOES 



They shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate 



Having regard to the antiquity of our office, it must be 

 admitted that, with a few distinguished exceptions. Masters 

 of the Buckhounds have not left a very marked or consecutive 

 impression upon the pages of constitutional history or the 

 roll of constructive legislation. The office belongs to the 

 livery of politics. Its duties and opportunities lie outside 

 the walls of Parliament. We cannot, for instance, boast 

 that a Cromwell, or a Pitt, or a Gladstone ever dignified 

 the couples : at the same time, tried by the most rigorous 

 tests of proportional representation, we stand out very fairly 

 well. We can hardly be said to be an insignificant order 

 when we remember that two of us have been beheaded for 

 high State reasons — Sir Bernard Brocas, whom Mr. Burrows 

 has told us all about in his valuable introduction, and Lord 

 Rochford, Anne Boleyn's gifted brother. Nor can we justly 

 be said to be undistinguished. Lord Leicester in Queen 

 Elizabeth's, Sir William Wyndham in Queen Anne's, and 

 Lord Granville in Queen Victoria's reign, all held high offices 

 of State. And we can point to a long succession of booted 

 and spurred, gentle and noble men who have done their 

 duty more or less picturesquely in the saddles to which 



