THE QUEEN'S HOUNDS

AND

STAG-HUNTING RECOLLECTIONS

INTRODUCTION

BY EDWARD BURROWS

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona

16

FEW of those who share with the writer the memories of an Eton wet-bob,' to whom 'The Brocas,' Brocas Clump,' 'Brocas Meadow,' and Brocas Lane' are familiar in their mouths as household words,' know the origin of the strange un-English name which thus lingers on the Eton bank of the Thames just above Windsor Bridge, but has died out on the opposite side where lay the manor, styled, at least until the beginning of the sixteenth century, Brocas in Clewer,' or 'Clewer-Brocas,' and where the position of the Brocas Chantry, founded by that notable knight Sir Bernard Brocas, may still be traced in Clewer Church.

Few of those who ride with her Majesty's Buckhounds are aware that the hereditary Mastership was held by the family

Materials for this Introduction are taken from The Family of Brocas of Beaurepaire and Roche Court, by Montagu Burrows, Captain R.N., M.A.,, F.S.A., Chichele Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford a work founded on the collection of original Brocas documents now in the writer's possession.

B

of Brocas for nearly three hundred years, from the middle of the fourteenth to the middle of the seventeenth century.

Fewer still among those who ride or row have ever heard of the connection between this long line of hereditary Masters and the ruined castle of Sault and a church and villages in South-Western France, still bearing the name of Brocas, far from the track of the modern traveller, and buried among the woodlands and sand dunes of ancient Gascony.

A brief account of certain of these Masters of old time may form a becoming introduction to modern incidents of stag-hunting, may bring to light picturesque details of sport closely mingled with war, may show that the Mastership can claim an ancient and romantic past, and add proof that in all ages good sportsmen have been staunch fighting-men and loyal subjects.

The lands held in Clyware, New Windesore, Old Windesore, Eton, Dauneye, Boveneye, Cokeham and Bray' during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by this family of Gascon knights, transplanted into England by Edward II., were important and extensive. Some ten men of this name and blood occupied notable positions as favoured courtiers and trusted servants of the Crown in the brilliant and romantic period of the reigns of the second and third Edward and the second Richard, and in successive generations held such offices as those of Master of the Horse, Master of the Buckhounds, Chief Forester of Windsor, Warden of King's Castles, Gaols, and Parks, Captain of Calais, Controller of Calais, Constable of Aquitaine, Controller of Bordeaux, Royal Ambassador, Chamberlain to the Queen, Chamberlain of the Exchequer, and King's Clerk of the Works. It is, therefore, hard to understand the almost complete oblivion into which has fallen the real origin of the name that still survives under the shadow of Windsor Castle. So fantastic and so far from the truth have been the suggested

derivations that they only prove how completely family traditions disappear amid the building of royal palaces and the founding of royal colleges. Sir John de Brocas acquired these lands before Edward III. began to enlarge Windsor Castle. His descendants had ceased to reside on them before the foundation of Eton College, and entirely relinquished them soon after that event. So long ago the knight was dust, and his good sword rust,' that on the spot where he dwelt not even

a herald who that way doth pass

Finds his cracked name at length in the church glass.

Yet the swords of these Gascon knights, among whom the most illustrious was the first Brocas Master of the Buckhounds, were kept bright for many years in the service of their adopted country, for we find them at Crecy, at the siege of Calais, at Poitiers and at Najara, while others of their kin met death in defence of the English shores.

It is singularly unfortunate that the painstaking author of a recent History of the Royal Buckhounds'' was ignorant of the Gascon origin of the hereditary Masters, or ignored the information that might have been obtained on this matter. It is, moreover, much to be regretted that in a history which shows so much research the foolish tradition is repeated that the ancestor of the hereditary Masters was Sir Bernard Brocas, who came into England with William the Conqueror, from whom, in reward for his military services, he received permission to select lands to the value of 4007.; that he chose these lands in Hampshire, and built thereon a mansion styled Beaurepaire,' and that the lives of three successors of the same name sufficed, by a startling assumption of longevity, to cover a period of 280 years from the date of the Conquest to the year when Sir John de Brocas served History of the Royal Buckhounds, by J. P. Hore.

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 genealogies, the College of Arms, 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 consequence 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 obligations 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 considerable 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.

stands the ruined keep of their ancestral stronghold of Sault, twice styled by Froissart a strong and good castle.' Here dwelt Sir Peter Arnald de Brocas, foully slain at Bayonne during truce by Earl Simon de Montfort, and here, during many years of incessant border forays, the de Brocas showed with other loyal Gascons their gallant devotion to their Roy Outremer,' by holding their fortress as a bulwark of the English rule in Gascony against the ceaseless attacks of their turbulent neighbours the Vicomtes de Béarn, to whose castle of Orthez the road still runs due south across the old border line. Wild tales of flight and hot pursuit, of desperate rally and midnight foray, could that old highway tell in the days when English and French knights, hard-riding Gascon borderers and swaggering Free Companions, mustered under the rival royal standards and the banners of de Montfort, de Béarn and d'Albret, while from the keep above floated the sable pennon of de Brocas. Strangely must old memories have been stirred when along the same road in later days, after the stubborn fight at Orthez, British squadrons pursued the flying French and Wellington received his only wound. Ruined at length by their loyalty to the English cause during the disasters of Edward II.'s latter years, the children of Arnald de Brocas, lately slain in the King's service in Scotland,' possibly at Bannockburn, were taken into the royal household and brought up at the English Court. As no less than three of these young Gascon officers of the King became Masters of the Horse, and by their length of service proved their aptness for the appointment, there are sufficient entries under the name of de Brocas' in the Record Office to supply almost a history of Edward III's equestrian organisation. Space only permits the mention of certain facts illustrative of the experience in this matter of the family which had charge for so long a period of the royal hunting establishment.