further explained in this deed that Queen Mary did revoke, repeal, and make void the said new office, and did confirm Sir Richard Pexall and his heirs in the ancient hereditary office.

In spite of this strenuous opposition of the hereditary Masters, the Privy Buckhounds were re-established under Elizabeth and James, and for a time the old and the new systems bitterly contended for the mastery, until in the early part of the seventeenth century the hereditary office became practically obsolete. It was in this condition when Thomas Brocas, in the year 1633, sold it to Sir Lewis Watson for 3,000l., with the Manor of Little Weldon, held by his ancestors for three centuries. Thus ended at last the long line of hereditary Masters, but not the loyalty of their race. For it appears from contemporary authority that Beaurepaire, their ancient seat, was one of the last houses in Hampshire to hold out for Charles's hopeless cause. Surprised and surrounded at length by a Roundhead force from Abingdon, the Brocas troop, after throwing into their moat the last pieces of plate that had not been melted down for the King, cut their way through to Basing House, to reinforce their neighbour, the gallant old Marquis of Winchester, in his final struggle. There for a few more desperate months the descendants of the faithful Masters of the Buckhounds fought on under that Paulet motto which might well have been theirs also, Aimez Loyauté. For not many families can boast, as can that of Brocas, that thrice in their history, once in Gascony and twice in England, their fortunes have been ruined by devoted loyalty to their King.

CHAPTER I

GEORGIAN STAG-HUNTING

I summon up remembrance of things past

I AM afraid that a great deal in this book has little or nothing to do with the Queen's Hounds. Often and often they have, as it were, to be dragged in by the scruff of the neck. I am constantly running out of my course, and at the outset I must plead this as my excuse for the many liberties taken with the unities of time and place in the following pages.

History, according to the late Master of Balliol, is Biography, and tested by Dr. Jowett's standard, any strictly conscientious history of the Buckhounds must leave much to be desired. For many long tracts of years they want the breath of life. Like most institutions they are not palpable. Their existence is abundantly vouched for by warrants, salaries, and accounts, but this is a very sinister way of reaching history. Besides, the history of the Royal Buckhounds has been done already, and well done. In his work on this subject, Mr. Hore taps and samples every available source of official information. He has brought a trained and patient industry to bear upon much old English and dog Latin. Pipe Rolls and the penetralia of public offices have been forced to yield their increase and been turned into type and plain figures. But cheerfully as he threads his way through this valley of dry bones and the dust of ages, Mr. Hore laments over and over again the absence of authentic records of actual hunting incidents. Where as an investigator he has failed, I am not likely to succeed. Thus the

lack of material might account for the short work made of several centuries, and be my apology for skipping the trunkhose periods. I am further relieved from having to touch on the earlier associations of royalty and stag-hunting by the fact that my friend Mr. Burrows, who, as a descendant of the hereditary Brocas Masters of the Buckhounds, is the proper person to remind us of these vanished ages, has told us about them in the Introduction.

Mr. Lecky, in one of his most engaging chapters, comments upon the fact that countless Enclosure Acts and the spread of agriculture had led to much less wild stag-hunting. But, on the other hand, it may be noted that these very Enclosure Acts in Bucks and Berks hastened the dawn of civilisation in the shape of the deer cart. Although I cannot fix an Hejira with absolute certainty, the credit of this invention belongs as much of right to George III. and his hunting advisers as the credit of hunting at force—that is, of unharbouring and riding to a deer with hounds—belongs of right to Edward III. and his hard-riding Gascon Master, Sir Bernard Brocas. I shall, therefore, without further apology, begin with a short survey of Court and country hunting under the Georges.

There is really little to be said about stag-hunting under George I. The Buckhounds, Mr. Hore tells us, were not idle they certainly cost money, and his pages will repay the attention of those who like comparing expenditure statistics of the past with the present. But George I., as everybody knows, never settled down in England. As Dr. Johnson explained to Boswell in the course of a panegyric upon Charles II., he knew nothing, and desired to know nothing; did nothing, and desired to do nothing.' The fine company on the Mall, the beauty of St. James's Park, impressed him not at all. The oaks of Windsor only made him regret the limes of Herrenhausen. He was over fifty

years old when he ascended the throne of his ancestors, as he called it in his first speech to Parliament-too old to learn a new language and new hunting ways. He never went out if the weather was bad, hardly realised the Buckhounds, and threw them and the Master of the Horse department into commission and the greedy hands of the Duchess of Kendal. An instance of the German complexion which pervaded everything at Windsor occurs in a picture at Windsor of George I. out hunting in the Great Park with his suite, by Göhrde. The names of the fourteen or fifteen personages are all given on the tablet. With two exceptions they are all German. Even one of these exceptions is Germanised, the huntsman being handed down to posterity as Ned Finsch.' In fine. weather, however, the King went sporting occasionally. In September, 1717, we hear of his diverting himself with hunting in Bushey Park. After which, alighting from horseback, his Majesty walked above three miles with a fowling-piece. in his hand, and killed several brace of partridges flying. During the summer of 1724 a stud of nice horses was got together and sent to Windsor for the King's stag-hunting, but there is no account of his ever using them. He went out pheasant-shooting in August of the same year, earlier than even the writers of the first of October leading articles begin their pheasant-shooting. From eight in the morning till nearly five that day he only shot two and a half brace, and one and a half brace of partridges. But, besides the gratitude we owe to George I. for the passive respect he paid a free government and a free people, we must, with the picture of the Queen's Jubilee Procession fresh upon our minds' eye, ever be grateful to him for bringing over the cream-coloured horses and their scarlet housings of velvet and morocco.1

For very many years past the cream-colours have all been bred at Hampton Court. The only new blood that has been obtained-at all recently—was in 1893,

According to Mr. Green, George I. had the manners of a gentleman-usher. Gentlemen-ushers are not clearly defined types of human nature, but I take them to be personages versed in the grave issues and nice points of Court ceremonial. At all events, when he fell out with his son the rupture was so decisive that the servants of the Prince of Wales's

From an oil painting in the Queen's collection at Windsor Castle

children were not allowed to wear scarlet liveries, only yellow ones being permitted according to precedent.' However, the Prince of Wales and cette diablesse Madame la Princesse,' as her father-in-law habitually called her, made the best of it, and set up for themselves at Leicester House and when a two-year-old stallion and filly were bought of Prince Schaumberg-Lippe. The Prince's stud was sold by auction in the beginning of this year, and I believe the Queen's and the Hanover stud are the only ones in Europe. Four brood mares are always kept at Hampton Court, and only stallions are used in the State coach.