Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOOK III. THE BROCAS ESQUIRES OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. WILLIAM BROCAS OF BEAUREPAIRE. The romantic period of the Brocas history now gives place to the more prosaic records of the esquires of Beaurepaire and the esquires of Horton, Bucks. Nevertheless, they are the fairly typical records of English country gentlemen, raised once more under the Tudors for a short time to their ancient state of wealth and knighthood, but falling back again under the Stuarts to the position which they held on the whole pretty continuously for many centuries. The progress of an old family through the troubles of the Wars of the Eoses, the Reformation, and the Great Rebellion, though not romantic, may not be found altogether uninteresting. It is the sort of history in which our country is most deficient, for we are only gradually learning that the larger and more striking records of wars and courts are not conterminous with the broad outlines of a nation's life. This, then, must necessarily be a chapter of transition and introduction. The young man, ' William Brocas of Dentn ' ( he was called during the period of forfeiture), who, by the execution of his father, now became the head of the family, was eminently fitted to set the tone of its future members. The long and intimate connection with the Court which we have watched could not indeed have come to an end all at once, and the Mastership of the Buckhounds, the right to perform the duties of which office was restored almost immediately after the attainder and forfeiture of its last holder to his son, must have maintained some shadow of the old position. It would have been quite consistent with the magnanimity often displayed by Henry IV. if the family had been allowed to resume at once its old share ofCourt favour and publ...