rightly interpreted the policy of Henry III. in his rule of this important dependency of the English crown. We see no indication of a long, persistent, and on the whole successful 'effort to bring the naval strength and commercial resources of England to bear in the best possible manner against the 'growing power of the French crown.' Only once during those fifty-six years was there anything like an attempt to recover the ground lost by the peace of 1206, and a more contemptible failure than that shameful campaign of 1242 has rarely been known in our history. Nevertheless, Gascony still remained English as before. It was all to the interest of the Gascons that it should be so; the 'country party' in the province were, as they always were and always will be, haughty, exclusive, and jealous of their own interests, real or supposed; they clung to their feudal rights, they quarrelled among themselves; they put forth their claims upon this or that privilege or franchise or jurisdiction, and as a rule they won from their overlord what they clamoured for. But they were getting poorer and poorer; that was inevitable, as the townsmen were getting richer and richer. Bordeaux grew to be one of the wealthiest seaports in Europe and, says Professor Burrows, the most beautiful. Her merchants had their mansions there, and there the King of England had his palace. There Henry III. took up his residence more than once. For two years Simon de Montfort from that same palace governed the province; and there too Prince Edward kept his state when Simon was recalled.

'Vast sums of money,' says Professor Burrows, were spent in the province, by which Bordeaux especially benefited. . . . On its ample quays were landed the corn, cheese, butter, skins, fish, leather, rope, and, above all, the tin, the wool, and the cloth of England. From thence it sent forth to the British and Flemish ports great fleets of wineships, generally sailing together for mutual protection, and governed, like men of war, by codes of laws. Free trade between the English and Gascons anticipated by centuries the modern lessons of political economy and gave unfettered vigour to the commerce of both countries.'

But the interests of the traders and the large proprietors were by no means identical; and as for the smaller proprietors, they must needs have tended to embark in the ventures of commerce. The great lords were doomed, but they whom we may call, mutatis mutandis, the country squires became at Bordeaux what the younger sons of the English gentry became in after times at London or Bristol

or Exeter-the foremost men among the great traders and adventurers; and as the cities grew and flourished, they grew and flourished with them. It was apparently to this class of the smaller landed proprietors-the representatives of what we now understand by county gentry-that these Brocas people belonged. When Mr. Burrows tries to prove more than this, we suspect that he proves too little or too much. To us it seems clear enough that some members of the family had exhibited a conspicuous talent for business, and from being nobodies had forced themselves into a prominent position before the reign of Henry III. was half over. They somehow got their hold upon this tract of land and that; they were flourishing burgesses of the town of Sault de Navailles, five or six miles from Orthez in the Basses Pyrénées; then they got entrusted with the charge of the castle by Prince Edward, and proved themselves capable and prudent. From this their rise seems to have been continuous. Whatever they did they did well; they were the architects of their own fortunes, and what they made they had the wit to keep and not to squander. What more need any man wish to discover about his forefathers? The small people of the thirteenth century became the great people of the fourteenth. If they had not been men of sagacity, courage, decision, and foresight, they would have been small men to the end; nay, instead of rising, they would have sunk and been absorbed among the masses. As late as 1331 these Brocas people were evidently regarded by their neighbours as parvenus, and there were those who objected strongly to these self-raised men, stigmatised as of ignoble birth,' acquiring a fee-noble in the very district where they had been settled so long. The territorial aristocracy, as ever, would not quietly submit to the new capitalists taking rank with themselves. It was the old story-Mrs. Partington and her mop doing battle with the Atlantic Ocean.

The Brocases were evidently useful to the first two Edwards, and were by no means ready to allow their services to be forgotten. Had they suffered losses here, and lent the king money there? Had hectoring lords despoiled them of their property, or one of the race been knocked on the head somewhere in Scotland ?-possibly in some piratical descent upon the coast, and this much more probably than, as Professor Burrows suggests, at Bannockburn. Let them be where they might, or do what they pleased, the king should hear of it. They were great petitioners, and their

petitions have always a tone of injured innocence about them. They were not the men to do nothing for nothing, or miss their reward. They had a very clear eye to the main chance. If the king could not pay them their due in hard cash, then let his highness at least help them to pay themselves. There were all sorts of posts of emolument which good men of business could turn to account, and for which it was only reasonable that an ambitious official should offer a substantial consideration. By all means let this or that Brocas receive the appointment, the balance against the king could be lessened, and the nominee of the crown could soon recoup himself and do something more. They played their cards skilfully during the reign of Edward II. If their hearts went after Piers Gaveston, they were shrewd enough not to compromise themselves. He was not the man to help a friend, and such men can never hope to stand in the day of adversity; but he was a Gascon, and so were they. Perhaps-it did not look probable-but perhaps there might be a career for the rising generation even of Gascons at the king's court. Edward I. had clearly been one of the great ones of the earth. If his son was weak and incompetent, it did not at all follow that his grandson would be. Moreover, there were signs that the English baronage were declining in power, and the great lords were too jealous of one another to allow of their hanging together for any great length of time. In point of fact, they did not hang together. The battle of Borough Bridge was a calamity to the English baronage, however little it might prove a decisive victory to the Despencers or their supporters. So here are two or three of the rising generation of Brocas-mere lads-putting in an appearance at the court, and early in Edward III.'s reign picking up some of the good things. One of them is master of the horse to Prince John; another is sent to the University of Cambridge, apparently at the expense of the king; a third became rector of the rich living of Guildford, presented thereto by another Gascon, for they stood by one another, these 'foreigners,' and all are rising men-that is to say, men of character and men of brains. At least six of the clan were enjoying offices about the king's person at the same time.

The most prominent and the most successful of them all was Sir John Brocas, master of the king's horse for some thirty years during that time of war and battle in which Edward III. was engaged while vainly trying to make himself or prove himself King of France. Whether the worthy

knight was present at Crecy and Poitiers and other previous. conflicts must always remain questionable, though Professor Burrows has no doubts where the glory of his heroes may be sung. But that Sir John was a shrewd man of business and a very able head of a department is certain, and also is it certain that he got his reward. The list of his lands and grants and offices is bewildering. Not the least important among these offices was that of chief forester of Windsor, in which capacity he seems to have availed himself of his opportunities by adding house to house and field to field. The great castle was much too small for all that was required of it, and the king saw, what others doubtless had already seen, that new and larger buildings must soon be added to the old. The Brocas estate did not decrease in value, we may be sure; nevertheless the old knight before he died made a free gift of the large property that lay in Windsor and its neighbourhood to the king, and we may be sure that he and his were no losers by the surrender. When the great extension of the castle was carried out, Sir John Brocas is one of the commissioners for executing the works, and he is associated with a greater than himself, and one who has left behind him a greater name-William of Wykeham, the real architect of the place.

The Windsor estate was but one of many which Sir John Brocas possessed, and he himself was only one among many of his race who helped to build up the fortunes of his kindred. There was Master Bernard Brocas, Rector of Guildford and Prebendary of Chichester and Wells, a great man in Gascony, Controller there, and Registrar of the Court, and a great deal else. Next there was Arnald Brocas, who succeeded Master Bernard as Rector of Guildford, who was Clerk of all the King's Works in 1381. Then there was Sir Oliver Brocas, who was Esquire of the Household, and who built up a large estate in Kent; and there was Sir Bernard, the Lord of Beaurepaire; and all these alive together and all playing into one another's hands, and all full of ambition, self-control, sagacity, and force over and above that indefinable something else which we call luck, because we have no better word and because we feel that there is something more to be said, and which yet we know not how to say when we seek to account for a successful career. These people never fell ill at the wrong moment, never got into scrapes that were found out, never died too soon or lived too long. They were never in the wrong place when they were wanted, they never lost their tempers, never backed the

wrong horse, never coveted barren honour, never pursued shadows when the substance was attainable, never allowed their zeal to go beyond discretion. You may call them trimmers if you choose, but of such are the wise men of the world, who do not tilt with windmills, and who get the solid good things of life and leave their broad acres to their posterity in quiet confidence that these latter will not forget the schooling they have received and the lessons they have learnt from their forefathers.

He

Yet when men like these rise too high they fall like others. Sir John Brocas had been steadily and warily building up the fortunes of his house; but already there were little clouds here and there that seemed to bode trouble. His two elder sons died before him, the one unmarried, the other with an only son, apparently of no capacity or promise; the third son alone remained. was all his father could wish him to be, but he, too, had his troubles. He had made a brilliant marriage, but his wife was unfaithful-so unfaithful that the outraged husband obtained a divorce. Sir Bernard was not the man to be crushed by a scandal. His first wife's misconduct only made him more resolved to get a better one next time. He aspired actually to ally himself with Joan Plantagenet, the fair Maid of Kent; and he might have won her, too, if she had not made up her mind to wed a better than he, even the Black Prince himself. Whereupon Sir Bernard did the next best thing that was open to him-he took to wife the heiress of the De Roches family, and became by this stroke of policy not only a great territorial landlord but Master of the Buckhounds, an office which became hereditary in his family. When the Black Prince engages upon that cruel raid into Narbonne hanging, burning, slaying-Sir Bernard is at his side; so he is when the victory of Poitiers is over. Other doughty warriors spend their prizemoney in revelry. Not he! The roysterers may take their pleasure in their own way; he has his. So when John Pecche of Roche Court gets into difficulties, Sir Bernard has money to lend upon the estate, and by-and-by there comes something like a foreclosing of the mortgage: Pecche goes out and Brocas walks in. Of the fallen house we hear no more; of the rising one there are five centuries of records, such as they are, to prove how stubbornly they could cling to their own. Old Sir John must have been a proud man when he died in 1365, and in the fulness of his heart he settles lands on the Windsor Lazar House, and founds oratories. For was it not well to