“Dear Sir,—I have been recently much interested, in reading Mr. Collier’s _Annals of the Stage_. My curiosity was excited, by the passage in vol. i. pp. 35 and 36, in which he gives in a note, a copy from the _Harl. MSS._, No. 433, of a warrant of 1st Richard III., {283b} to John Brown, appointing him keeper of the King’s bears and apes; and Mr. Collier there slates, that if a keeper of those animals were known before the reign of Richard the Third, he is not aware of any earlier record of his existence, as a licensed court officer. On reading the passage, I felt a strong impression, that the _Rotuli Parliamentorum_ contained proofs of the existence, at an earlier date than that reign, of an officer of a similar description, to the one alluded to by Mr. Collier. Although I have not succeeded in discovering, that any person is previously mentioned, as being the keeper, by royal authority, of bears and apes in England, I have discovered in the 5th vol. of the _Rotuli Parliamentorum_, proofs in three different instances, in the reign of Edward IV.; one of which is as early as 1461, of the fact of a keeper (Ralph Hastings, Esq.), having been appointed, by letters patent of that King, to what would, in more modern times, be called the Royal Menagerie, in the Tower of London. Lions and lionesses are there mentioned, as being kept in the Tower, in all the three instances; and leopards are mentioned in the first of them. As Edward IV. only came to the throne on the 4th of March, 1461, and as the references to the grant of the office are worded in a commonplace manner, as if it were nothing extraordinary, it is only fair to presume, that the keeping of foreign animals in the Tower, and the appointment of an officer to have the custody of them, not only existed in the reign of Edward IV., but may have occurred at least as far back as the reign of Henry VI. “It is probable that the passages in the _Rotuli Parliamentorum_, to which I have alluded, are well known to many of our Society, still there may be some who are not aware of them; and I am induced to subjoin extracts, and request them to be read before the Society, under the impression that all information of this nature is useful, as tending to give us an insight into the customs and habits of an age gone by. “I remain, dear Sir, “Yours faithfully, “RICHARD BROOKE. “To Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.R.S., Secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, &c. &c.” Extract from the Act of Declaration of the Royal Title and of Resumption of 1st Edward IV., A.D. 1461.—_Rot. Parl._ vol. v. fo. 475:—