ranger of Exmoor under grant from the Crown, a title for the king's chief officer of the royal forest. According to the Victorian author, Charle Palk Collyns, he "hunted the country in almost princely style. Respected and beloved by all the countryside, he was solicited at the same time to allow himself to be returned as member of Parliament for the counties of Devon and Somerset. He preferred, however, the duties and pleasures of life in the country, where he bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman". Although he had three of his own kennels, he had a further method of keeping hounds at Holnicote, Jury and Highercombe, whereby he made the keeping of one hound a term a stipulation of many of the tenancies he granted. In his manor of Bossington (near Holnicote) alone an estate survey of 1746–1747 lists twelve tenements let, either by Acland or Dyke, with the requirement to keep a hound. In 1775 he handed over the mastership to the then Major Basset, and in 1779 his beloved collection of stag heads and antlers at Holnicote was lost in a fire which also destroyed the house. He declared that "he minded the destruction of his valuables less bitterly than the loss of his fine collection of stags' heads". He was known on his estates as "Sir Thomas his Honour" (as later was his son the 9th Baronet) and was renowned for his generous hospitality at Holnicote or at Pixton, whichever was closest, to all riders "in at the death", and it is said that by the architect Anne Acland that "open house was kept at Pixton and Holnicote throughout the hunting season". Acland's eldest son died as a result of wounds aged 34. His grandson died at the age of 7 a few weeks after inheriting the baronetcy and so his second son, Thomas Dyke Acland (1752–1794), became the ninth Baronet. Like his father, he was known locally in Devon and Somerset as "Sir Thomas his Honour" and they shared a passion for staghunting. He followed him into the Mastership of the North Devon Staghounds and virtually abandoned the family's main seat of Killerton in mid-Devon to live at Holnicote and Highercombe, near Dulverton, on the north and south edges respectively of the ancient royal forest of Exmoor, renown for its herds of red deer. During the period 1785 to his death in