and temporal baron accustomed to receive an individual writ, one was issued. Every county elected its knights and every city or borough of any importance was instructed by the sheriff to elect and to return its allotted number of representatives. Stubbs’s view (Const. Hist. ii. 22 3) may probably be regarded as authoritative, inasmuch as it was adopted by Lord Ashbourne in the Norfolk peerage case of 1906 (Law Reports [1907], A.C. at p. 15). Edward I. held frequent parliaments throughout his reign, and although many must be regarded as merely baronial councils, nevertheless year after year, on all important occasions, the knights of the shire and the citizens appear in their places. The parliament of Shrewsbury in 128 3, for instance, has been claimed as a full parliament in several peerage cases, but no clear decision on the point has ever been given by the Committee for Privileges. It may be taken for granted, however, that any assembly held since 1295, which did not conform substantially to the model of that year, cannot be regarded constitutionally as a full parliament. The point is even of modern importance, as in order to establish the existence of a barony by writ it must be proved that the claimant’s ancestor was summoned by indiwdual writ to a full parliament, and that either he himself or one of his direct descendants was present in parliament.
It is now convenient to consider the various grades into which the members of the peerage are grouped, and their relative positions. An examination of the early writs issued to individuals shows that the baronage consisted of archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, earls and barons In course of time every member of these classes Grades of Peerage. came to hold his land by feudal tenure from the Crown, and eventually in every instance the writs issued as an incident of tenure. It is therefore necessary to discover, if possible, what combination of attributes clothed the greater baron with a right to receive the king’s personal writ of summons. While the archbishops and bishops received their writs with regularity, the summonses to heads of ecclesiastical houses and greater barons were intermittent. The prelate held an office which lived on regardless of the fate of its temporary holder, and if by reason of death, absence or translation the office became vacant, a writ still issued to the “Guardian of the Spiritualities.” The abbot, on the other hand, often outside the jurisdiction of the English Church, and owing allegiance to a foreign order, was but the personal representative of a land-holding community. It has already been pointed out that the amount of land held direct from the king by individuals varied greatly, and that the extent of his holding must have had something to do with a man’s importance. A landless noble in those days was inconceivable. The conclusion, then, may be drawn that in theory the issue of a writ was at the pleasure of the Crown, and that in practice the moving factor in the case of the prelates was office and personal importance, and in the case of abbots and barons probably, in the main, extent of* possession. There is nothing however to show that in the early years of the custom any person had a right to claim a writ if it were the king’s pleasure or caprice to withhold it and to treat everyone not summoned individually as being duly summoned under the general writs issued to the sheriff of the county.
The next point for consideration is when did the peerage, as the baronage subsequently came to be called, develop into a body definitely hereditary? Here again growth was gradual and somewhat obscure. Throughout the reigns of the Edwards summonses were not always issued to the same individual for successive parliaments; Hereditary Principle. and it is quite certain that the king never considered the issue of one writ to an individual bound the Crown to its repetition for the rest of his life, much less to his heirs in perpetuity. Again we must look to tenure for an explanation. The custom of primogeniture tended to secure estates in strict family succession, and if extent of possession had originally extracted the acknowledgement of a personal summons from the Crown it is more than probable that as successive heirs came into their inheritance they too would similarly be acknowledged. In early days the summons was a burden to be suffered of necessity, an unpleasant incident of tenure, in itself undesirable, and probably so regarded by the majority of recipients during at least the two centuries following the Conquest. The age of the Edwards was in the main a rule of settled law, of increase in population generally, of growing power in the large landowners and of opportunities for those about the person of the king. The times were changing, and in place of the idea of the writ being a burden, its receipt gradually came to be looked upon as a mark of royal favour, a recognition of position and an opportunity leading on to fortune. Once such a view was established it is easy to understand how desirous any individual would be to preserve so valuable a privilege for his posterity; and primogeniture with its strict settlement of estates pointed out an easy way. The Crown was itself an hereditary dignity; and what more natural than that it should be surrounded by an hereditary peerage? Thus the free and indiscriminate choice of the Crown became fettered by the custom that once a summons had been issued to an individual to sit in parliament and he had obeyed that summons he thereby acquired a right of summons for the rest of his lifetime; and in later years when the doctrine of nobility of blood became established his descendants were held to have acquired the same privilege by hereditary right.
The earl’s position in the baronage needs some explanation. Various suggestions have been made as to Saxon or Norman origin of a high official nature, but historical opinion Ea, Mom seems generally to incline towards the theory that the term was a name of dignity conferred by royal prerogative on a person already classed among the greater barons. At first the dignity was official and certainly not hereditary, and the name of a county of which he is said to have been an officer in the king’s name was not essential to his dignity as an earl. There were also men who, though Scottish and Norman earls, and commonly so addressed and summoned to parliament, were rated in England as barons (Lords Reports, ii. 116, 120; Earldom of Norfolk Peerage Case, Law Reports [1907], A.C. p. 18). Earls received individual summonses to parliament by the name of Earl (q.v.); but there is reason to believe, as already mentioned, that in early days at any rate they sat not in right of their earldoms but by tenure as members of the baronage.
If we review the political situation at the beginning of the 14th century a great change is evident. The line between those members of the baronage in parliament and the rest of the people is firmly and clearly drawn. Tenure as the sole qualification for presence in the national assembly has disappeared, and in its place there Writ Supersedes Tenure appears for the baronage a system of royal selection and for the rest of the people one of representation. The rules and customs of law relating to the baronage slowly crystallized so as to provide the House of Lords, the history of which for generations is the history of the peerage of England, whilst the representative part of parliament, after shedding the lower clergy, ultimately became the House of Commons.
Until the reign of Richard II. there is no trace of any use of the term baron (q.v.) as importing a personal dignity existing apart from the tenure of land, barons owing their seats in parliament to tenure and writ combined. This is borne out by the fact that a husband was often summoned to parliament in his wife’s right and name, and while she lived fulfilled those feudal, military and parliamentary obligations attached to her lands which the physical disabilities of sex prevented her from carrying out in her own person (Pike, House of Lords, p. 103).
Primogeniture, a custom somewhat uncertain in early Anglo-Norman days, had rapidly developed into a definite rule of law. As feudal dignities were in their origin inseparable from the tenure of land it is not surprising that they too followed a similar course of descent, although as the idea of a dignity being exclusively personal Peerage becomes a Personal Dignity gradually emerged, some necessary deviations from the rules of law relating to the descent of land inevitably resulted. In the eleventh year of his reign Richard II. created by letters patent
