Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/33

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PREFACE xxiii no writs of this latter date have ever been brought forward in any Case, nor are they even mentioned in the Lords' Reports, vol. i, p. 208. It may be further observed that the person whom Nicolas here calls Reginald de Clyvedon is described, and rightly described, in the enrolment {Gascon Roll, 22 Edw. I, m. 8d) as Reymond de Clivedon : also that under " Ros, " Nicolas has confused the writ of 1294 to William de Ros (of Hemsley) with that to William de Ros of Ingmanthorpe, though both these persons were summoned, and distinguished from each other in the writs. It remains to be added that Courthope has copied Nicolas in all these parti- culars. " WRITS OF 1297 The validity of the writs of i 297 as regular writs of sum- mons to Parliament (such as would now be held to originate a Peerage) is discussed at great length in Nicolas (p. 242), under " FiTz John, " in a long and elaborate note which is reprinted in Courthope, with a few slight alterations. The doubt of such validity was suggested by the following note (written, apparently, by John Vincent, son of the well known Augustine Vincent) in a copy of the summonses in the College of Arms. " This can be no sum- mons [to Pari.], because it is only directed to the Temporality. " As to the reason for the clergy not being summoned, Hamilton Hall, in N. & Q., 8th Ser., vol. xi, p. i, points out that they were all then outlawed. Pope Boniface VIII and the Primate Winchelsey having advanced the proposition (very unlikely to he admitted by a needy and resolute King) that Church property should pay no taxes. J. H. Round points out that, according to Stubbs f Constitu- tional History), " Six earls and eighty-nine barons and knights had been invited, and most of them attended, " but the clergy and commons were not summoned. It was in this historic assembly, which met at Salisbury, 24 February i 296/7, having been summon- ed 26 January preceding, that the earls of Hereford and Norfolk defied the king, who exclaimed to Norfolk ' By God, Earl, you shall either go or hang, ' and was met by the rejoinder, ' By God, King, I will neither go nor hang. ' It was probably owing to this assembly being styled a parliamentum in the marginal heading on the Close Roll that it seems to have been accepted without question