Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/164

 ii6 THE ANCESTOR disputed election of representative peers for Scotland in 1790. Most of the claims, which were in respect of dignities not upon the then existing Roll of Peers, were rejected. The evidence is extremely rare, and the late well known peerage counsel, Mr. Fleming, reprinted a few copies. The study of peerage law from the printed evidence there- fore begins with the last century, during the first half of which there were heard a great number of claims. The claim to the dukedom of Roxburgh, decided in 18 12, turned upon a diffi- cult settlement of lands and dignity. The Airlie, Marmion and Berkeley claims have already been mentioned. Previously in the period 1805-15 two very remarkable claims of the ^romantic * kind arose, one to the earldom of Berkeley, 181 1, which turned on the date of a marriage, when the original parish register was proved to have been falsified, resulting in several hundred folio pages of printed evidence ; the other to the earldom of Banbury, 1 808-13, when a claim which had been in existence since the reign of Charles II. was again put forward. It is not possible within the limits of a single article to state the exact nature of each claim. Suffice it to say that in the Banbury case the ancestor actually sat in the House of Lords, received no writ to the next Parliament, was held by the Lord Chief Justice of England to have been wrongly indicted because not described as Earl of Banbury, and yet neither he nor any of his descendants ever succeeded in obtaining a writ, because the House of Lords is not bound by the maxim. Pater est quern nuptia demostrant. This was further exemplified in the Gardner case, 1825-8, on which occasion many of the leading accoucheurs of Europe gave evidence on the length of time which can elapse between conception and birth. During the period 1830-50 arose a number of claims to baronies created by writs of summons, and many dignities were called out of the abeyances of centuries. The successful result of these claims fortunately restored many old Roman Catholic families to the House of Lords ; but it may reason- ably be suspected that if the peers of the seventeenth century had foreseen that the evolution of their doctrine of abeyance would be the revival of dignities not heard of for centuries, placing an ordinary gentleman pet saltum over the heads of all intervening barons, they would have been somewhat astonished. Equally may it be suspected that when King Edward I. sent a summons to one of his knights to confer with him and his