Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/24

 xiv COMPLETE PEERAGE 1283 to be good, and by so doing accomplished the ex post facto creation of, or gave a new precedence to, 99 peers, or rather, to be strictly accurate, it did so as far as the supposed intentions of King Edward I are concerned. But in fact, owing to the unreasonable though desirable doctrine that proof of sitting is necessary before a man can establish his right to a peerage under a writ of summons, this startling pronouncement has very small practical effect on any one living at the present day. It is not, however, only as regards the past that the decision in 1877 as to the writs of 1283 is important, but in view of the number of such summonses to councils and other gatherings, it has opened up a wide field for the conversion in the future of knights and gentlemen of the Edwardian period into hereditary noblemen. It may be quite true that with regard to the living the Crown is the ' sole fountain of honour, ' but with regard to the dead and gone that position has been usurped by the Committee for Privileges. Until 1877 the first valid writs of summons, setting aside the anomalous cases of Ros and Despenser, were supposed to have issued in 1295, ^"^ inconsequence of the decision in the Mowbray and Segrave Case the Editor has felt bound to set out all the men summoned in 1283 ; for obviously all those that were summoned at the same date as Roger Mowbray were as much, or as little, peers as Roger himself. Nevertheless, there is no ground for supposing that, because the House of Lords held Roger's peerage to have originated in the writ of 1283, they would treat another claimant whose claim rested on the same basis in the same fashion. For although we must all recognise the truth of what the learned Sir Francis Bacon advances in the Ros Case (27 April 16 16), that "matters of honour before so honourable judges cannot but receive an honourable determin- ation," yet it is much to be hoped that before such another occasion arises, sufficient light on the history of the subject will have pene- trated into that august Chamber to prevent their Lordships repeating this decision. Remembering, however, the unanimous finding of the Committee for Privileges in the case of the Earldom of Norfolk in 1906, when the plainest historic facts were ignored because they did not square with later legal decisions, such a hope seems somewhat over-sanguine. Finality can never be reached as to who were and who were not peers until the Lords' decisions are based upon some recognised principle ; hitherto they have been