Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/29

 PREFACE xix writs by recognising them in his Parliamentary Writs as good : with this exception, until 1877, it had never, as far as the Editor knows, been suggested that writs summoning men to Shrewsbury to attend the trial of David ap Griffith, at least "super hoc et aliis locuturi " important as the event was in marking the development of parliamentary institutions, could confer on them hereditary titles. Nevertheless at that date the Lords, as it would seem, quite lightly and unadvisedly, and without realising the important bearing of their action, but apparently desiring to offisr some solatium for disallowing a writ of 1264, held that one of 1283 was valid for that purpose. The question of the validity of these writs is fully discussed by J. H. Round in his Peerage and Pedigree (19 10), where he deals with the treatment of them in the successive cases of Mowbray, WahuU, and Fauconberg. In this last case the validity of a writ of this date was keenly argued and was based on its acceptance in the Mowbray case. Unfortunately the Resolutions adopted by the Committee, while studiously ignoring these writs, leave it, perhaps, open to doubt whether they have been definitely rejected. J. H. Round has now advanced against them the further argument that " no fewer than half the ' barons ' summoned were never summoned to a Parliament of clear valid- ity " [Peerage and Pedigree, vol. i, pp. 261-2), which is certainly significant. The argument which appeared to have most weight with Lord Halsbury, who sat on the Committee, was that because a statute was passed by the assembly in 1283, that constituted it a Parliament. Yet, as has been pointed out. Magna Charta is numbered among the Statutes, but no one will suggest that it was a regular Parliament which met at Runnymede. Even if the fact that the Clergy were not summoned were not a fatal flaw, when it is remembered that as late as the first Parliament of James I the peers of England of all ranks only numbered 82, the notion that Edward I, into whose head it never entered to make peers at all, ever contemplated such a wholesale creation as that of 99 Barons in one day is so preposterous, that the mere number alone should have made the Lords hesitate to render the law of Baronies by writ ridiculous by adopting it. (") If however it be answered that Edward I never had any such intention, but that many of these men had been peers of Parliament long before, the retort can only be " produce your evidence. " (") See Preface to ist edition, note " a, " as reprinted on p. xxx of this volume.