Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/31

 PREFACE xxi Willelmus le Latymer Walterus de Huntercomb' Rogerus de Monte Alto Nicholaus de Segrave et ceteri Willelmus de Brewose magnates et proceres tunc in Theobaldus de Verdun Parliamento existentes. (*) The scant knowledge that we have about the constitution of this Parliament, and the fact that, in spite thereof, the Lords in 1 841 decided that the then Lord Hastings' Barony originated at this date, because his ancestor could then be proved to have sat, makes it desirable to consider this Parliament when doubtful writs are being discussed. The imperfection of the present state of our acquaintance with the development stage of our parliamentary history is empha- sised by the discovery of C. Hilary Jenkinson that burgesses were summoned to the first Parliament of Edward I, at Easter 1275. Until April of the present year (19 10) it was not known that representatives of the towns had ever been summoned before the Assembly or Parliament of 1283, except in the case of Simon de Montfort's rebel Parliament in 1264. That the assembly of May i 290, however constituted, pro- ceeded to pass Statutes, including among them the well-known Quia Emplores, is certain, and if Lord Halsbury's opinion ut supra is to be accepted, that fact alone constitutes it a genuine Parliament. Fortunately, whether the Parliament was good or bad, for the purpose of converting its members into hereditary noblemen, the effect on the Peerage can be but small. In the first place only eleven men of Baronial rank are known to have sat; in the second, nearly all ot those were summoned to an undoubted Parliament 5 years later, — in fact only two, Robert de Poynings and John de St. John, were never summoned again — and finally, as has been intimated already, the fact that the Committee for Privileges recognised the sitting in 1290 as originating the Barony in the Hastings case, is no criterion as to the line which a differently constituted Committee may take in the future. It is of course quite absurd to look for the same regularity and precision in the summoning of Parliaments during the period of transition and development temp. Edward I, as when these matters have been settled and ordered for centuries, temp. Edward VII. The exact amount of irregularity in the constitution of an (") Pari. Rolls, vol. i, p. 25 : Palgrave, Pari. Writs, vol. i, p. 20.