Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 1.djvu/40

 XXX COMPLETE PEERAGE solution thereof has been thus ably indicated. ' The origin of the difficulty- is, we would suggest, that whereas in England the credtion of a Barony [if not by letters patent] is reckoned to date from the first proved writ of summons ; in Ireland the writ of summons has been comparatively ignored, and dignities traced to the earliest period at which their possessors were Barons by tenure. This principle, tho' pressed upon them, has always been rejected by our own House of Lords, so that the apparent superior anti- quity of Irish over English Baronies has no foundation in fact. ' The anomalous precedency accorded to the Barony of Abergavenny seems, however, a case (probably the only case) in which the English Peers have in modern times recognised some such right. As TO England, Courthope's work (above mentioned) is an almost infallible guide as far as it extends ; some matters, however, have been changed since (1857) the date of its issue. The validity of the writ of (1264) 49 Hen. Ill (to Montfort's pari.) which had been accepted in the cases of Le Despencer (1604) and of De Ros (1806) has been disallowed in 1877 (i" the decision on Mowbray) whereby it ' has raised a question of precedence as yet insoluble. ' It had previously, in 1841, been ignored in the Hastings Case. The theory that the next valid writ to 1264 was that of 24 June (1295) 23 Edw. I, (though the late Dep. Keeper of the Records, the well-known Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, expressly stated in 1841, in the Hastings case, that he had made search for any intermediate writs of summons and found none) has also been upset by their Lordships' decision in 1877 (in the Mowbray and Segrave case) who allowed the validity of the writ of summons to Shrewsbury, 28 June (1283) 1 1 Edw. I, ' apparently without the slightest conception that they were establishing a precedent of the most momentous consequence. When it is added that the contested writs of 1294 and 1297 were also allowed to be put into evidence without question (") and that the writ of 1283 affects a hundred [!] Baronies, it will be seen that the Mowbray decision (1877) unconsciously worked a revolution, and that the histories of baronies by writ must now be undertaken de novo. ' C') The decision in 1841 in the Hastings case (ignoring the writ of 1264) recognised the sitting in 1290 (no record being found of writs of summons) as the date of that dignity. prevailed at first. It is largely due to this development that the houses of the Conquistadores present so long and illustrious a descent in the male line, instead of merging in heiresses, as in England would have been their fate. " {Quarterly Review, for Oct. 1893, vol. 177, p. 410, in an able article headed " The Peerage "). (") These writs, however, were very possibly not questioned, as nothing turned upon them. The number of writs (already held to be valid) under which (by the decision of 1673), a peerage descendible to heirs general is now held to have been created, is great, and the persons summoned in such writs are " legion. " It is curious, too, that these (now deemed) hereditary peerages should have been created in batches of 100 or so, and that, too, by the early Plantagenet kings, generally supposed to have been more chary of such creations than their successors. C") Article headed " The Peerage " in the Quarterly Review for Oct. 1893.