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 656 APPENDIX H Record Office had been ransacked. And the counsel on either side produced the impression that there was nothing known about earldoms which was not laid bare before the House. And yet there was one essential lacking — a reasonable idea as to the nature of an earldom in the time of the three Edwards. All participants in the case, Lords and counsel alike, were obsessed by the idea that an earldom was an office in the 14th century. As is to be expected. Lord Coke was cited on this point: Lord Robert Cecil. Your Lordships will find that Lord Coke, for instance, refers to earls as great Conservators of the Peace. (•) ... It is evident if )ou had a great official, part of whose duty it was to fight and to keep the peace _sic] . . .(^) In the Supplementary Case on behalf of Lord Mowbray, also, counsel took the same view: From 1375 to March 24, 1398-99, the Earldom was vested in the hands of a woman, Margaret, Countess of Norfolk, who, not being able to exercise the duties and office of an Earl, did not receive the third penny. (■=) Lord Davey, speaking of earldoms and dukedoms in the time of Richard II, observed: They are essentially territorial and of the nature of offices . . .{^) and later on in the hearing he was more precise in his definition: An Earl was not only the Lord Lieutenant of the county where he was Earl, but he was something more, because he had high judicial functions in the County Courts. (*) From the context it would appear that this was the official character of the Earl, in Lord Davey's opinion, in the time of Edward II. In a previous quotation it will be noted that the Earl was held to be an official as late as Henry IV. Finally, when judgment was delivered. Lord Davey again referred to an earldom as an office, and the Earl of Halsbury on the same occasion stated that An earldom was an office as well as a dignity, and the office was full of the heir of the Bygods.(') This opinion is now enunciated as law in the most recent work on the Peerage, where the Earldom of Norfolk case is quoted in support of the statement that an earldom (not merely was, but) " is an office as well as a dignity." (^) The judgment in the case bears no sort of relation to this (*) If counsel had continued the quotation, he would have exposed the value of Coke's dictum: "and that sheriffs were called ' vice-comites' because in ancient times they were as deputies to earls, though it was then changed " [i.e. changed at the time of Nevil's case against Lady Fane, which Coke was reporting]. C") Earldom of Norfolk case. Speeches, p. 123. (*=) Supplementary Case, p. 15. ^) Speeches, p. 21. (*) Speeches, p. 41. (') Law Reports, 1 907, Appeal Cases, p. 10. (e) The Laws of England, edit, by the Earl of Halsbury, vol. 22, p. 264.