Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/675

 APPENDIX H 657 definition at an earldom, (') and the reader may well question the value of a pronouncement, unvouched by any authority, which is so completely at variance with the tacts of history. Up to the present no legal decision has been given on the competency of women to inherit earldoms, and should a case arise the issue may be prejudiced by the above declaration of "the law" ; for it the facts be overlooked and authority be sought for, "authority " will be found for holding that, as an earldom was and is an office, a woman is not capable of succeeding to it. No legal decision as to whether an earldom has been an office from Saxon times up to the present day can alter the facts of history, and, whatever the law may decide in the future, we may be satisfied with the opinion of the learned authors of /^ History of English Law. " Even before the beginning of legal memory," they say, official earldoms had disappeared — that is, betore Richard 1, and takes us near to the time when Stephen and Maud were bringing the new nobility into being. And we may conclude that from about this period there was no office in an earldom (if we exclude the later palatinates) to bar female succession. Whether women ever did inherit earldoms can only be decided by the various facts concerning their descent which will be set out later on in this paper. The Earl and the Third Penny of the County Pleas We come now to an interesting but rather obscure connecting link between the Saxon earldoms and those of the 12th century — namely, the third penny, which was referred to in two of the quotations above. Unfortunately little is known of it in Saxon times. H. M. Chadwick('') says that the Saxon laws contain hardly any information on this subject, the history of which in pre-Conquest days has not been studied much hitherto. In Domesday Book, however, there are several passages referring to the third penny of the profits of jurisdiction in the county. Thus Earl Harold held the manor of Pirton, Dorset, in the time of Edward the Confessor — "T.R.E.," as it is expressed in the Survey — and to this manor was annexed the third penny of the pleas of the county: Huic etiam manerio Piretone adjacet tercius denarius de tota scira Dorscte.(') (*) The decision is summarised in Law Reports, 1907, Appeal Cases, p. 10, thus: "Held, that the sirrender by Roger le Bygod was invalid; that the charter of 1 31 2 was consequently invalid; that the sitting in Parliament under the King's writ could not create an earldom; and that Lord Mowbray had not made out his claim." The actual resolution proposed by Lord Halsbury at the end of the hearing was " that the Claimant has not established his claim to the dignity in question," and that also is substantially the resolution of the House of Lords as recorded in Lordi" Journak, vol. 138, p. 425. ('') Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, ut supra. ("=) Domesday, i, fol. 75. 83