Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/677

 APPENDIX H 659 hereditary or personal, at the pleasure of the Crown." Careful reading, however, will show, I think, that, like the question, the reply deals with "the third penny" alone. The " haec conferenda decernit " of the latter refers to the " ista " of the former.(*) He also quotes the Pipe Rolls of 2-7 Hen. II to prove that of 17 earls only 7 received the third penny. On the passage from the Dialogus quoted above, the editors of that work remark: The emphasis is on the word " singulis " ; " Are there," says the scholar, " in every county earls who receive these profits ? " " No," answers the master, " only these men (not as Selden, 'these earls') receive them, whom the royal bounty. . . creates earls, and to whom by reason of that dignity it decrees that these sums are to be granted, whether in fee or for life." The construction is, of course, difficult; "quibus" seems to be put for "quos" because of "conferenda" in the latter part; but the meaning is clear. There is not an earl in every county: but when there is an earl, he gets the third penny "ratione dignitatis," whether he is an earl in fee or only for life.(*') With regard to J. H. Round's references to the Pipe Rolls, Messrs. Hughes, Crump, and Johnson say: The negative evidence of the Pipe Rolls is adduced by Mr. Round in support of the view taken by him; and it is, of course, likely enough that the author of the Dialogus is simply blundering in his assertion. We would, however, urge on the other side that Mr. J. H. Round himself admits that there is evidence in the case of Leicestershire and Oxfordshire of the payment of the third penny in cases where the Pipe Roll is silent. Of this a specific instance may be given from the 40th year of Henry III. Madox (c. xxiii, § 2, p. 651, n. 1) quotes the writ directed to the barons of the exchequer ordering them to cause John de Warenna (who had just come of age) to have the third penny of the county of Surrey, as William de Warenna his father and his other ancestors had had it as appurtenant to his earldom (comitatus) of Surrey. There is no mention in the Pipe Rolls of 40 or 41 Hen. Ill of any payment of the third penny in consequence of this writ; but it would be difficult to argue from this silence that it was not made. Surrey is one of the earldoms for which the Pipe Rolls of Hen. II are also silent; and the silence is equally inconclusive here. The conclu- sion seems to be that we do not know how the third penny of the county was paid, except in the cases mentioned on the Pipe Rolls-C^) When we turn to the evidence of charters recording the creation of earldoms, we find that the earliest known to us, that of Stephen to Geoffrey de Mandeville,('') bears out J. H. Round's contention, for it contains no word of the third penny. Against this, however, has to be set the Empress Maud's charter to the same Geoffrey a year later, in which (») Geoffrey de Mandeville, pp. 293-4, where the text used diflFers in some points from that of Messrs. Hughes, Crump, and Johnson. The whole Appendix on the Tirciu! Denarius will repay careful study. (•>) Dialogus, ut supra, p. 203. (') Dialogus, ut supra, p. 204. {^) See post, p. 662.