Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/699

 APPENDIX H 677 passage of time. It was not merely the breakdown of a military organisa- tion: it was also the failure of a social system which greatly affected the general administration of the country. Two circumstances contributed largely to bring this about, (i) By the frequent failure of heirs male many of the great fiefs throughout the country were broken up, and the repre- sentation of great responsibilities of service became complicated. The inconvenience, friction, and loss in which such a condition involved the administration were aggravated by (2) the alienation of part of their lands by many of the tenants who held in fee. This not only weakened the fief, so that in many cases the services due from it could not be maintained, but it brought into existence a class of sub-tenants whose responsibility was to the grantor and not to the overlord, and from whom it proved difficult to exact the. performance of feudal obligations. In order to arrest this source of disintegration the statute Quia Emptores was passed in I290.('') The result, however, was quite other than that which had been anticipated, for it led to a multiplication of tenants-in-chief without any compensating advan- tages. The system of tenure which the statute was intended to strengthen was actually weakened thereby, and soon lost much of its political and economic significance. The two causes we have mentioned had no inconsiderabfe influence on the evolution of our peerage. They contributed to bring about a change in earldoms, and affected the writ of summons which eventually originated peerage barony. We have remarked that as long as earldoms remained territorial the failure of heirs male did not necessarily cause perplexity. But we have seen that the frequent partition of great estates was undermining the tenurial system, which, as a consequence, fell into disfavour. The ultimate result was twofold. The Crown became indisposed to grant earldoms with the very wide limitations of the earlier creations, and began to narrow the inheritance to male issue; and the new limitations in the course of time obscured the old and predisposed the Sovereign to disregard them. We must distinguish here between the Lr^ up to about the beginning of the 14th century and the usage of a later time. The legal doctrine, that the law regarding peerage is always the same, against which J. H. Round has so strenuously protested,('') is accountable for most of the contu- sion which the arguments of lawyers and decisions of law lords have imported into the investigation of peerage descents. Even if the repetition prove wearisome, it must again be stated that the only early " peerages " — namely, earldoms — were territorial, and their descent was governed by the law as to baronial tenure. When, gradually, personal titles began to be bestowed which, unlike the older earldoms, were unconnected with land, the law did not fit the new conditions, and there was no new law to apply. (*) This statute had the effect of placing the holder of the portion of the estate which was aliened in the same relation to the overlord as the tenant in fee who had parted with it. ('') See article, " The Muddle of the Law," in P,:^rasf and Ptdigrte, vol. i.