Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/712

 690 APPENDIX H writ failed for want of the " addition " or description of " Baron." Tliis, however, is not all. When an Earl sues, or is sued, his dignity is always stated, or, if not, Counsel raises an objection. No cases have been found in which the addition of Baron occurs, and no cases in which any exception is grounded on this omission. Persons who were summoned to Parliament. . . were of course frequently engaged in law- suits, and it is consequently impossible that the term Baron should have been universally omitted when they were concerned, and that no exception should have been grounded on the omission, if the word had been, in law, a name of dignity in the same manner as the word Earl.(*) Our author then cites the case of Henry FitzHugh (so summoned), who, in an action of ravishment of ward in 14 Edw. Ill, "is nowhere described as a Baron in the reports of the case or in the corresponding record." And he continues: Long after the reign of Edward III, too, when the wars of the Roses were giving new power to the Barons, the old ideas still prevailed in the Courts of Justice, and a Baron was still not as another peer. As late as the eighth year of Henry VI it was expressly decided that there was a difference between a lord who was only a Baron and a lord who was an Earl or a Duke, and that when a writ was brought by or against an Earl or Duke, he must be named by his name of dignity, but not when the writ was brought by or against a Baron. C") The difference between "a lord who was only a Baron " and Earls and Dukes was, however, just as marked at a very much later period.('') Collins, in his account of the Abergavenny claim (which was settled in 1604), quotes Serjeant Doddridge thus: Dignities of Nobilitie are with us of two kinds, some are dignities of nobilitie, honour, or parcell of the name of those that are ennobled thereby, so that in publicke proceedings of law, it is parcell of their name, and may not any more be omitted then their surname, such are the nobilitie of dukes, earles, viscounts. Others are dignities onely, and not parcell of the name, and so is the baron, and therefore if an action bee brought by, or against a baron, who hath but a barony onely, it is not requisite to make him baron, which in all other dignities being parcell of the name is otherwise most curiously observed, otherwise the writ shall abate. . .{^) So far in our brief survey of barony we have dealt with barony by tenure, and have touched on the condition of those who are supposed to have acquired baronies by writ. We must now turn our attention to the law, and to those Parliaments in the summonses to which the root of peerage barony is, according to modern doctrine, to be found. (*) Constitutional History of the House of Lords, p. 100. («>) Idem, p. 1 01, quoting as reference Year Book, M., 8 Hen. VI, no. 22, fo. lo. {") Sir Henry Maxwell-Lyte has shown the writer a transcript of a document dated 9 Edw. IV, in Sir William Pole's MS. Collections (fol. 567), in which a man is designated Nicholas Carew baron Carew, esquire. C^) Collins, Proceedings, p. 106.