Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/735

 APPENDIX H 713 the heir male, Francis, 4th Earl, and that an earldom "attracted " a barony to descend with it. In this erroneous belief Henry, son of Francis, was summoned to Parliament in his father's supposed Barony of Clifford in Feb. 1627/8. This summons prompted the heir general, Anne, and Lord Abergavenny to take steps to protect their rights as to precedence, as appears in the following entry on the Lords' 'Journals^ 22 Mar. 1627/8: The House being this Day called by the Clerk's Book, and Henry the Son and Heir Apparent of Francis now Earl of Cumb'land (who received his Writ of Summons this Parliament) being called, though absent, and ranked in the Place pretended to be due to the ancient Barons of Clifford; the House was moved. That this might be no Way prejudicial unto the Claim and Right of Anne Countess Dowager of Dorset!, the Daughter and sole Heir of George late Earl of Cumb'land, deceased; and also that the same may not be prejudicial unto the Right and Claim of the Lord Abirgavrnn nor of any other; which the House Ordered accordingly. (») On 16 May 1628 the Barony was again claimed by Annc;('') but although without direct result, the claim seems to have raised doubts as to rights of the heir male.('') This is indicated by the fact that Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Henry Clifford (sum. in error in 1628), never assumed the style after her father's death in 1643, ^""^ '^h^'^ her husband, Richard, Earl of Cork, was created by patent Baron Clifford of Lanesborough in 1644. Throughout this period (1605- 1643) first Anne's mother, and then Anne herself, had been fighting the heir male in the law courts, and on 30 May i663('^) she again petitioned the King. Nothing was done before her death in 1676, when the ancient barony fell into abeyance between her daughter Margaret, Countess of Thanet, and her granddaughter Alathea. The former died Aug. 1676, and the latter s.p. in 1678, when the Barony vested in Nicholas, 3rd Earl of Thanet. He and his brothers John and Richard, who succeeded him in the Earldom, all died s.p., and in 1684, on the death of Richard, their brother Thomas, 6th Earl of Thanet, was heir to the Barony. He made a claim to it, with the assistance of "Mr. King, title, vi-z.. whether all, or any of the said baronies, be by virtue of the patent or Henry Vlllth, creating Henry, lord Clifford, earl of Cumberland, entailed upon the then earl (viz. earl Francis) as appertaining to the earldom, or ought to descend in fee simple to the lady Anne as lieir general, and whether she be capable thereof yea or no ? " (Collins, p. 312). (*) Lords'' 'Journals, vol. iii, p. 695^. (•>) Idem, p. 800a. ("=) In his argument for the petitioner in the Grey de Rutliyn case (1640-41) Dugdale says that the summons of Henry Clifford to the ancient place of the Lords Clifford " was an apparent wrong to Anne ... in whom the honour and barony of Clifford then virtually was, and is,. . . and whose son, or daughter and heir, in case she should have any, will have a most clear and undoubted title to that dignity." (Collins, p. 237). ("*) Lords 'Journals, vol. xi, pp. 529-30. 90