Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/758

 736 APPENDIX H by these presents erect, make, create and confirm the said Conyers Darcy, Kt., Baron Darcy, and have confirmed, restored, assigned, given and granted, and by these presents do confirm, restore, assign, give and grant to him the name style, status, rank, dignity, title and honour of Baron Darcy, isfc.{'') It will be noted that there is no claim here to the Crown's absolute right to dispose of the Barony (as was held by the Judges in the Oxford case in 1625); but rather we see a recognition of the state of abeyance, and also the Crown's intention to determine that abeyance in favour of Conyers Darcy. The doubt entertained by the Crown as to the validity of its pro- posed action was probably due to the fact that the limitation was to be changed. In effect the warrant declares that if the determination of the abeyance with altered terms of inheritance be deemed illegal, then the patent shall operate as a new creation. As the Crown cannot vary the limitation in a dignity without the consent of Parliament, and no such con- sent was obtained in this case, it would appear that the Crown's doubts were well grounded, and that what took place under this warrant cannot have been the determination of an abeyance, but must have been the bestowal of a new dignity. It is strange, therefore, to find the Committee in 1 903 giving a decision which was in conflict with the law they have to administer. And this violation of the law and of fact was quite unnecessary, for if the patent of 1641 operated as a new creation which became extinct in 1778, there still remained the ancient Barony of Darcy to be called out of abeyance. Moreover, as it is the law that a writ of summons to Parliament, even though issued in error, creates a barony in fee, the writ to Conyers Darcy in 1678 directed Conyers Darcie de Darcie et Meynill must be held to have bestowed on him a Barony of Meynill in fee. GREY OF RUTHYN Henry Grey, Earl of Kent and Lord Grey of Ruthyn, died s.p. in 1639, when ^^^ Earldom devolved on his cousin and heir male, Anthony Grey, but the Barony descended to the heir general, Charles Longueville, son of Susan, sister of the aforesaid Henry, by Sir Michael Longueville. Charles Longueville presented a petition for the Barony in Nov. 1640, his claim being opposed by Anthony, Earl of Kent. Although the question whether an earldom attracts a barony had been raised in the Ros case in 1616, and the compromise then effected was really favourable to the heir general, the point was again fully argued. Selden, for the Earl of Kent, urged that The custom, and therefore the law in cases of descent of honours, is, when a barony by writ is once involved into an earldom, it shall wait upon the earldom, and may not after be transferred into another family, by a daughter and heir, so long as the earldom doth continue in the male line. C') (") Chancery Warrants, Privy Seal, File 2207, 17 Car. I. (•>) Collins, p. 207.