Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/766

 744 APPENDIX H On 9 Jan. 1695/6 Sir Richard Verney again petitioned, but on this occasion did not designate the title by which he desired to be called. ('') On 17 Jan. following, on a resolution that the petitioner should be heard, eleven peers protested against a decision of the House being reviewed. On 13 Feb. the House resolved that the petitioner had a right to be sum- moned by the title of Lord Willoughby de Broke. C") In this case again we see how little idea anyone had in the 17th century that a barony by writ which had fallen to coheirs would survive. For Sir Fulke Greville was suo jure Lord Broke or Lord Willoughby of Broke, yet he became M.P. for Warwick and accepted a patent creating him Lord Broke of Beauchamp's Court in 1621. BOTETOURT This case deserves special mention as the first in which a barony was awarded in answer to a petition which alleged the existence of an abeyance during no less than 358 years. The case of Despenser is not com- parable; Windsor was a modern creation; Ferrers, Clinton, and Clifford might be claimed to have been acquired by prescription, and the abeyances in these cases lasted only 31, 29, and 5 years respectively. In all those 358 years there had been no Lord Botetourt except from Mar. 1663/4 to June 1665, when Charles (Berkeley), Viscount Fitzhardinge [I.] (who died s.p. enjoyed the title under the patent of creation granted in the former year. It seems unlikely that this Barony by patent would have been created at that time if the existence of an abeyance in an ancient barony by writ of the same name had been recognised. The petition of Norborne Berkeley for the determination of the alleged abeyance in this Barony in his favour was granted by the issue of a writ of summons to him in 1764. John Botetourt was summoned from 1305 to 1324; his son Thomas died-u./.; his grandson John was summoned from 1342 to 1385, in which year he died. On the death, s.p., of the younger John's daughter, Joyce, in 1406, his three sisters were his coheirs, and Norborne Berkeley's claim was based on descent from one of them. Nicolas, in his Barony of nisle,(f) gives an account of the Botetourt claim, and points out that Cruise derived his information regarding the proofs of sitting which were offered from the Printed Case, and not from the Committee Books. From these it appears that the entry on Close Roll, 33 Edw. I, m. 3 d, on which petitioner relied to prove the presence of John Botetourt the elder in Parliament, was, after some discussion, rejected by the Committee on the ground that the membrane in question " was not written upon the Clause Roll, but affixed or tacked to it, because it was (') Lords' Journah, vol. xv, p. 634. C) Idem, p. 668fl. (<=) Report of Proceedings on the Claim to the Barony of U Isle, by Sir N. H. Nicolas, 1829, p. 315.