Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/774

 752 APPENDIX H The resolution, after reciting the descent, attainders, and coheirs (see vol. iii, p. 351)5 concluded: That the said Barony of Cobham would, if the effect of the said attainders be removed, be in abeyance and at His Majesty's disposal. Future generations may not credit it, but it is a fact that in Mar. 1916 it was announced in the Press that a Bill would be introduced in Parlia- ment to reverse the attainder of 1603 with a view to calling the Barony out of abeyance in favour of Gervase Disney Alexander. And time was found for this Bill, although our Ministers profess to be overworked with legisla- tion needed for the War! THE EARLDOM OF OXFORD CASE After the earlier portion of this Appendix had gone to press the writer was allowed, by the courtesy of the officers of the House of Lords, to examine the transcripts of the shorthand notes in this case. The crux of the case, of course, was whether the proceedings in 1392 amounted to a new creation or whether they determined an abeyance. To account for the change in the limitation from heirs general to heirs male the Attorney General said : Then, my Lords, in 1399 there is this significant fact, that the innovation crept in of limiting the descent to the dignity to the heirs male of the body. ...(*) Up to that time it had always been thought that it was the better plan to have a Dignity in fee, but from about this time or a little before it, it evidently occurred to the nobles that it would he better to have a limitation to the immediate descendants male ... At that time it was the fashionable plan to have the limitations to heirs male.C) In support of these statements the Attorney General referred to the petitions in Parliament of the Earls of Warwick and of Arundel and Surrey in i Hen. IV. The dignities of these earls, which had been held in fee, had been forfeited in the previous reign, and petitions were presented in Parliament for their restoration with limitations to heirs male. With reference to these petitions the Attorney General remarked : It is significant, my Lords, that at this time these Acts of 1399 . . . took the form of petitions to the King, and in the petitions to the King was the prayer for this limitation, and then in the particular case to which I am calling attention [the Earldom of Arundel and Surrey] the King did assent and this Roll of Parliament was the record of it. The consequence is that it amounts to a prayer by the Earl to limit to heirs male, and assent by the King and Parliament to that being done. Your Lordships will find after the petition in which those words occur to which I have called attention, " Le roy ad fait g'ce au dit Thomas count Darundeft bf as (*) MS. Minutes of Proceedings, 2 Dec. 191 2, p. 235. C') Idem, 3 Dec, p. 8. No doubt the learned counsel meant to say "heirs male of the body." The limitation to " heirs male " was unusual and confined to only a few earldoms.