Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/481

PEERAGE 459 Qstion a: o the p rage o he Ids ,s] itual. >ne of p-s. sonal privileges of peerage, but they have had no seats in the House of Lords. But this is a modern accident and anomaly. The persons spoken of hold peerages which entitled their holders to seats in the parliaments of Scotland and Ireland as long as those parliaments were distinct bodies. And their present holders, if not members of the House of Lords in esse, are such in posse. They have a capacity for being chosen to seats in that House which is not shared by other persons. Their membership of the House is rather suspended than altogether taken away. Their rather anomalous case hardly affects the general principle that, as far as the hereditary peerage is concerned, peerage and membership of the House of Lords are the same thing. A few words are also needed as to the effect of the earlier doctrine which rules that peerage is an attribute of the lords temporal only and not of the lords spiritual (see Lords Report, i. 323, 393 ; ii. 75). This is doubtless meant to imply a certain inferiority on the part of the spiritual lords, as not sharing in that nobility of blood which is looked on as the special attribute of the heredi tary peerage. But the inferiority thus implied, as it has nothing to do with parliamentary powers, has also nothing to do with precedence. The lords spiritual as a body are always mentioned first ; one class of them, namely the archbishops, take precedence of all temporal peers who are not of the royal family, as the other bishops take preced ence of the temporal barons. What the distinction is con cerned with is simply certain personal privileges, such as the right of being tried by the court of our lord the king in parliament, that is by the House of Lords or some part of it, instead of in the ordinary way by a jury. The doctrine which denies "peerage" to the spiritual lords is altogether contrary to earlier precedents ; but the way in which it came about is one of the most curious parts of our inquiry. It was the natural result of the ideas under whose influence the temporal peerage grew up and put on its distinguishing character. The use of the word peers (pares) to denote the members of the House of Lords first appears in the 14th century, and it was fully established before the end of that century. The name seems to be rather a direct importation from Prance than anything of natural English or even Norman growth. In the 12th and 13th centuries the great men of the realm appear under various names, English, Latin, and French, ivitan, sajnentes, magnates, proceres, grantz, and the like ; they are pares only incidentally, as other men might be. In the Great Charter the word pares, in the phrase judicium parium, has simply the general meaning which it still keeps in the rule that every man shall be tried by his peers, the peer (in the later sense) by his peers and the commoner by his. In the 13th century this seems to have still been the only meaning of the word in England. This is illustrated by the story of Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester (see R. Wendover, iv. 277 ; M. Paris, ed. Luard, iii. 252 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist., ii. 48, 183), when in 1233 the right of being tried by their peers was asserted on behalf of Richard earl Marshall, and others. The bishops and other lords exhort the king to make peace with certain of his nobles and other subjects, " quos absque judicio parium exsulaverat," &c. The Poitevin bishop, either through ignorance or of set purpose, misunderstood the phrase, and answered that in England there were no peers (pares) as there were in France, and that therefore the king might deal with all his subjects as he chose by means of his own justices only. 1 The word pares is here clearly used in one sense and understood in another. The English lords used 1 "Quod non suut pares in Anglia, sicut in regno Francorum, unde licet regi Anglorum per justitiarios quos constituent quoslibet de regno suo exulare et mediante judicio coudemnare. " the word in its older general sense ; Peter des Roches used it in the special sense which it bore in France. Neither used it in the sense which it took in the next century. It was perfectly true that there Avas in England no body of men answering to the peers of France, of whom we shall speak presently. But there is every likelihood that the name, as describing a particular body of men in England, was borrowed from the peers of France. But the thing is more important than the name. What ever view may be taken of the constitution of the ancient Witenagem6t, we may safely assume that that assembly, with whatever change in its constitution, is personally continued in the House of Lords. That house consists House of of two classes of men who have never lost their right Lords ; to a personal summons, together with certain other classes j^JT 1 " who have acquired that right in later times. Two constitu- classes of men, namely earls and bishops, have, with a tion ; the certain interval in the 17th century, sat continuously bishops in the councils of the nation from the earliest times. an(iearls - These two classes are those whose presence connects the earliest and the latest English assemblies. From the time when the House of Lords began to take anything like its present shape, other classes of men, spiritual and temporal, were summoned as well as the bishops and earls, but not with the same regularity as they were. Some abbots were always summoned from the beginning, and a few other churchmen afterwards obtained the same right. But, while every bishop except in a few cases of personal enmity on the part of the king was summoned as a matter of course, there was great irregularity in summon ing of abbots. So some barons were always summoned as well as the earls ; but, while every earl was with a few such exceptions as in the case of the bishops summoned as a matter of course, there was great irregularity in sum moning the barons. The bishops and earls in short were personages too great to be left out ; so were a few of the greatest abbots. Lesser men, spiritual or temporal, might be summoned or not according to a hundred reasons of convenience, caprice, or accident. But it is only the common tendency of things that the occasional summons should grow into the perpetual summons, and that the perpetual summons should, wherever it was possible, that is, in the case of the temporal lords, grow into the hereditary sum mons. In other words, the doctrine was gradually estab- Growth lished that, when a man was once summoned, a right of of the . summons was created for him and his heirs for ever. The j 16 establishment of this doctrine called into being a new order t riue of men, of lower rank than the bishops and earls but of equal parliamentary power, namely the class of barons having an hereditary right to seats in parliament. Pre sently, in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, the ranks of the temporal peerage were increased by the in vention of new orders, those of duke, marquess, and vis count, the two former classes taking precedence of the ancient earls. It is easy to see how the growth of these several classes New of hereditary lords of parliament tended to strengthen the position notion of the temporal peerage as a body by itself, apart of the from all other men, even from those lords of parliament ^ e whose seats were not hereditary. Here were five classes of men who were not peers in the sense of strict equality among themselves, for they were divided by rigid rules of precedence, but who were peers in the sense of having each of them an equal right to something peculiar to themselves, something which was so far from being shared with any who were not lords of parliament that it was not shared by all who were. The archbishop took precedence of the duke, the bishop took precedence of the baron ; but duke and baron alike shared in something which archbishop and bishop had not, the hereditary right to a summons to