Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/43

1920 EARLDOM OF CHESTER 35 whether the comitatus, the lands of the earldom, were partible or not ; but, as will be seen, that question was not decided on this, but on a later occasion. The earl duly presented himself by his attorney at Northamp- ton and proceeded to make several interesting preliminary objec- tions. His first point was that he was not bound to answer to the writ because Dominus Gomes (which must here mean the palatine earl) was not bound to acknowledge any summons relating to lands in the county of Chester which was issued outside such county, in, e.g., Northamptonshire. The king's writ did not run in the earl's county, and he asked the king to uphold him in the liberties which he and his ancestors had always enjoyed. On this point he claimed the court should not give judgement without a decision of his peers {sine consideracione parium suorum). He also suggested that the plaintiffs ought to come to his court in Cheshire, when he would himself give them full justice. After an adjournment for some time, probably for the consideration of precedents on the important claim to a iudicium parium by a palatine earl, a decision was given on the earl's first preliminary objection as follows : that as it had been the custom hitherto that the earl's peers and others who had similar liberties, such as the bishop of Durham and the earl marshal, answered concerning lands within their liberties on summonses made to (or, at) their lands {factas ad terras suas) ^ outside such liberties, therefore the earl must answer to the writ. (This ascription of palatine rights to the earl marshal is one of the features of this litigation to which Maitland draws very brief attention .^ It does not seem of great importance, however, except as additional evidence that, as earl of Pembroke, the earl marshal was considered to be of palatine rank.) A second objection by the earl that he ought not to answer without the countess of Lincoln (apparently absent on the second hearing), a coparcener with D'Aubigny and the Ferrers, Avithout whom they ought not to be heard as they were as one heir, also failed. She had been summoned, said the court, and knew all about the second hearing, and her coparceners were not estopped because she was unwilling to plead. The earl was in mercy for this bad point, but, nothing daunted, he tried again to evade the issue by raising what had been a frequent objection since Magna Carta and its reissue not many years before. The case was. he said, coram Rege, and as the plea was a common plea, it was clearly contrary to the charter of liberties that it should follow the king in incerto loco. The plaintiffs argued that the fact that the plea had been begun coram Rege ' The earl had lands in Northamptonshire, and was summoned to attend there. ^ Bracton'e Note Book, i. 128. D2