Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/165

THE ANCESTOR 117 nobles, etc., on public affairs, it did not occur to his mind that if the knight obeyed he transmitted a right of peerage to his heirs for ever, not to be defeated by any subsequent omission of a king to summon him or his heirs on later occasions ! The Crawford case, 1845-8, was a remarkable example of pedigree proof, and was followed by a claim to the dukedom of Montrose, created in 1488, which resulted in the House of Lords declining to receive evidence of pedigree, and resolving that the dignity had been destroyed by an Act of Parliament in which it was not mentioned. The Devon case, 1831, appeared to recognize the validity of a limitation to heirs male general which is unknown to the law of England. It was decided in favour of the claimant by Lord Brougham, whose judgments in peerage claims are not thought valuable. The decision prompted Mr. Scrope to claim, 1859-69, an earldom of Wiltes, created by Richard IL, and entered in the Roll of Parliament 2 1 Ric. IL (perhaps in error) as limited to the grantee and his heirs male, among several other creations, all to heirs male of the body. The claim was rejected, and the lords took occasion to state that when sitting in Committee for Privilege they were not bound by the decisions of previous committees. Other cases more interesting to novel writers are Strathmore, 1 82 1, and Lauderdale, 1885, where legitimacy depended on domicil ; Breadalbane, 1864, Dundonald, 1863, and Dysart, 1878, depending on the validity of irregular marriages ; the Wicklow case, 1870, in which the widow of an heir presump- tive failed to prove the birth of a son ; and the Aberdeen case, 1 87 1, is a fine example of the evidence to prove identification. There are indeed few vicissitudes of human life and charac- ter not illustrated in a complete collection of peerage evidence, and nowhere can the distinction between the admissibility of evidence and its value, if admissible, be better ascertained. There is perhaps no question more difficult to the layman or more puzzling to the lawyer than this. How often do genealogists, for example, urge the value of a copy of a lost original deed without being prepared to show that the original itself would be evidence if it existed ! How far hearsay evidence, and hearsay upon hearsay, is admissible ; whether evidence, verbal or documentary, is excluded by lis mota ; the value of coincidence ; how far tradition is affected by the