Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 1 Vol 1.djvu/5

PREFACE. 111. three other feudal Baronies, viz., the important ones of Clanricarde, and of Dunboi-ne, and that of Power (or La Poer) of Curraghmore, the respective holders of which, though not among the Peers summoned by Henry VII, were created Peers by patent shortly afterwards by his successor. Of the twelve Peerages created by patent before the reign of Henry VII as above-mentioned, the holders of live were among the fifteen Irish Peers( a ) who were summoned by that King in 1489 to Greenwich, but the remaining ten of those so summoned (two Viscounts and eight Barons) possessed Peerages, the mode of whose creation is, and probably will ever remain unknown ;( b ) it certainly was not by writ,(' ) and probably, in the earlier cases at all events, not by patent. These ten may be called Prescriptive Peerages, of which the holders were, in 1489, acknowledged as Hereditary Peers of Parliament by Henry VII. ( d ) As to Scotland and Ireland, the Editor, though he has not in all cases implicitly adopted the views therein contained, is under the greatest obligation to two most valuable works : one entitled " Inquiry into the Law and Practise in Scottish Peerages, &&," by John Riddell ; the other, ( a ) Cfe, three Earls, i.r., Kildare, Ormonde and Desmond [all three Earldoms having been created by patent) ; three Viscounts, i.e., Buttevaut, Fermoy and Qormanaton (of which the lust alone had been, in 1478, created by patent), and nine Bauons, i.e., Athenry, Kfflgsate, Kerry and Lixuaw, Slaue, Delvin, Killeen, Howtli, Tritnleatou and Dunsany, of which Trimleston alone had been (in 1 46) created by patent. The Earl of Waterford (Karl of Shrewsbury in England) was not Summoned, neither was Lord Portloster, who did not die till H96. The Baronies of Itatowth and of Rathwire were probably under forfeiture. () Even with respect to the Baronies of Killeeu and Duusany, two of the most modern prescriptive peerages, nothing can be ascertained as to the mode of their creation. Camden merely states that " Christopher Pluuket was advaueed [eveetus est] to the dignity of Baron of Killeen, having inherited Killeen (i.e., the manor) from the family of G'usaek." The Barony so created ( though the name and estate were inherited through a female) was, according to the established rule of the Irish Baronage, one descendible to the issue male of the grantee, and has, as such, twice passed over the heir general in favour of the heir male. The writ under which Lord Killeeu's male ancestor, Richard Phmkctt of Kathregan, sat in the Parliament of ■18 Ed. Ill did not entitle him (as in England) to any hereditary Peerage. ( c ) Until the 10th yeai of Henry VIII the power of summoning these Parliaments was in the chief Governor of Ireland though he issued his wit in the lloyal name and style. No act of any subject, however exalted, can, in any ease, create a Peer, and indeed (excepting in the case of the Barony of La Poer) none of the families so summoned ever attempted to advance any such claim. See "Remarks upon the Ancient Baronage of Ireland " [Dublin 1829, Svo., pp. 158], page 16, 31, &c, which little work is a very clear account of these dignities, not improbably written by Mr. Lynch, the Author of the « Feudal Baronies in Ireland." ( J ) A list of the principal Feudal Lordships and Baronies in Ireland before the six- teenth cewUivi . whkAi, oS cowi-sc, comprises (ayiu much more than comprises) the entire Irish Peerage before that period is given at page jx.