Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/773

APPENDIX H 751 CoHHAM The facts in this case were, in the view of the Crown, quite simple, the only question raised by the Attorney General being the attainders of Henry and George Brooice in 1603. Henry de Cobham was summoned from 6 Edw. II to 9 Edw. Ill, but cannot be shown to have sat; his son John was summoned from 24 to 29 Edw. Ill, and no sitting could be proved for him also; the grandson, John, was summoned from 29 Edw. Ill to 7 Hen. IV, and his being a Trier of Petitions in i Ric. II was accepted as proof of sitting. His only child, Joan, married Sir John de la Pole, and their daughter Joan married no less than five times, only one of her husbands. Sir John Oldcastle, being summoned to Parliament; but no sitting was proved for him. She had no surviving male issue, and only one surviving daughter, also named Joan, by her second husband, Sir Reynold Braybrooke. This last-named Joan married Sir Thomas Brooke, who was never summoned to Parliament; but their son Edward was summoned from 23 Hen. VI to 2 Edw. IV, and all his descendants were summoned. The last of them, Henry Brooke, was attainted (with his brother George) and forfeited in 1603, dying s.p. 161 8/9, when his heir was his brother William, through whom the claim was made. Counsel for the petitioners naturally pressed their Lordships to refer back the first sitting in 1377 to the first writ in 13 13, and alternative resolutions were offered for the Committee's consideration by Mr. Cozens-Hardy on behalt of Alexander Henry Leith, and by Lord Robert Cecil on behalf of the other two petitioners. The first of these was: That Henry de Cobham, who was summoned to ParUament by a writ dated 8 Jan. 6 Edw. II (13 13), was entitled to a Barony by writ descendible to the heirs general of his body. As this proposed resolution was tantamount to a declaration that a writ without proof of sitting created a heritable barony, it might be supposed that the Committee would reject it in favour of the much more accurate one offered by Lord Robert Cecil, in which the dates of creation and baptismal name of the grantee were modestly left blank: That the Barony of Cobham is an ancient Barony in fee. That it is proved by the Writ of Summons addressed to Henry de Cobham in the sixth year of Edw. II and by the sitting in Parliament of his grandson and heir, John, Lord Cobham, in the first year of Ric. II, and by the other evidence adduced on behalf of the Petitioners that the Barony of Cobham was in the year of vested in the said Lord Cobham. Their Lordships effected a compromise by taking the first sentence of the second suggestion and adding thereto the whole of the first suggestion, thus going out of their way to adopt a resolution implying that a writ of summons alone was sufficient to bestow a barony inheritable by heirs general of the body of the grantee.