Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/775

APPENDIX H 753 autres come piert de record pamont en cest rolle du parlement." That is the granting of the prayer that establishes what I ventured to put before your Lordships just now — that at this time there had crept in the innovation of this particular limitation. (^) One might suppose from the above that the sole object of the petitions was to get the limitations of these earldoms altered, whereas, of course, their main purpose was to get the dignities with their great possessions restored; the terms of inheritance were merely incidental. The Committee accepted without question this grotesque picture of the earls combining in 1399 to "change the fashions" in limitations. We have seen earlier in these pages that the alteration in terms of inheritance was the natural outcome of the changed conditions consequent on the failure of the feudal system, in which the ancient tenures had their origin, and that signs of a change of principle began to appear soon after the creation of the first earldom in tail male in the reign of Edward II. (*) Idejn^ 2 Dec. 1912, pp. 237-8. 95