This system remained in force two hundred years, and in the reign of Richard II.* was rendered more severe by the fact that no labourer without letters patent, under the king's seal, could quit his hundred or wapentake. According to 7 Henry IV. c. 17, only such folks could apprentice their children to trades as were owners of land yielding twenty shillings yearly rent,† a sum which at that period was not within the means of many. In Fortescue's time the free peasants had grown important. He speaks of many, who in consequence of their holdings, were qualified to be jurors. Since the Tudors this class of the community rapidly declined. The terrible social consequences did not escape the quick-minded patriot, even at that period. Bacon complains of the disappearance of the prosperous peasant class, which he styles the groundwork of all healthful political life.§ Modern English legislation recognizes only the free-born; a slave who touches English soil becomes forthwith free, inasmuch as he cannot contract any obligation to serve his master as a slave; and according to the English law the mere fact of purchase does not give any title to the services of a man.|| From the 1st of August, 1834, negro-slavery ceased to exist in all the British colonies. All Englishmen are equal before the law, the legal pre-eminence of classes is unknown; the privileges of peers and peeresses are only of a special personal nature; the son of a peasant may legally attain the highest rank in church and state. A misalliance between nobles and commoners, or exclusion of commoners from the inheritance of baronial estates, are as unknown to the English law as the exemption of the great landholders among the nobility from taxation.** An antiquated statute forbids the marriage of a noble ward with a man of the citizen or peasant class, but if the noble maiden at the time of her marriage were fourteen years old, and had contracted it without compulsion, the marriage was valid. To check mis-alliances, Elizabeth decreed should marry without her consent; but this statute that no peer 12 Richard II. c. 3, called "Statute of Labourers." + Crabb, 336. See chap. iv. of this Book. § Essay on the Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates. || Bl. i. 127. Christian's Notes, ed. 1809, note 4, 127, note 1. p. 425. Christian's Note, 23. Bl. i. 407. ** Hallam, M. A., iii. 347. fell into desuetude under the Stuarts.* Any one in England may establish entails. The right of primogeniture is a fundamental law in the succession to landed property, consequently the common law of the land and not any privilege of the nobility. Such a distinction as we have already seen is not recognised in law; the nobility or peerage is not a class, but only an office. With the exception of a seat in the upper house, which any English peer may take, the peerage merely enjoys the right to be judged by the upper house, in cases of treason and felony.† Peeresses enjoy the same right. This follows from the principle of Magna Charta c. 29, that every Englishman is to be judged by sentence of his peers in case he be accused either of treason or felony. In misdemeanours, consequently for libel, riot, conspiracy, the greatest peer in the realm is tried by a jury composed of commoners. Scotch peers have the like rights, whether they sit in the upper house or not. Irish peers enjoy all the privileges of the English peers so long as they are not elected to the lower house, in which latter case they are tried as commoners. English peers who are minors, and who do not yet sit in the upper house, can only be judged by verdict of their equals.§ to Bishops are not reckoned among the nobility, although they are members of the House of Lords, and for all offences they are tried by the ordinary courts.|| Peers and peeresses can only be imprisoned for treason, and consequently not for debt. This privilege arises merely from their office, as permanent councillors of the crown. Without any logical sequence, it is granted likewise peeresses. The libelling of a peer or peeress is a crime of a special nature "scandalum magnatum."¶ Under these three heads the exceptional jurisdiction in cases of felony, exemption from insolvency, and the greater protection against libel—the actual privileges of the nobility are summed up. On the trial of a peer in the upper house, his verdict is given upon "honour," and not upon oath, whereas every other Englishman is bound, when called as a witness, to take an oath.** Même de nos jours, en France, après soixante ans de démocratie, les familles anciennes et les nouvelles qui semblent confondues en toutes choses, y évitent encore le plus qu'elles le peuvent de se mêler par le mariage.-De Tocque ville, L'Ancien Régime, p. 147. + Crabb, 357. Coke, Inst. iii. 30. § Bl. iv. 265; 39, 40 George III. c. 67. For instance, in the trial of the bishops under James II. Bowyer, 453. **In judicio non crediturnisi juratis. The king is the fountain of honour, and can create new titles. The following, however, are those in ordinary use: 1. Duke, a Saxon title; the Conqueror did not grant it. Edward III. first conferred it on the Black Prince, who assumed the title of "Duke of Cornwall." The title of "duke" first became a permanent one under James I. 2. Marquess, Marchio, Marquis, Markgrave, from the office of guarding the frontiers of the realm. The earliest creation of Marquess, as a title of honour, was in the ninth year of Richard II., when it was conferred on Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford. 3. Earl (Comes or Count). From Ealdorman, Elder, a Saxon title. The Norman title, " count," disappeared as a title of the English nobility. Whereas for duke and marquess the corresponding female titles, duchess and marchioness, exist; that for earl is wanting. The wife is accordingly in England always styled countess. The title "earl" is one so peculiarly English, that it cannot be made to correspond with the continental title of count; a foreign count consequently never becomes "earl" in England, but is always styled "count." The earls have no longer any connection with the administration or government or the country. In writs and commissions, the king addresses earls as "Truest and well-beloved cousin." This custom derives from Henry IV., who was related to all the earls in his kingdom. 4. The title Viscount (Vicecomes) first came into use in the time of Henry VI., and was first conferred on John Beaumont. The rank and precedence were more distinctly defined in the 23rd of Henry VI., to be above the heirs and sons of earls, and immediately after the earls themselves. manor. 5. Barons (from baro, a man) were originally all peers; until Richard II. all barons were "tenentes in capite," or lords of the From Edward III. (according to others, Richard II., or Henry IV.),* barons possessed of no barony, but having the mere title, sit as barons in parliament. At the present day there is no such connection between the title and the barony, as that the alienee of a barony becomes thereby ennobled. The crown can give to one peer precedence over every other. From 31 Henry VIII. c. 10, however, the precedence by law of the actual classes of the nobility, so far as it confers a seat in * Bowyer, 445, parliament and in the council, is established. No actual notice is taken by the upper house of this statute. The peerage is, as a rule, hereditary in the male branch. Females also of the same line may, in certain cases, inherit the dignity on failure of males.* The dignity is in abeyance in the event of several co-parceners coming after the last holder.† A dignity or name of nobility does not descend to or vest in co-heirs, as they are altogether incapable of taking in the only way in which the subject-matter can be enjoyed-i.e., by wearing the dignity. The title is then in a state of abeyance and reverts to, and so long as such abeyance continues, remains in the crown-the fountain of honour from which it originally proceeded. It is competent to the crown to termi Here George succeeds to the Duke of S., and excludes his aunt Emily and his sister Georgina, as the next male heir. Here Blandina succeeds as next in succession to the Duke of B. Here the peerage is in abeyance, because there is no one to inherit. nate the abeyance of the dignity in favour of either of the co-heirs or the heir of any of the co-heirs. The king, however, may transfer a peerage to one of several sisters, which will then be inherited in the male branch. The king may also nominate any woman as "peeress in her own right," thus the widow of Canning received for herself and her heirs the rank of the peerage. Life peerages to which women were appointed have ceased to exist since the reign of George II. Lord Brougham maintains that such nominations, by reason of their long non-user, would at the present day be against law. A peeress in her own right does not lose her privilege by marrying a commoner; should a peeress, however, have acquired rank only by marriage, she loses it on re-marrying a person not a peer.* If a duchess, whether noble by birth or by marriage, marry a peer, baron, or earl, she remains duchess all the same, because her husband was noble, and all noblemen are of equal rank (pares, peers).† The king may create new English and Irish, but not new Scotch peers. The elevation to the peerage does not ennoble the collaterals. The ordinary form of nomination to the peerage is by patent, which grants the rights of a peer to the individual named and the heirs-male of his body. It confers nobility at once, whether the peer take his seat in the upper house or not. If one is summoned by royal writ to assist at the sittings at the upper house, he must, in order to acquire the dignity of peer, actually take his seat, in which case the dignity descends to his lineal descendants, both male and female.§ In the nomination by writ, the right to inherit is understood as of course; whereas in that by letters patent, the right to inherit must be actually expressed to allow of the peerage passing by inheritance. It may likewise be so limited as absolutely to exclude females. Territorial peerage, depending on the possession of a specific landed estate, wholly disappeared under the house of Lancaster. The peerage is lost by death or by "Bill of Attainder." Under Edward IV., George Nevill, Duke of Bedford, was degraded by Coke, Inst. ii. 50. + Bowyer, 468. The first instance of a barony conferred by patent was in the twelfth year of Richard II., when Sir John Holt, a judge of the Common Pleas, was created Lord Beauchamp of Kidderminster. § Bowyer, 466. |