PEEKS OK THE REALM. 



PEINE FORTE ET DUKE. 



B 



j to dwide Uie question whether lords spiritual are in strictness 

 Ptbr rralui, the persons who fall under this description are the 

 OP. umnuossiii. mrl. viscount*, and barons, and this without refer- 



i to the socident of age, in earl being as much a peer of the realm, 



though s minor, and consequently not admissible to some of the high 

 privUem of his order. Ladies may also in certain cases be peeresses of 

 the realm in their own right, as by creation, or as inheritors of baronies 

 which descend to heirs general. The wives of peers are peeresses of 

 the realm, and entitled, in consequence of the rank, to certain privi- 



VJnder the several articles DUKE, MARQUESS, EARL, VISCOUNT, and 

 specially BABOX, will be found certain observations pertaining to each 

 distinct order of peers. On the remote origin of this order, and of 

 the privileges belonging to it, especially that great privilege of forming 

 a distinct and independent branch of the legislature, and being at the 

 same time the highest and last court of appeal, great obscurity rests, 

 as it don indeed on the whole of the early constitution and history of 

 Parliament [I'AIIUAMKNT.] The reports of the committee of the 

 House of Peers, which sat during several {nrlinmrnU about the years 

 1817, 1318, and 1 >!'', on the dignity of a peer of the realm, contain a 

 great amount of information on these topics, but leave undecided some 

 of the more important questions connected with it. 



It is now, however, clearly established, as a part of the laws and 

 constitution of the realm, that every peer, of full age and of sound mind, 

 is entitled to Uke his seat in the House of Peers and to shore in all the 

 deliberations and determinations of that assembly ; and that he baa 

 privilege (perhaps not very distinctly defined) of access to the king or 

 queen regnant to advise concerning any matter touching the affairs of 

 the realm. These are great and eminent privileges, but they are 

 accompanied by others which illustrate the great consequence and 

 deference which the constitution of England allows to the possessors 

 of this dignity. If charged with any crime, they are not subject to the 

 ordinary tribunals, but the truth shall be examined by the peers them- 

 selves ; they cannot be arrested in civil cases ; a peer's affirmation on 

 honour is sometimes accepted where in ordinary cases an oath is 

 required ; and scandals concerning them are peculiarly punishable. 



It is now also clearly established that the crown may at its pleasure 

 create a peer that is, advance any person to the dignity, and to any 

 one of the five orders ; but that when once advanced the peer cannot 

 be deprived of the dignity, or any of the privileges connected with it, 

 except on forfeiture of the dignity in due course of law ; and the 

 dignity must descend, on his death, to others (as long as there are 

 persons within the limitation of the grant), with all the privileges 

 appurtenant to it, usually to the eldest son, and the eldest of that 

 eldest son in perpetual succession, and so on, to the eldest male repre- 

 sentative of the original grantee. Some deviation from this rule of 

 descent, however, has occasionally occurred, special clauses having been 

 introduced into the patent, which is the writing by which the crown 

 declares its will in this particular, limiting the descent of the dignity 

 in a particular way, as in the case of the creation of Edward Seymour 

 to the dukedom of Somerset, in the reign of Edward VI., when it was 

 declared that the issue of the second marriage of the duke should suc- 

 ceed to the dignity in preference to the son of a former marriage. 

 But generally, and perhaps universally for the two last centuries, the 

 descent of a dignity has been limited to the next male heir of the 

 blood of the person originally ennobled ; sometimes with remainders 

 to the next male heir of his father or grandfather. There is an instance 

 in the reign of Charles I. of a dignity of peer of the realm being granted 

 to a person (a Lucas) and the heirs male of his body, with remainder to 

 a brother and the heirs mole of his body, with remainder to one who 

 was an illegitimate sou of the father of the grantee, and therefore, in 

 the eye of the law, not of the blood of the grantee and the heirs male 

 of his body. 



It has not unfrequently happened that the crown has granted the 

 dignity of the peerage to a person, with remainder to the female issue 

 or to the female kindred of the grantee and their heirs, as in the case 

 of the Nelson peerage. In these cases it has generally happened either 

 that the party had no male issue to inherit, and that the other moles 

 of the family were also without male issue, or that there was already 

 a dignity inheritable by the male heir of the party on whom a new 

 dignity was conferred to descend to his female issue. 



The peers who possess what are called baronies in fee are the 

 descendants and representatives of certain old families for the most 

 part long ago extinct in the male line, but which had in their day 

 summon* to parliament as peers, and whose dignity it has been 

 sssniniiil descended like a tenement to a daughter, if only one daughter 

 and heir, or to a number of daughters as co-heirs, when there was no 

 son. This principle has been so often recognised, that it may be 

 regarded as a part of the constitution of the peerage ; and in virtue 

 of it, if A die seised of a barony in fee, leaving B a daughter and >nl y 

 child and M a brother, the dignity shall inhere in B in preference to 

 If, and shall descend on the death of B to her eldest son. In case A, 

 instead of leaving B his only daughter, leave several daughters, B, C, 

 D, Ac., and no son, the dignity shall not go to M, but among the 

 daughters ; and since it is imparticipablc, it is in a manner lost as long 

 as those daughters, or issue from more than one of them, exist. But 

 should those daughters die with only one of them having left issue, 

 and that issue a son, he shall inherit on the death of his aunts. This 



is what is meant by the dignity of a peer of the realm being m 

 tibeyitnre ; it is divided among several persons, not one of 

 possessing it wholly, none of them can then-fore <nj\ it. jl'.u- 

 C-ESERS.] But the crown possesses the power of .l.t, running tho 

 abeyance ; that is, it may declare iU pleasure that some one of the 

 daughters, or the eldest male representative of some one of tin- 

 daughters, shall possess the dignity, as would have been the case had 

 there been a single daughter only ; and in case of an heir thus enter- 

 ing into possession of the dignity, he shall take that precedence among 

 the barons in the House of Peers which belonged to the family of 

 whom he is the representative. A female who is only a co-heir of a 

 co-heir may also have the abeyance determined in her favour. 



Many of the peers, having a superior title limited to heirs male, 

 have baronies in fee inherent in them ; so that if A, one of them, die, 

 leaving a daughter, an only child, and a brother, the brother shall take 

 the superior title, and the barony descend to the daughter and tli.- 

 heirs of her body. An eldest son of a |>eer enjoying o barony and a 

 superior dignity is sometimes also called to tbe House of Peers in his 

 father's barony. When this is done, it is by writ of summons without 

 a patent of creation (it not being in fact a creation of a new dignity, 

 but only in anticipation of the son's possession of it), and this i* (!.. 

 case also when a barony is taken out of abeyance. 



Thus the English portion of the House of Peers, or House of I 

 for they are terms used in precisely the same sense, arc the lords 

 spiritual that is, the archbishops and bishops and the lords temporal, 

 who are of one of the five orders (though many of the dukes possess 

 dignities of the four inferior kinds also, and their ancestors may have 

 long hod seats in that house in those inferior dignities before the 

 family was raised to the dukedom), and these are either persons who 

 have been created peers by the crown, who have been admitted into 

 the peerage by favour of the crown in virtue of the determination of 

 an abeyance, or who have inherited the dignity from some ancestor on 

 whom it had been conferred. 



The fullest information on all points connected with the antiquarian 

 part of this subject is to be obtained from the Reports of tin 

 mittee of the House of Lords before referred to. Biographical ae 

 of the more eminent of the persons who have possessed these dignities 

 ore to be found in that very valuable book, Dugdale's ' Baronage of 

 England.' In 1708, Arthur Collins, a London bookseller, publish' -d in 

 a single volume an account of tbe peers then existing and thrir 

 ancestors, a work of great merit. The demand for it appears to have 

 been great, as it was followed by other editions in quick succession. 

 It assumed a higher character in 1734, when it appeared in four 

 volumes, great additions having been mode to every article. 

 that time there has been a succession of editions, each professing to be 

 improvements on the preceding, and each bringing up the state of tho 

 peerage to tho time when the work was printed. But as titles become 

 extinct, and consequently the families bearing them ore left out of the 

 peerage-books, those who wish to possess a complete account of those 

 eminent persons must procure many of the earlier editions of the work, as 

 well os that which, being the latest, will for the most part be called the 

 best. There are certain minor works giving the genealogical details of 

 the descent of the dignities, which are published almost every year ; 

 but they do not possess the authority of the older works, being too 

 courtly in the manner of their compilation to state the tfkiJt truth. 



PE'GASUS, one of the old constellations, called by Aratus (and al,-o 

 by Hyginus) simply the Horse. The mythological accounts of Pegasus 

 (a son, it was said, of Neptune and the Gorgon Medusa, though how 

 with such parentage he came to be a horse is not stated), the creator 

 of the fountain Hippocrene at one kick, are more than usually uncon- 

 nected, and the constellation is not a whole horse, but only Hi. 

 fore legs, and shoulders, to which a pair of wings is attached ; nor is 

 there any fountain near the place, except that with which Aquarius 

 feeds one of the fishes. The figure .of Pegasus is invi i-t< d. tli 

 being farther from the north pole than the body : the constellation is 

 surrounded by Cygnus, Equuleus, Aquarius, Pisces, and Andromeda. 

 There ore three bright stars, a (or Markab), '/3 (or Scheat), 7 (or 

 Algeuib), which form a rectangular figure with a Andromeda;, : i 

 cannot be mistaken when the latter constellation is known. M. 

 a lino drawn through a and ft points to the pole star, in a line which 

 produced passes through the pointers of the Great Bear. 



The following are the principal stars : 



No. In Catalogue 



No. in Cutaloirao of llriUih 



Character. of Plaautecd. Association. Magnitude. 



8 ;:,<;] 24 



10 7671 4 



24 7706 4 



i 



K 

 I 



C 



t 

 I 



A 



D 







M 



42 

 44 



47 

 48 

 3 



r,4 

 M 



7723 

 7908 

 7923 

 7845 

 7958 

 BOM 

 8034 

 26 



4 

 3 

 S 



M 



'2 

 2 

 2 



PEINE FORTE ET DURE. The " strong and hard pain," which 



