OT: baronies by writ

> Anton Sherwood wrote:
> > When a Parliament is convened, the Crown writes to all the Lords
> > something like "You, John Blank, are summoned to Parliament as Lord
> > Foo."  If John Blank did not already bear the title Lord Foo, that
> > summons creates it; this is a barony by writ, with the inheritance
> > rules I described before.
Irina Rempt wrote:
> Ooh, I like that! What if John Blank is summoned to Parliament as
> Lord Foo, but he is in fact already Lord Bar?
Baronies-by-mistake do exist; my source (Heywood <British Titles> 1951)
implies that they mostly arose from accelerations:

"By immemorial usage the Crown has power to accelerate in certain cases
the descent of a peerage, so as to make it pass during the life of the
holder to his or her eldest son and heir apparent just as if the parent
were dead.  This power, however, can be exercised only where the parent
is the holder of more than one peerage.  Thus, if the father holds an
earldom as well as a barony, the son may be summoned to a seat in the
House of Lords in right of the father's barony.
        ...
"Thus in the case of Charles Pawlet, son and heir apparent of the second
Duke of Bolton, the writ was addressed to him as `Carlo Paulet de
Basing', whereas the name of the Duke's barony was St.John de Basing.
This writ and sitting were held to constitute the creation of a new
peerage [i.e. Baron Paulet de Basing].
        ...
"A peerage created in error in this way would be on a par with the
ancient baronies by writ and inheritable by females.  It is to this fact
that the Duke of Atholl owes his English baronies of Strange and Percy.
        "The original Barony of Strange, of Knokin, was a minor title of the
Earls of Derby ... The fifth Earl died in 1594 without male issue, when
the earldom passed to his brother, William, but the Barony of Strange in
fact fell in abeyance between his three daughters ...
        "Its history from that point is curious.  It seems to have been assumed
that William inherited the barony also, and ... in 1628 his elder son,
James, was summoned to Parliament in his father's lifetime as Baron
Strange. ...
        "The mistake seems to have been discovered some time after the death of
... the tenth Earl. ... When a remote kinsman succeeds, as in this case,
the descent from the original grantee has to be proved very carefully,
and it was presumably during this complicated investigation that doubts
first arose about the 1628 writ of summons to the sixth Earl's son.
Later it was definitely decided that the original Strange barony was in
fact in abeyance between the heirs of the fifth Earl's daughters, and
that in consequence the 1628 writ had created a new barony.  As in the
circumstances of its creation this new peerage was inheritable by
females, it was promptly claimed and allowed to James, second Duke of
Atholl, maternal great-grandson of the original [1628] grantee ....


--
Anton Sherwood  --  http://www.ogre.nu/

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