nqueror made the possession of landed
property directly dependent on the discharge of public duties. So
that if, on the one hand, the Conquest carried out the principle

"That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,"[1]

on the other, it insisted on the higher principle that in return for
such *taking* and *keeping* the victors should bind themselves by oath
to help defend the kingdom, and to help govern it.

[1] Wordsworth's "Rob Roy's Grave."

In later reigns the King summoned other influential men to attend
Parliament. To distinguish them from the original barons by land
tenure, they were called "barons by writ" (S263). Subsequently it
became customary for the Sovereign to create barons by letters patent,
as is the method at present (S263).

Edward I, 1295, is generally considered to have been the "Creator of
the House of Lords" in the form in which it has since stood.[2] From
his time the right to sit in the House of Lords was limited to those
whom the King summoned, namely, the hereditary Peers (save in the case
of a very limited number of life Peers), and to the upper clergy.

[2] W. Stubb's "English Constitutional History," II, 184, 203; also
Feilden's "Short Constitutional History of England," pp. 121-122.

The original baronage continued predominant until the Wars of the
Roses (S316) destroyed so many of the ancient nobility that, as Lord
Beaconsfield says, "A Norman baron was almost as rare a being in
England then as a wolf is now." With the coming in of the Tudors a new
nobility was created (S352). Even this has become in great measure
extinct. Perhaps not more than a fourth of those who now sit in the
House of Lords can trace their titles further back than the Georges,
who created great numbers of Peers in return for political services
either rendered or expected.

Politically speaking, the nobility of England, unlike the old nobility
of France, is strictly confined and strictly descends to but one
member of the family,--the eldest son receiving the preference. None
of the children of the most powerful Duke or Lord has, during his
father's life, any civil or legal rights or privileges above that of
the poorest and most obscure native-born day laborer in Great
Britain.[1]

[1] Even the younger children of the Sovereign are no exception to
this rule. The only one born with a title is the eldest, who is Duke
of Cornwall by birth, and is