ong females into many
parts, each retaining its character as a fractional member of a barony.
The tenants in such case were said to hold of the king by the third,
fourth, or twentieth part of a barony, and did service or paid relief in
such proportion.

[293] Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 42 and 58; West's Inquiry, p. 28, 33.
That a baron could only be tried by his fellow barons was probably a
rule as old as the trial per pais of a commoner. In 4 E. III. Sir Simon
Bereford having been accused before the lords in parliament of aiding
and advising Mortimer in his treasons, they declared with one voice that
he was not their peer; wherefore they were not bound to judge him as a
peer of the land; but inasmuch as it was notorious that he had been
concerned in usurpation of royal powers and murder of the liege lord (as
they styled Edward II.), the lords, as judges of parliament, by assent
of the king in parliament, awarded and adjudged him to be hanged. A like
sentence with a like protestation was passed on Mautravers and Gournay.
There is a very remarkable anomaly in the case of Lord Berkley, who,
though undoubtedly a baron, his ancestors having been summoned from the
earliest date of writs, put himself on his trial in parliament, by
twelve knights of the county of Gloucester. Rot. Parl. vol. ii. p. 53;
Rymer, t. iv. p. 734.

[294] Prynne, p. 142, &c.; West's Inquiry.

[295] Prynne, p. 141.

[296] It is worthy of observation that the spiritual peers summoned to
parliament were in general considerably more numerous than the temporal.
Prynne, p. 114. This appears, among other causes, to have saved the
church from that sweeping reformation of its wealth, and perhaps of its
doctrines, which the commons were thoroughly inclined to make under
Richard II. and Henry IV. Thus the reduction of the spiritual lords by
the dissolution of monasteries was indispensably required to bring the
ecclesiastical order into due subjection to the state.

[297] Perhaps it can hardly be said that the king's prerogative
compelled the party summoned, not being a tenant by barony, to take his
seat. But though several spiritual persons appear to have been
discharged from attendance on account of their holding nothing by
barony, as has been justly observed, yet there is, I believe, no
instance of any layman's making such an application. The terms of the
ancient writ of summons, however, in fide et _homagio_ quibus nobis
tenemini, afford a presumption th