, as well as from the words to the fact; both are fallacious, and
betray them into some vacillation and perplexity. They do not, however,
question, on the whole, but that a new constitution of the legislative
assemblies of the realm had been introduced before the 15th year of
Edward II., and that "the practice had prevailed so long before as to
give it, in the opinion of the parliament then assembled, the force and
effect of a custom, which the parliament declared should thereafter be
considered as established law." (p. 293.) This appears to me rather an
inadequate exposition of the public spirit, of the tendency towards
enlarging the basis of the constitution, to which the "practice and
custom" owed its origin; but the positive facts are truly stated.

NOTE IX. Page 124.

Writs are addressed in 11th of Edw. II. "comitibus, majoribus baronibus,
et praelatis," whence the Lords' committee infer that the style used in
John's charter was still preserved (Report, p. 277). And though in those
times there might be much irregularity in issuing writs of summons, the
term "majores barones" must have had an application to definite persons.
Of the irregularity we may judge by the fact that under Edward I. about
eighty were generally summoned; under his son never so many as fifty,
sometimes less than forty, as may be seen in Dugdale's Summonitiones ad
Parliamentum. The committee endeavour to draw an inference from this
against a subsisting right of tenure. But if it is meant that the king
had an acknowledged prerogative of omitting any baron at his discretion,
the higher English nobility must have lost its notorious privileges,
sanctioned by long usage, by the analogy of all feudal governments, and
by the charter of John, which, though not renewed in terms, nor intended
to be retained in favour of the lesser barons, or tenants _in capite_,
could not, relatively to the rights of the superior order, have been
designedly relinquished.

The committee wish to get rid of tenure as conferring a right to
summons; they also strongly doubt whether the summons conferred an
hereditary nobility; but they assert that, in the 15th of Edward III.,
"those who may have been deemed to have been in the reign of John
distinguished as _majores barones_ by the honour of a personal writ of
summons, or by the extent and influence of their property, from the
other tenants in chief of the crown, were now clearly become, with the
earls and the newly create