authority; but it manifestly appears that the Nevilles
were preferred to the Fanes for the particular barony in question;
though some satisfaction was made to the claimant of the latter family
by calling her to a different peerage.

[470] The continuance of barony by tenure has been controverted by Sir
Harris Nicolas, in some remarks on such a claim preferred by the present
earl Fitzharding while yet a commoner, in virtue of the possession of
Berkeley castle, published as an Appendix to his Report of the L'Isle
Peerage. In the particular case there seem to have been several
difficulties, independently of the great one, that, in the reign of
Charles II., barony by tenure had been finally condemned. But there is
surely a great general difficulty on the opposite side, in the
hypothesis that, while it is acknowledged that there were, in the reigns
of Edward I. and Edward II., certain known persons holding by barony and
called peers of the realm, it could have been agreeable to the feudal or
to the English constitution that the king, by refusing to the posterity
of such barons a writ of summons to parliament, might deprive them of
their nobility, and reduce them for ever to the rank of commoners.

[471] It has been doubted, notwithstanding the authority of Spelman, and
some earlier but rather precarious testimony, whether the chancellor
before the Conquest was any more than a scribe or secretary. Palgrave,
in the Quarterly Review, xxxiv. 291. The Anglo-Saxon charters, as far as
I have observed, never mention him as a witness; which seems a very
strong circumstance. Ingulfus, indeed, has given a pompous account of
chancellor Turketul; and, if the history ascribed to Ingulfus be
genuine, the office must have been of high dignity. Lord Campbell
assumes this in his Lives of the Chancellors.

[472] The words of the petition and answer are the following:--

"Item, que nul franc homme ne soit mys a respondre de son franc
tenement, ne de riens qui touche vie et membre, fyns ou redemptions, par
apposailles devant le conseil notre seigneur le roi, ne devant ses
ministres queconques, sinoun par proces de ley de ces en arere use."

"Il plest a notre seigneur le roi que les leies de son roialme soient
tenuz et gardez en lour force, et que nul homme soit tenu a respondre de
son fraunk tenement, sinoun par processe de ley: mes de chose que touche
vie ou membre, contemptz ou excesse, soit fait come ad este use ces en
arere." Rot. Par.