[z] Vita Ricardi II. p. 85.
[a] Otterbourne, p. 191. He says of the knights returned on this occasion, that they were not elected per communitatem, ut mos exigit, sed per regiam voluntatem.
[] Prynne's second Reg. p. 141; Rot. Parl. vol. v. p. 367.
[c] Prynne's second Reg. p. 450.
[d] vol. i. p. 96, 98; vol. ii. p. 99, 105; vol. ii. p. 243.
[e] Upon this dry and obscure subject of inquiry, the nature and constitution of the house of lords during this period, I have been much indebted to the first part of Prynne's Register, and to West's Inquiry into the Manner of creating Peers; which, though written with a party motive, to serve the ministry of 1719 in the peerage bill, deserves, for the perspicuity of the method and style, to be reckoned among the best of our constitutional dissertations.
[f] Baronies were often divided by descent among 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.
[g] 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.
[h] Prynne, p. 142, &c.; West's Inquiry.
[] Prynne, p. 141.