PEERS OF THE REALM are persons to whom the law and con stitution attribute certain high dignities and privileges. Without meaning to decide the question whether lords spiritual are in strictness pens of the realm, the persons who fall under this description are the duke., marquesses, earls, viscounts, and barons, and this without refer ence to the accident of age, an earl being as much a peer of the realm, though a minor, and conseluently not admissible to some of the high of his order. Ladies may also in certain case be peeresses of the realm in their own right, as by creation, or as inheritors of baronies which descend to heirs general. The wives of peers are peeresses of the realm, and entitled, in consequence of the rank, to certain privi l Une several article! DUKE, MARQUESS, East., VISCOUNT, and especially Basos, will be found certain observations pertaining to each distinct order of peers. On the remote origin of this order, and of the privileges belonging to it, especially that great privilege of forming a distinct and Independent branch of the legislature, and being at the *une time the highest and last court of appeal, great obscurity rests, as it does indeed on the whole of the early constitution and history of Parliament. [Paituatirscr.1 The reports of the committee of the House of Peers, which satduring several parliaments about the years 1517, ISIS, and ISIS, on the dignity of a peer of the realm, contain a great amount of information on these topics, but leave undecided some of the more important questions connected with it.
It is now, however, clearly established, as a part of the laws and constitution of the realm, that every peer, of full age and of sound mind, is entitled to take his seat in the House of Peers and to share in all the deliberations and determinations of that assembly ; and that he has privilege (perhaps not very distinctly defined) of access to the king or queen regnant to advise concerning any matter touching the affairs of the realm. These are great and eminent privileges, but they are accompanied by others which illustrate the great consequence and deference which the constitution of England allows to the possessors of this dignity. If charged with any crime, they are not subject to the
ordinary tribunals, but the truth shall be examined by the peers them selves ; they cannot be arrested in civil eases; a peer's affirmation on honour is sometimes accepted where in ordinary cases an oath is required ; and scandals concerning them are peculiarly punishable.
It is now also clearly established that the crown may at its pleasure create a peer—that is, advance any person to the dignity, and to any one of the five orders ; but that when once advanced the peer cannot be deprived of the dignity, or any of the privileges connected with it, except on forfeiture of the dignity in due course of law ; and the dignity must descend, on his death, to others (as long as there are persona within the limitation of the grant), with all the privileges appurtenant to it, usually to the eldest son, and the eldest of that eldest son in perpetual succession, and so on, to the eldest male repre sentative of the original grantee. Some deviation from this rule of descent, however, has occasionally occurred, special clauses having been introduced into the patent, which is the writing by which the crown declares its will in this particular, limiting the descent of the dignity in a particular way, as in the case of the creation of Edward Seymour to the dukedom of Somerset, in the reign of Edward VL, when it was declared that the issue of the second marriage of the duke should suc ceed to the dignity in preference to the son of a former marriage. But generally, and perhaps universally for the two last centuries, the descent of a dignity has been limited to the next male heir of the blood of the person originally ennobled; sometimes with remainders to the next male heir of his father or grandfather. There is an instance in the reign of Charles I. of a dignity of peer of the realm being granted to a person (a Lucas) and the heirs male of his body, with remainder to a brother and the heirs male of his body, with remainder to one who was an illegitimate son of the father of the grantee, and therefore, in the eye of the Law, not of the blood of the grantee and the heirs male of his body.