It has not unfrequently happened that the crown has granted the dignity of the peerage to a person, with remainder to the female issue or to the female kindred of the grantee and their heirs, as in the case of the Nelson peerage. In these cases it has generally happened either that the party had no male issue to inherit, and that the other males of the family were also without male issue, or that there was already a dignity inheritable by the male heir of the party on whom a new dignity was conferred to descend to his female issue.
The peers who possess what are called baronies in fee are the descendants and representatives of certain old families for the most 'art long ago extinct in the male line, but which had in their day summons to parliament as peers, and whole dignity it has been assumed descended like a tenement to a daughter, if only one daughter and heir, or to a number of daughters as coheirs, when there was no son. This 'principle has been so often recognised, that it may be regarded as a part of the constitution of the peerage; and in virtue of it, if A die seised of a barony in fee, leaving II a daughter and only child and 31 a brother, the dignity shall inhere in B in preference to and shall descend on the death of It to her eldest son. In case A, instead of leaving II his only daughter, leave several daughters, B, C, D, dc., and no son, the dignity shall not go to 31, but among the daughters; and since it is imparticipable, it is in a manner lost as long as those daughters, or issue from more than one of them, exist. But should those daughters die with only one of them having left Issue, and that issue a son, he shall inherit on the death of his aunts. This --s---- — is what is meant by the dignity of a peer of the realm being in abeyance ; it is divided among several persons, not one of whom possessing it wholly, none of them can therefore enjoy it. [Pali. CENEKS.] But the crown possesses the power of determining the abeyance; that is, it may declare its pleasure that some one of the daughters, or the eldest male representative of some one of the daughters, shall possess the dignity, as would have been the case had there been a single daughter only ; and in case of an heir thus enter ing into possession of the dignity, he shall take that precedence among the barons in the House of Peers which belonged to the family of whom he is the representative. A female who is only a oo-heir of a co-heir may also have the abeyance determined in her favour.
Many of the peers, having a superior title limited to heirs male, have baronies in fee inherent in them ; so that if A, one of them, die, leaving a daughter, an only child, and a brother, the brother shall take the superior title, and the barony descend to the daughter and the heirs of her body. An eldest son of a peer enjoying a barony and a
superior dignity is sometimes also called to the House of Peers in his father's barony. When this is done, it is by writ of summons without a patent of creation (it not being in fact a creation of a new dignity, but only in anticipation of the son's possession of it), anti this is the ease also when a barony is taken out of abeyance.
Thus the English portion of the House of Peers, or House of Lords, for they are terms used in precisely the same sense, are the lonls spiritual—that is, the archbishops and bishops—and the lords temporal, who are of one of the five orders (though many of the dukes possess dignities of the four inferior kinds also, and their ancestors may have long had seats in that house in thbse inferior dignities before the family was raised to the dukedom), and these are either persons who have been created peers by the crown, who have been admitted into the peerage by favour of the crown in virtue of the determination of an abeyance, or who have inherited the dignity from some ancestor on whom it had been conferred.
The fullest information on all points connected with the antiquarian part of this subject is to be obtained from the Reports of the Com mittee of the Ilouso of Lords before referred to. Biographical accounts of the more eminent of the persons who have possessed these dignities are to be found in that very valuable book, Dugdale's `Baronage of England.' In 1708, Arthur Collins, a London bookseller, published in a single volume an account of the peers then existing and their ancestors, a work of great merit. The demand for it appears to have been great, as it was followed by other editions in quick succession. It assumed a higher character in 1734, when it appeared in four octavo volumes, great additions having been made to every article. From that time there has been a succession of editions, each professing to be improvements on the preceding, and each bringing up the state of the peerage to the time when the work was printed. But as titles become extinct, and consequently the families bearing them are loft out of the peerage-books, those who wish to possess a complete account of those eminent persona must procure many of the earlier editions of the work, as well as that which, being the latest, will for the most part be called the best. There are certain minor works giving the genealogical details of the descent of the dignities, which are published almost every year; but they do not possess the authority of the older works, being too courtly in the manner of their compilation to state the whole truth.