installation and all foreign, nay, Irish peers; for not only these, but the eldest sons of peers of Great Britain, though frequently titular lords, are only esquires in the law, and and established custom; for which see, among others, Camden's Britannia, tit. ordines; Milles's Catalogue of Honour, edit. 1610, and Chamberlayne's Present State of England, p. 3. ch. 3. TABLE OF PRECEDENCE. * Barons. +Speaker of the house of commons. Viscounts' eldest sons. || Knights of the garter. | Chancellor of the exchequer. || Chancellor of the duchy. Chief justice of the king's bench. Chief justice of the common | Chief baron of the exchequer. || Knights bannerets. Yeomen. Tradesmen. Artificers. Labourers. N.B. Married women and widows are entitled to the same rank among each other, as their husbands would respectively have borne between themselves, except such rank is merely professional or official;-and unmarried women to the same rank as their eldest brothers would bear among men, during the lives of their fathers. must be so named in all legal proceedings. As for gentlemen, says Sir Thomas Smith, they be made good cheap in this kingdom: for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth the liberal sciences, and, to be short, who can live idly and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called master, and shall be taken for a gentleman. A yeoman is he that hath free land of forty shillings by the year; who was anciently thereby qualified to serve on juries, vote for knights of the shire, and do any other act, where the law requires one that is probus et legalis homo. The rest of the commonalty are tradesmen, artificers, and labourers. QUESTIONS. Why is the king styled the fountain of honour ? What is the first title of rank, next to the royal family? What is a marquess? An earl? Who first created viscounts? What is a baron? How do the bishops come to sit in the house of lords? What are the two methods of creating peers? Describe them. By whom must a nobleman be tried? Why? Is there any difference between the marriage of a peeress with a commoner, and with a peer but of rank inferior? When does a peer speak upon his honour, and when must he be sworn? What is scandalum magnatum? How may a peer lose his nobility ? What is the order of dignity next to the peerage? How is a baronet created? What is a knight of the bath? Whence the name? What are knights bachelors? Explain the term equites aurati. Who are esquires? What are the four classes of esquires named by Camden? Who are gentlemen? THE MILITARY AND NAVAL ESTATES. THE military state includes the whole of the soldiery; or such persons as are peculiarly appointed among the rest of the people, for the safeguard and defence of the realm. In the time of our Saxon ancestors, as appears from Edward the confessor's laws, the military force of this kingdom was in the hands of the dukes or heretochs* who were constituted through every province and county in the kingdom; being taken out of the principal nobility, and such as were most remarkable for being "sapientes, fideles, et animosi." Their duty was to lead and regulate the English armies, with a very unlimited power; "prout eis visum fuerit, ad honorem coronæ et utilitatem regni." And because of this great power they were elected by the people in their full assembly, or folkmote, in the same manner as sheriffs were elected: following still that old fundamental maxim of the Saxon constitution, that where any officer was intrusted with such power, as if abused might tend to the oppression of the people, that power was delegated to him by the vote of the people themselves. This large share of power, thus conferred by the people, though intended to preserve the liberty of the subject, was perhaps unreasonably detrimental to the prerogative of the crown; and accordingly we find a very ill use made of it by Edric duke of Mercia, in the reign of king Edmund Ironside; who, by his office of duke or heretoch, was entitled to a large command in the king's army, and by his repeated treacheries at last transferred the crown to Canute the Dane. It seems universally agreed by all historians, that king Alfred first settled a national militia in this kingdom, and by his prudent discipline made all the subjects of his do * From the Saxon here (exercitus) and togen (ducere)—the general of an army. minions soldiers: but we are unfortunately left in the dark as to the particulars of this his so celebrated regulation; though, from what was last observed, the dukes seem to have been left in possession of too large and independent a power: which enabled duke Harold, on the death of Edward the confessor, though a stranger to the royal blood, to mount, for a short space, the throne of this kingdom, in prejudice of Edgar Atheling, the rightful heir. Upon the Norman conquest, the feudal law was introduced here in all its rigour, the whole of which is built on a military plan. I shall not now enter into the particulars of that constitution, but shall only observe, that, in consequence thereof, all the lands in the kingdom were divided into what were called knights' fees, in number above sixty thousand; and for every knight's fee a knight, or soldier, miles, was bound to attend the king in his wars, for forty days in a year; in which space of time, before war was reduced to a science, the campaign was generally finished, and a kingdom either conquered or victorious. By this means, the king had, without any expense, an army of sixty thousand men always ready at his command. This personal service, in process of time, degenerated into pecuniary commutations or aids, and at last the military part of the feudal system was abolished at the restoration, by statute 12 Car. II. c. 24. In the mean time, we are not to imagine that the kingdom was left wholly without defence, in case of domestic insurrections, or the prospect of foreign invasions. Besides those, who by their military tenures were bound to perform forty days' service in the field; first the assize of arms, enacted 27 Hen. II. and afterwards the statute of Winchester under Edward I., obliged every man, according to his estate and degree, to provide a determinate quantity of such arms as were then in use, in order to keep the peace; and constables were appointed in all hundreds by the latter statute, to see that such arms were provided. These weapons were changed by the statute, 4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 2. into others of more modern service: but, both this and the former provisions, were repealed in the reign of James I. While these continued in force, it was usual, from time to time for our princes to issue commissions of array, and send into every county officers in whom they could confide, to muster and array, or set in military order, the inhabitants of every district; and the form of the commission of array was settled in parliament in the 5 Hen. IV., when it was also provided that no man should be compelled to go, out of the kingdom, at any rate, nor out of his shire, but in cases of urgent necessity; nor should provide soldiers, unless by consent of parliament. About the reign of king Henry VIII., or his children, lieutenants began to be introduced, as standing representatives of the crown, to keep the counties in military order; for we find them mentioned as known officers in the statute 4 & 5 Ph. & M. c. 3. though they had not been then long in use, for Camden speaks of them, in the time of queen Elizabeth, as extraordinary magistrates constituted only in times of difficulty and danger. But the introduction of these commissions of lieutenancy, which contained in substance the same powers as the old commissions of array, caused the latter to fall into disuse. In this state things continued, till the repeal of the statutes of armour in the reign of king James the First: after which, when king Charles the First had, during his northern expeditions, issued commissions of lieutenancy, and exerted some military powers, which, having been long exercised, were thought to belong to the crown, it became a question in the long parliament, how far the power of militia did inherently reside in the king; being now unsupported by any statute, and founded only upon immemorial usage. This question, long agitated with great heat and resentment on both sides, became at length the immediate cause of the fatal rupture between the king and his parliament: the two houses not only denying this prerogative of the crown, the legality of which might perhaps be somewhat doubtful; but also seizing into their own hands the entire power of the militia, of the illegality of which there could never be any doubt at all. Soon after the restoration of king Charles the Second, when the military tenures were abolished, it was thought proper to ascertain the power of the militia, to recognize the sole right of the crown to govern and command them, and to put the whole into a more regular method of military subordination; and the order, in which the militia now stands by law, is principally built upon the statutes which were then enacted. It is true the two last of them are apparently repealed; but many of their provisions are re |