the peers.
Lord Holdernesse is the heir of that family.]

[*** Spel. Gloss, hi verb. Domesday.]

[**** Dug. Bar. vol. i. p. 79. Ibid. Origines
Juridicales p. 13,]

[***** Spel. Glos. it verb. Baro.] in parliament
before the king had made him restitution of his
temporalities; and during the vacancy of a see, the guardian
of the spiritualities was summoned to attend along with the
bishops.

The supreme legislative power of England was lodged in the king and
great council, or what was afterwards called the parliament. It is not
doubted but the archbishops, bishops, and most considerable abbots were
constituent members of this council. They sat by a double title: by
prescription, as having always possessed that privilege, through the
whole Saxon period, from the first establishment of Christianity; and
by their right of baronage, as holding of the king in capite by
military service. These two titles of the prelates were never accurately
distinguished. When the usurpations of the church had risen to such a
height, as to make the bishops affect a separate dominion, and regard
their seat in parliament as a degradation of their episcopal dignity,
the king insisted that they were barons, and, on that account, obliged,
by the general principles of the feudal law, to attend on him in his
great councils. Yet there still remained some practices, which supposed
their title to be derived merely from ancient possession.

The barons were another constituent part of the great council of the
nation These held immediately of the crown by a military tenure: they
were the most honorable members of the state, and had a right to be
consulted in all public deliberations: they were the immediate vassals
of the crown, and owed as a service their attendance in the court of
their supreme lord. A resolution taken without their consent was likely
to be but ill executed: and no determination of any cause or controversy
among them had any validity, where the vote and advice of the body did
not concur. The dignity of earl or count was official and territorial,
as well as hereditary; and as ali the earls were also barons, they
were considered as military vassals of the crown, were admitted in that
capacity into the general council, and formed the most honorable and
powerful branch of it.

But there was another class of the immediate military tenants of the
crown, no less, or probably more numerous tha