-law Judges. The petition of Lord Banbury was subsequently laid
before the Privy Council, when the sudden death of Queen Anne once
more put an end to the proceedings.

When the Hanoverian princes came to the throne, Lord Banbury again
tempted fate by a new petition to the Crown. Sir Philip York, the then
Attorney-General, investigated the whole of the past proceedings from
1600 up to his time, and made a full report to the king, but no
definite decision was given. In 1740, the claimant Charles, so-called
Earl of Banbury, died in France. During his lifetime he had never
ceased to bear the title he had presented five petitions to the
Crown, demanding the acknowledgment of his rights, and neither he nor
any of his family, during the eighty years which had elapsed from the
first preferment of the claim, had ever relinquished an iota of their
pretensions.

At his death Charles, the third assumed Earl of Banbury, left a son
called Charles, who adopted the title, and, dying in 1771, bequeathed
it to his son William, who bore it until his decease in 1776. He was,
in turn, succeeded by his brother Thomas, at whose death, in 1793, it
devolved upon his eldest son, William Knollys, then called Viscount
Wallingford, who immediately assumed the title of Earl of Banbury, and
in 1806 presented a formal petition to the Crown--a petition which was
in due course referred to the Attorney-General, and was by his advice
transferred to the House of Lords.

Until 1806, when the claim was renewed, the pretenders to the Banbury
honours had not only styled themselves earls in all legal documents,
but they had been so described in the proceedings which had taken
place, and in the commissions which they had held; and while their
wives had been styled Countesses of Banbury, their children had borne
those collateral titles which would have been given by courtesy to the
sons and daughters of the Earls of Banbury. But, although there had
thus been an uninterrupted usage of the title for upwards of 180
years, when William Knollys succeeded his father a new system was
practised. His father, the deceased earl, had held a commission in the
third regiment of foot, and during his father's lifetime he had been
styled in his own major-general's commission, "William Knollys,
commonly called Viscount Wallingford." But on his father's decease,
and the consequent descent of his father's claims, the title of earl
was refused to him, and therefore it was that he