edford and Gloucester by request of the lords and
commons.[319] But the patent of Sir John Cornwall, in the tenth of Henry
VI., declares him to be made lord Fanhope, "by consent of the lords, in
the presence of the three estates of parliament;" as if it were designed
to show that the commons had not a legislative voice in the creation of
peers.[320]

[Sidenote: And by patent.]

The mention I have made of creating peers by act of parliament has
partly anticipated the modern form of letters patent, with which the
other was nearly allied. The first instance of a barony conferred by
patent was in the tenth year of Richard II., when Sir John Holt, a judge
of the Common Pleas, was created lord Beauchamp of Kidderminster. Holt's
patent, however, passed while Richard was endeavouring to act in an
arbitrary manner; and in fact he never sat in parliament, having been
attainted in that of the next year by the name of Sir John Holt. In a
number of subsequent patents down to the reign of Henry VII. the assent
of parliament is expressed, though it frequently happens that no mention
of it occurs in the parliamentary roll. And in some instances the roll
speaks to the consent of parliament where the patent itself is
silent.[321]

[Sidenote: Clergy summoned to attend parliament.]

It is now perhaps scarcely known by many persons not unversed in the
constitution of their country, that, besides the bishops and baronial
abbots, the inferior clergy were regularly summoned at every parliament.
In the writ of summons to a bishop he is still directed to cause the
dean of his cathedral church, the archdeacon of his diocese, with one
proctor from the chapter of the former, and two from the body of his
clergy, to attend with him at the place of meeting. This might, by an
inobservant reader, be confounded with the summons to the convocation,
which is composed of the same constituent parts, and, by modern usage,
is made to assemble on the same day. But it may easily be distinguished
by this difference--that the convocation is provincial, and summoned by
the metropolitans of Canterbury and York; whereas the clause commonly
denominated praemunientes (from its first word) in the writ to each
bishop proceeds from the crown, and enjoins the attendance of the clergy
at the national council of parliament.[322]

The first unequivocal instance of representatives appearing for the
lower clergy is in the year 1255, when they are expressly named by the
au