It will thus be seen that the Conqueror made the possession of landed property directly dependent on the discharge of public duties.  So that if, on the one hand, the Conquest carried out the principle

“That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can,"[1]

on the other, it insisted on the higher principle that in return for such taking and keeping the victors should bind themselves by oath to help defend the kingdom, and to help govern it.

[1] Wordsworth’s “Rob Roy’s Grave.”

In later reigns the King summoned other influential men to attend Parliament.  To distinguish them from the original barons by land tenure, they were called “barons by writ” (S263).  Subsequently it became customary for the Sovereign to create barons by letters patent, as is the method at present (S263).

Edward I, 1295, is generally considered to have been the “Creator of the House of Lords” in the form in which it has since stood.[2] From his time the right to sit in the House of Lords was limited to those whom the King summoned, namely, the hereditary Peers (save in the case of a very limited number of life Peers), and to the upper clergy.

[2] W. Stubb’s “English Constitutional History,” II, 184, 203; also Feilden’s “Short Constitutional History of England,” pp. 121-122.

The original baronage continued predominant until the Wars of the Roses (S316) destroyed so many of the ancient nobility that, as Lord Beaconsfield says, “A Norman baron was almost as rare a being in England then as a wolf is now.”  With the coming in of the Tudors a new nobility was created (S352).  Even this has become in great measure extinct.  Perhaps not more than a fourth of those who now sit in the House of Lords can trace their titles further back than the Georges, who created great numbers of Peers in return for political services either rendered or expected.

Politically speaking, the nobility of England, unlike the old nobility of France, is strictly confined and strictly descends to but one member of the family,—­the eldest son receiving the preference.  None of the children of the most powerful Duke or Lord has, during his father’s life, any civil or legal rights or privileges above that of the poorest and most obscure native-born day laborer in Great Britain.[1]

[1] Even the younger children of the Sovereign are no exception to this rule.  The only one born with a title is the eldest, who is Duke of Cornwall by birth, and is created Prince of Wales.  The others are simply commoners.  See E.A.  Freeman’s “Growth of the English Constitution.”