ORIGIN.

The House of Lords is by far the more ancient of the two Houses of Parliament, being derived from the King's Great Council as it existed in the reigns immediately following the Conquest. Of this Council the constitution and powers seem not to have been precisely defined, and there is some difference of opinion as to what they really were in practice. It included magnates ecclesiastical and temporal, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and apparently other persons of distinction, summoned by the king. In early times it seems likely that all tenants-in-chief of the king received the summons, which later was only issued directly to the greater tenants holding baronies, while the lesser, summoned through the sheriff of the county, and appearing by representation, were the germ of the knights of the shires in the Lower House. The creation of baronies by patent, apart from tenure, dates from the latter part of the fourteenth century. The effect of a summons by writ in creating a peerage in early times has been a matter of some question. It seems that some persons were summoned by writ for one parliament, and not again, others were summoned individually, but not their descendants. The same irregularity, however, is found in the issue of writs to boroughs for the election of members of the House of Commons for some time after the commencement of its existence, so that it is difficult to draw the line in this matter between constitutional and arbitrary exercises of prerogative. It was held in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in accordance with what had gradually become an established custom, that a writ of summons conveyed a hereditary peerage. Such a peerage is considered to descend to heirs general; it goes into abeyance in the case of a peer so created having several daughters, until it is called out of abeyance by the Crown as the descendants of all but one co-heiress are extinct. It thus differs from the usual rule of English patents descending to heirs male only, and from that of some Scotch peerages descending to an elder daughter. In the case of the Earl of Arundel, in 1626, it was decided by the House that every peer of full age is entitled to his summons, and that the House should refuse to proceed to business in case such summons to any peer is omitted. That the Crown no longer possesses the right of creating a life peerage, conferring a seat and vote in the House, was decided in the well-known case of Lord Wensleydale in 1856. The only temporal lords sitting without hereditary peerages are the two Lords of Appeal created under the Acts regulating the appellate jurisdiction of the House, passed in 1876 and 1897. These lords hold the rank of barons for life,

and may sit and vote after resignation of their offices.

APPELLATE JURISDICTION.

The Appellate jurisdiction of the House has its origin in the practice of appealing for justice to the King in Parliament. Petitions of this kind were addressed to the King in the Great Council, but after the establishment of the Courts at Westminster, such petitions were ordinarily referred to the proper Court. The Lords and the Privy Council appear to have exercised certain judicial powers jointly. The Lords exercised a right of appellate jurisdiction down to the reign of Henry IV., and after some disuse, it was resumed in that of Elizabeth. In 1585, the establishment of the Court of Exchequer Chamber, as intermediate between the Common Law Courts and the House of Lords, definitely recognised its right to hear appeals from those Courts. The House of Lords in the following century claimed in some cases even an original jurisdiction. But two cases in the reign of Charles II., which created for the time a violent conflict between the Houses -those of Skinner v. the East India Company and Shirley v. Sir John Fagg-ended by the defeat in the first case of the claim to original jurisdiction, and the establishment in the second of the right to entertain appeals from Courts of Equity as well as of Common Law.

This jurisdiction, originally exercised by the whole House, or any members who chose to attend, has, since the case of O'Connell's appeal (1844), been left to the Law Lords-that is, the Chancellor and other peers holding, or having held, high legal positions. By the recent Act, as before mentioned, two Lords of Appeal are especially appointed to exercise this jurisdiction, under the presidency of the Lord Chancellor. But any other legal peer, and, theoretically, any peer whatever, retains the right to attend and deliver judgment.

THE LORDS SPIRITUAL.

Before the Reformation, the Lords Spiritual formed the larger part of the House. By the disappearance of the mitred abbots under Henry VIII., they were reduced to the twenty-six bishopsbeing then a minority of the House, which about that time included fifty-nine temporal peers. Their number in the first Parliament of his predecessor had been only twenty-nine.

Under the Union with Ireland, the Irish bishops sat by rotation in the House, but they are now excluded by the Irish Church Act of 1869. At present, 24 English bishops sit as barons, the junior bishops above that number for the time being having no seats. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of London, Durham, and Winchester are always members of the