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conclusion that without Peel's aid in office there was no prospect | sagacious modesty yielded him the first place, and became prime of success. Under that pressure Peel consented to remain, and all the cabinet approved. The consent of the king, which could scarcely have been obtained except by the duke and Peel, was extorted, withdrawn (the ministers being out for a few hours), and again extorted; and on the 5th of March 1829 Peel proposed Roman Catholic emancipation in a speech of more than four hours. The apostate was overwhelmed with obloquy. Having been elected for the university of Oxford as a leading opponent of the Roman Catholics, he had thought it right to resign his seat on being converted to emancipation. His friends put him again in nomination, but he was defeated by Sir R. H. Inglis. He took refuge in the close borough of Westbury, whence he afterwards removed to Tamworth, for which he sat till his death. Catholic emancipation was forced on Peel by circumstances; but it was mainly owing to him that the measure was complete, and based upon equality of civil rights. This great concession, however, did not save the Tory government. The French Revolution of July 1830 gave fresh strength to the movement against them, though, schooled by the past, they promptly recognized King Louis Philippe. The parliamentary reform movement was joined by some of their offended Protestant supporters. The duke of Wellington committed them fatally against all reform, and the elections went against them on the demise of the Crown; they were beaten on Sir H. Parnell's motion for a committee on the civil list, and Wellington took the opportunity to resign rather than deal with reform.

While in office, Peel succeeded to the baronetcy, Drayton Manor and a great estate by the death of his father (May 3, 1830). The old man had lived to see his fondest hopes fulfilled in the greatness of his son; but he had also lived to see that a father must not expect to fix his son's opinions-above all, the opinions of such a son as Sir Robert Peel, and in such an age as that which followed the French Revolution.

Sir Robert Peel's resistance to the Reform Bill won back for him the allegiance of his party. His opposition was resolute but it was temperate, and once only he betrayed the suppressed fire of his temper, in the historical debate of the 22nd of April 1831, when his speech was broken off by the arrival of the king to dissolve the parliament which had thrown out reform. He refused to join the duke of Wellington in the desperate enterprise of forming a Tory government at the height of the storm, when the Grey ministry had gone out on the refusal of the king to promise them an unlimited creation of peers. By this conduct he secured for his party the full benefit of the reaction which he no doubt knew was sure to ensue. The general election of 1832, after the passing of the Reform Bill, left him with barely 150 followers in the House of Commons; but this handful rapidly swelled under his management into the great Conservative party. He frankly accepted the Reform Act as irrevocable, taught his party to register instead of despairing, appealed to the intelligence of the middle classes, whose new-born power he appreciated, steadily supported the Whig ministers against the Radicals and O'Connell, and gained every moral advantage which the most dignified and constitutional tactics could afford. To this policy, and to the great parliamentary powers of its author, it was mainly due that, in the course of a few years, the Conservatives were as strong in the reformed parliament as the Tories had been in the unreformed. It is vain to deny the praise of genius to such a leader, though the skill of a pilot who steered for many years over such waters may sometimes have resembled craft. But the duke of Wellington's emphatic eulogy on him was, "Of all the men I ever knew, he had the greatest regard for truth." The duke might have added that his own question, "How is the king's government to be carried on in a reformed parliament ?" was mainly solved by the temperate and constitutional policy of Sir Robert Peel, and by his personal influence on the debates and proceedings of the House of Commons during the years which followed the Reform Act..

In 1834, on the dismissal of the Melbourne ministry, power came to Sir Robert Peel before he expected or desired it. He hurried from Rome at the call of the duke of Wellington, whose

minister, holding the two offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. He vainly sought to include in his cabinet two recent seceders from the Whigs, Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham. A dissolution gave him a great increase of strength in the house, but not enough. He was out voted on the election of the speaker at the opening of the session of 1835, and, after struggling on for six weeks longer, resigned on the question of appropriating part of the revenues of the Church in Ireland to national education. His time had not yet come; but the capacity, energy and resource he displayed in this short tenure of office raised him immensely in the estimation of the house, his party and the country. Of the great budget of practical reforms which he brought forward, the plan for the commutation of tithes, the ecclesiastical commission, and the plan for settling the question of dissenters' marriages bore fruit. From 1835 to 1840 he pursued the same course of patient and far-sighted opposition. In 1837 the Conservative members of the House of Commons gave their leader a grand banquet at Merchant Taylors' Hall, where he proclaimed in a great speech the creed and objects of his party. In 1839, the Whigs having resigned on the Jamaica Bill, he was called on to form a government, and submitted names for a cabinet, but resigned the commission owing to the young queen's persistent refusal to part with any Whig ladies of her bedchamber (see VICTORIA, QUEEN). In 1840 he was hurried into a premature motion of want of confidence. But in the following year a similar motion was carried by a majority of one, and the Whigs ventured to appeal to the country. The result was a majority of ninety-one against them on a motion of want of confidence in the autumn of 1841, upon which they resigned, and Sir Robert Peel became first lord of the treasury, with a commanding majority in both Houses of Parliament.

The crisis called for a master-hand. The finances were in disorder. For some years there had been a growing deficit, estimated for 1842 at more than two millions, and attempts to supply this by additions to assessed taxes and customs duties had failed. The great financier took till the spring of 1842 to mature his plans. He then boldly supplied the deficit by imposing an income-tax on all incomes above £150 a year. He accompanied this tax with a reform of the tariff, by which prohibitory duties were removed and other duties abated on a vast number of articles of import, especially the raw materials of manufactures and prime articles of food. The increased consumption, as the reformer expected, countervailed the reduction of duty. The income-tax was renewed and the reform of the tariff carried still farther on the same principle in 1845. The result was, in place of a deficit of upwards of two millions, a surplus of five millions in 1845, and the removal of seven millions and a half of taxes up to 1847, not only without loss, but with gain to the ordinary revenue of the country. The prosperous state of the finances and of public affairs also permitted a reduction of the interest on a portion of the national debt, giving a yearly saving at once of £625,000, and ultimately of a million and a quarter to the public. In 1844 another great financial measure, the Bank Charter Act, was passed and, though severely controverted and thrice suspended at a desperate crisis, has ever since regulated the currency of the country. In Ireland O'Connell's agitation for the repeal of the Union had now assumed threatening proportions, and verged upon rebellion. The great agitator was prosecuted, with his chief adherents, for conspiracy and sedition; and, though the conviction was quashed for informality, repeal was quelled in its chief. At the same time a healing hand was extended to Ireland. The Charitable Bequests Act gave Roman Catholics a share in the administration of charities and legal power to endow their own religion. The allowance to Maynooth was largely increased, notwithstanding violent Protestant opposition. Three queen's colleges, for the higher education of all the youth of Ireland, without distinction of religion, were founded, notwithstanding violent opposition, both Protestant and Roman Catholic. The principle of toleration once accepted, was thoroughly carried out. The last remnants of the penal laws

were swept from the statute-book, and justice was extended to | land. In 1849, in a speech on the Irish Poor Laws, he first the Roman Catholic Church in Canada and Malta. In the same suggested, and in the next year he aided in establishing, a comspirit acts were passed for clearing from doubt Irish Presbyterian mission to facilitate the sale of estates in a hopeless state of marriages, for settling the titles of a large number of dissenters' encumbrance. The Encumbered Estates Act made no attempt, chapels in England, and removing the municipal disabilities of like later legislation, to secure by law the uncertain customary the Jews. The grant for national education was trebled, and rights of Irish tenants, but it transferred the land from ruined an attempt was made, though in vain, to introduce effective landlords to solvent owners capable of performing the duties of education clauses into the factory bills. To the alienation of any property towards the people. On the 28th of June 1850 Sir part of the revenues of the Established Church Sir Robert Peel Robert Peel made a great speech on the Greek question against never would consent; but he had issued the ecclesiastical com- Lord Palmerston's foreign policy of interference. This speech mission, and he now made better provision for a number of was thought to show that if necessary he would return to office. populous parishes by a redistribution of part of the revenues of It was his last. On the following day he was thrown from his the Church. The weakest part of the conduct of this great horse on Constitution Hill, and mortally injured by the fall. government, perhaps, was its failure to control the railway Three days he lingered and on the fourth (July 2, 1850) he mania by promptly laying down the lines on a government plan. died. All the tributes which respect and gratitude could pay It passed an act in 1844 which gave the government a right of were paid to him by the sovereign, by parliament, by public men purchase, and it had prepared a palliative measure in 1846, but of all parties, by the country, by the press, and, above all, by was compelled to sacrifice this, like all other secondary measures, the great towns and the masses of the people to whom he had to the repeal of the corn laws. It failed also, though not without given "bread unleavened with injustice." He would have been an effort, to avert the great schism in the Church of Scotland. buried among the great men of England in Westminster Abbey, Abroad it was as prosperous as at home. It had found disaster but his will desired that he might be laid in Drayton church. It and disgrace in Afghanistan. It speedily ended the war there, also renounced a peerage for his family, as he had before declined and in India the invading Sikhs were destroyed upon the Sutlej. the garter for himself when it was offered him by the queen The sore and dangerous questions with France, touching the through Lord Aberdeen. right of search, the war in Morocco, and the Tahiti affair, and with the United States touching the Maine boundary and the Oregon territory, were settled by negotiation.

Yet there were malcontents in Sir Robert Peel's party. The Young Englanders disliked him because he had hoisted the flag of Conservatism instead of Toryism on the morrow of the Reform Bill. The strong philanthropists and Tory Chartists disliked him because he was a strict economist and an upholder of the new poor law. But the fatal question was protection. That question was being fast brought to a crisis by public opinion and the Anti-Corn-Law League. Sir Robert Peel had been recognized in 1841 by Cobden as a Free Trader, and after experience in office he had become in principle more and more so. Since his accession to power he had lowered the duties of the sliding scale, and thereby caused the secession from the cabinet of the duke of Buckingham. He had alarmed the farmers by admitting foreign cattle and meat under his new tariff, and by admitting Canadian corn. He had done his best in his speeches to put the maintenance of the corn laws on low ground, and to wean the landed interest from their reliance on protection. The approach of the Irish famine in 1845 turned decisively the wavering balance. When at first Sir Robert proposed to his cabinet the revision of the corn laws, Lord Stanley and the duke of Buccleuch dissented, and Sir Robert resigned. But Lord John Russell failed to form a new government. Sir Robert again came into office; and now, with the consent of all the cabinet but Lord Stanley, who retired, he, in a great speech on the 27th of January 1846, brought the repeal of the corn laws before the House of Commons. In the long and fierce debate that ensued he was assailed, both by political and personal enemies, with the most virulent invective, which he bore with his wonted calmness, and to which he made no retorts. His measure was carried; but immediately afterwards the offended protectionists, led by Lord George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, coalesced with the Whigs, and threw him out on the Irish Coercion Bill. He went home from his defeat, escorted by a great crowd, who uncovered as he passed, and he immediately resigned. So fell a Conservative government which would otherwise have probably ended only with the life of its chief.

Though out of office he was not out of power. He had "lost a party, but won a nation." The Whig ministry which succeeded him leant much on his support, with which he never taxed them. He joined them in carrying forward free-trade principles by the repeal of the navigation laws. He helped them to promote the principle of religious liberty by the bill for the emancipation of the Jews. One important measure was his own. While in office he had probed, by the Devon commission of inquiry, the sores of Ireland connected with the ownership and occupation of

Those who judge Sir Robert Peel will remember that he was bred a Tory in days when party was a religion; that he entered parliament a youth, was in office at twenty-four and secretary for Ireland at twenty-five; that his public life extended over a long period rife with change; and that his own changes were all forward and with the advancing intellect of the time. They will enumerate the great practical improvements and the great acts of legislative justice of those days, and note how large a share Sir Robert Peel had, if not in originating, in giving thorough practical effect to all. They will reflect that as a parliamentary statesman he could not govern without a party, and that it is difficult to govern at once for a party and for the whole people. They will think of his ardent love of his country, of his abstinence from intrigue, violence and faction, of his boundless labour through a long life devoted to the public service. Whether he was a model of statesmanship may be doubted. Models of statesmanship are rare, if by a model of statesmanship is meant a great administrator and party leader, a great political philosopher and a great independent orator, all in one. But if the question is whether he was a ruler loved and trusted by the English people there is no arguing against the tears of a nation,

Those who wish to know more of him will consult his own posthumous Memoirs (1856), edited by his literary executors Earl Stanhope and Viscount Cardwell; his private correspondence, edited by C. S. Parker (1891-1899); the four volumes of his speeches; a sketch of his life and character by Sir Lawrence Peel (1860); an historical sketch by Lord Dalling (1874); Guizot's Sir Robert Peel (1857); Künzel's Leben und Reden Sir Robert Peel's (1851); Disraeli's Life of Lord George Bentinck (1858); Morley's Life of Cobden; monographs by F. C. Montague (1888), J. R. Thursfeld (1891), and the earl of Rosebery (1899); Peel and O'Connell, by Lord Eversley; the Life of Sir J. Graham (1907), by C. S. Parker; Lord Stanmore's Life of Lord Aberdeen (1893); and the general histories of the time. (C. S. P.)

Four of Sir Robert's five sons attained distinction. The eldest, SIR ROBERT PEEL (1822-1895), who became the 3rd baronet on his father's death, was educated at Harrow and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was in the diplomatic service from 1844 to 1850, when he succeeded his father as member of parliament for Tamworth, and he was chief secretary to the lordlieutenant of Ireland from 1861 to 1865. He represented Tamworth until the general election of 1880; in 1884 he became member for Huntingdon and in 1885 for Blackburn, but after 1886 he ceased to sit in the House of Commons. Sir Robert described himself as a Liberal-Conservative, but in his later years he opposed the policy of Gladstone, although after 1886 he championed the cause of home rule for Ireland. In 1871 he sold his father's, collection of pictures to the National Gallery for £75,000, and in his later life he was troubled by financial difficulties. Sir Robert was interested in racing, and was known on the

turf as Mr F. Robinson. He died in London on the 9th of May 1895, and was succeeded as 4th baronet by his son, Sir Robert Peel (b. 1867).

SIR FREDERICK PEEL (1823-1906), the prime minister's second son, was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, becoming a barrister in 1849. He entered parliament in that year, and with the exception of the period between 1857 and 1859 he remained in the House of Commons until 1865. In 1851-1852 and again in 1853-1855 he was under-secretary for the colonies; from 1855 to 1857 he was under-secretary for war; and from 1859 to 1865 he was secretary to the treasury. He became a privy councillor in 1857 and was knighted in 1869. Sir Frederick Peel's chief service to the state was in connexion with the railway and canal commission. He was appointed a commissioner on the inception of this body in 1873, and was its president until its reconstruction in 1888, remaining a member of the commission until his death on the 6th of June 1906.

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The third son was SIR WILLIAM PEEL (1824-1858), and the youngest VISCOUNT PEEL (q.v.). Sir William was a sailor, who distinguished himself in the Crimea, where he gained the Victoria Cross, and also during the Indian Mutiny, being wounded at the relief of Lucknow. He died on the 27th of April 1858. Sir William wrote A Ride through the Nubian Desert (1852), giving an account of his travels in 1851.

Two of Sir Robert Peel's brothers were also politicians of note. WILLIAM YATES PEEL (1789-1858), educated at Harrow and at St John's College, Cambridge, was a member of parliament from 1817 to 1837, and again from 1847 to 1852; he was undersecretary for home affairs in 1828, and was a lord of the treasury in 1830 and again in 1834-1835. JONATHAN PEEL (1799-1879) was first a soldier and then a member of parliament during the long period between 1826 and 1868, first representing Norwich and then Huntingdon. From 1841 to 1846 he was surveyor-general of the ordnance, and in 1858-1859 and again in 1866-1867 he was a very competent and successful secretary of state for war.. General Peel was also an owner of racehorses, and in 1844 his horse Orlando won the Derby, after another horse, Running Rein, had been disqualified.

For the history of the Peel family see Jane Haworth, A Memoir of the Family of Peel from the year 1600 (1836).

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PEEL, a seaport and watering-place of the Isle of Man, on the W. coast, 11 m. W.N.W. of Douglas by the Isle of Man railway. Pop. (1901), 3304. It lies on Peel Bay, at the mouth of the small river Neb, which forms the harbour. The old town consists of narrow streets and lanes, but a modern residential quarter has grown up to the east. On the west side of the river-mouth St Patrick's Isle is connected with the mainland by a causeway. It is occupied almost wholly by the ruins of Peel castle. St Patrick is said to have founded here the first church in Man, and a small chapel, dedicated to him, appears to date from the 8th or 10th century. There is a round tower, also of very early date, resembling in certain particulars the round towers of Ireland. The ruined cathedral of St German has a transitional Norman choir, with a very early crypt beneath, a nave with an early English triplet at the west end, transepts, and a low and massive central tower still standing. There are remains of the bishops' palace, of the so-called Fenella's tower, famous through Scott's Peveril of the Peak, of the palace of the Lords of Man, of the keep and guardroom above the entrance to the castle, and of the Moare or great tower, while the whole is surrounded by battlements. There are also a large artificial mound supposed to be a defensive earthwork of higher antiquity than the castle, and another mound known as the Giant's Grave. The guardroom is associated with the ghostly apparition of the Moddey Dhoo (black dog), to which reference is made in Peveril of the Peak. In 1397 Richard II. condemned the earl of Warwick to imprisonment in Peel Castle for conspiracy, and in 1444 Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, received a like sentence on the ground of having compassed the death of Henry VI. by magic. Peel has a long-established fishing industry, which, however, has declined in modern times. In the town the most notable building is the church of St German, with a fine tower and spire. 'Peel was called by the Northmen Holeń (island, i.e. St Patrick's Isle); the existing name is Celtic,

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meaning "fort " (cf. the peel towers of the borderland of England and Scotland). PEEL. (1) The skin or rind of a fruit; thus "to peel" is to remove the outer covering of anything. The etymology of the word is closely connected with that of "pill," to plunder, surviving in "pillage." Both words are to be referred to French and thence to Latin. In French peler and piller, though now distinguished in meaning (the first used of stripping bark or rind, the second meaning to rob), were somewhat confused in application, and a similar confusion occurs in English till comparatively late. The Latin words from which they are derived are pellis, skin, and pilare, to strip of hair (pilus). (2) The name of a class of small fortified dwelling-houses built Juring the 16th century on the borders between Scotland and England. They are also known as "bastel-houses," i.e. "bastille-houses," and consist of a square massive tower with high pitched roof, the lower part being vaulted, the upper part containing a few living rooms. The entrance is on the upper floor, access being gained by a movable ladder. The vaulted ground-floor chamber served for the cattle when there was danger of attack. The word appears in various forms, e.g. pele, peil, and Latinized as pelum, &c.; " pile " is also found used synonymously, but the New English Dictionary (s.v. pile) considers the two words distinct. It seems more probable that the word is to be identified with "pale," a stake (Lat. palus). The earlier meaning of "peel" is a palisaded enclosure used as an additional defence for a fortified post or as an independent stronghold.

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PEELE, GEORGE (1558-c. 1598), English dramatist, was born in London in 1558. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on book-keeping. George Peele was educated at Christ's Hospital, and entered Broadgates Hall (Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1571. In 1574 he removed to Christ Church, taking his B.A. degree in 1577, and proceeding M.A. in 1579. In 1579 the governors of Christ's Hospital requested their clerk to "discharge his house of his son, George Peele." It is not necessary to read into this anything more than that the governors insisted on his beginning to earn a livelihood. He went up to London about 1580, but in 1583 when Albertus Alasco (Albert Laski), a Polish nobleman, was entertained at Christ Church, Oxford, Peele was entrusted with the arrangement of two Latin plays by William Gager (fl. 1580-1619) presented on the occasion. He was also complimented by Dr Gager for an English verse translation of one of the Iphigenias of Euripides. In 1585 he was employed to write the Device of the Pageant borne before Woolston Dixie, and in 1591 he devised the pageant in honour of another lord mayor, Sir William Webbe. This was the Descensus Astraeae (printed in the Harleian Miscellany, 1808), in which Queen Elizabeth is honoured as Astraea. Peele had married as early as 1583 a lady who brought him some property, which he speedily dissipated. Robert Greene, at the end of his Groatsworth of Wit, exhorts Peele to repentance, saying that he has, like himself, "been driven to extreme shifts for a living." The sorry traditions of his reckless life were emphasized by the use of his name in connexion with the apocryphal Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele (printed in 1607). Many of the stories had done service before, but there are personal touches that may be biographical. He died before 1598, for Francis Meres, writing in that year, speaks of his death in his Palladis Tamia.

His pastoral comedy of The Araygnement of Paris, presented by the Children of the Chapel Royal before Queen Elizabeth perhaps as early as 1581, was printed anonymously in 1584. Charles Lamb, sending to Vincent Novello a song from this piece of Peele's, said that if it had been less uneven in execution Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess "had been but a second name in this sort of writing." Peele shows considerable art in his flattery. Paris is arraigned before Jupiter for having assigned the apple to Venus. Diana, with whom the final decision rests, gives the apple to none of the competitors but to a nymph called Eliza, whose identity is confirmed by the further

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PEEPUL, or PIPUL (Ficus religiosa), the “sacred fig" tree of India, also called the Bo tree. It is not unlike the banyan, and is venerated both by the Buddhists of Ceylon and the Vaishnavite Hindus, who say that Vishnu was born beneath its shade. It is planted near temples and houses; its sap abounds in caoutchouc, and a good deal of lac is obtained from insects who feed upon the branches. The fruit is about the size of a walnut and is not much eaten.

explanation, whom some Zabeta call." The Famous Chronicle | they chose for their raids on the Roman Catholic villages. of King Edward the first, sirnamed Edward Longshankes, with his The Roman Catholics in return formed the society of "The returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell Defenders." in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Queen Elinor, who suncke at Charingcrosse, and rose again at Potters-hith, now named Queenehith (printed 1593). This "chronicle history," formless enough, as the rambling title shows, is nevertheless an advance on the old chronicle plays, and marks a step towards the Shakespearian historical drama. The Battell of Alcazar-with the death of Captaine Stukeley (acted 1588-1589, printed 1594), published anonymously, is attributed with much probability to Peele. The Old Wives Tale, registered in Stationers' Hall, perhaps more correctly, as "The Owlde wifes tale" (printed 1595), was followed by The Love of King David and fair Bethsabe (written c. 1588, printed 1599), which is notable as an example of Elizabethan drama drawn entirely from scriptural sources. Mr Fleay sees in it a political satire, and identifies Elizabeth and Leicester as David and Bathsheba, Mary Queen of Scots as Absalom. Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (printed 1599) has been attributed to Peele, but on insufficient grounds. Among his occasional poems are The Honour of the Garter," which has a prologue containing Peele's judgments on his contemporaries, and "Polyhymnia" (1590), a blank-verse description of the ceremonies attending the retirement of the queen's champion, Sir Henry Lee. This is concluded by the 66 Sonnet," His golden locks time hath to silver turn'd," quoted by Thackeray in the 76th chapter of The Newcomes. To the Phoenix Nest in 1593 he contributed "The Praise of Chastity." Mr F. G. Fleay (Biog. Chron. of the Drama) credits Peele with The Wisdom of Doctor Doddipoll (printed 1600), Wily Beguiled (printed 1606), The Life and Death of Jack Straw, a notable rebel (1587?), a share in the First and Second Parts of Henry VI., and on the authority of Wood and Winstanley, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany.

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Peele belonged to the group of university scholars who, in Greene's phrase, "spent their wits in making playes." Greene went on to say that he was "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior," to Marlowe. Nashe in his preface to Greene's Menaphon called him "the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of Poetrie and primus verborum artifex, whose first encrease, the Arraignement of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexteritie of wit and manifold varietie of invention, wherein (me judice) hee goeth a step beyond all that write." This praise was not unfounded. The credit given to Greene and Marlowe for the increased dignity of English dramatic diction, and for the new smoothness infused into blank verse, must certainly be shared by Peele. Professor F. B. Gummere, in a critical essay prefixed to his edition of The Old Wives Tale, puts in another claim for Peele. In the contrast between the romantic story and the realistic dialogue he sees the first instance of humour quite foreign to the comic "business" of earlier comedy. The Old Wives Tale is a play within a play, slight enough to be perhaps better described as an interlude. Its background of rustic folk-lore gives it additional interest, and there is much fun poked at Gabriel Harvey and Stanyhurst. Perhaps Huanebango, who parodies Harvey's hexameters, and actually quotes him on one occasion, may be regarded as representing that arch-enemy of Greene and his friends.

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PEERAGE (Fr. pairage, med. Lat. paragium; M.E. pere, O. Fr. per, peer, later pair; Lat. paris, “equal"). Although in England the terms " peerage,” “ nobility," "House of Lords " are in common parlance frequently regarded as synonymous, in reality each expresses a different meaning. A man may be a peer and yet not a member of the House of Lords, a member of the House of Lords and yet not strictly a peer; though all peers (as the term is now understood) are members of the House of Lords either in esse or in posse. In the United Kingdom the rights, duties and privileges of peerage are centred in an individual; to the monarchial nations of the Continent nobility conveys the idea of family, as opposed to personal, privilege.

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The

Origin of
Peerage.

Etymologically "peers are equals " (pares), and in AngloNorman days the word was invariably so understood. feudal tenants-in-chief of the Crown were all the peers of each other, whether lords of one manor or of a hundred; so too a bishop had his ecclesiastical peer in a brother bishop, and the tenants of a manor their peers in their fellow-tenants. That even so late as the reign of John the word was still used in this general sense is clear from Magna Carta, for the term "judicium parium " therein must be understood to mean that every man had a right to be tried by his equals. This very right was asserted by the barons as a body in 1233 on behalf of Richard, earl marshal, who had been declared a traitor by the king's command, and whose lands were forfeited without proper trial. In 1233 the French bishop Peter des Roches, Henry III.'s minister, denied the barons' right to the claim set up on the ground that the king might judge all his subjects alike, there being, he said, no peers in England (Math. Paris. 389). The English barons undoubtedly were using the word in the sense it held in Magna Carta, while the bishop probably had in his mind the French peers (pairs de France), a small and select body of feudatories possessed of exceptional privileges. In England the term was general, in France technical. The change in England was gradual, and probably gathered force as the gulf between the greater barons and the lesser widened, until in course of time, for judicial purposes, there came to be only two classes, the greater barons and the rest of the people. The barons remained triable by their own order (i.e. by their peers), whilst the rest of the people rapidly became subject to the general practice and procedure of the king's justices. The first use of the word "peers" as denoting those members of the baronage who were accustomed to receive regularly a writ of summons to parliament is found in the record of the proceedings against the Despensers in 1321 (Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 347), and from that time this restricted use of the word has remained its ordinary sense.

Properly to understand the growth and constitution of the peerage it is necessary to trace the changes which occurred in the position of the Anglo-Norman baronage, first Anglothrough the gradual strengthening of royal supre- Norman macy with the consequent decay of baronial power Baronage. locally, and subsequently by the consolidation of parliamentary institutions during the reigns of the first three Edwards.

Before the conquest the national assembly of England (see' PARLIAMENT) was the Witan, a gathering of notables owing their presence only to personal influence and standing. The Saxon The imposition of a modified feudal system resulted Witenain a radical alteration. Membership of the Great gemot. Councils of the Norman kings was primarily an incident of

tenure, one of the obligations the tenants-in-chief were bound | consequently throughout the early years of William's reign to perform, although this membership gradually became restricted by the operation of the Royal prerogative to a small section of the Baronial class and eventually hereditary by custom. The Norman Councils may have arisen from the ashes of a Saxon Witenagemot, but there is little evidence of any historical continuity between the two. The Church in England, as in Christendom generally, occupied a position of paramount importance and far-reaching influence; its leaders, not alone from their special sanctity as ecclesiastics, but as practically the only educated men of the period, of necessity were among the chief advisers of every ruler in Western Europe. In England churchmen formed a large proportion of the Witan, the more influential of the great landowners making up the rest of its membership.

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In place of the scattered individual and absolute ownership of Saxon days the Conqueror became practically the sole Norman owner of the soil. The change, though not immeFeudal diately complete, followed rapidly as the country Tenure. settled down and the power of the Crown extended to its outlying frontiers. As Saxon land gradually passed into Norman hands the new owners became direct tenants of the king. Provided their loyal and military obligations were duly performed they had fixity of tenure for themselves and their heirs. In addition fixed money payments were exacted on the succession of the heir, when the king's eldest son was knighted, his eldest daughter married, or his person ransomed from captivity. In like manner and under similar conditions the king's tenants, or as they were termed tenants-in-chief, sub-granted the greater portion of their holdings to their own immediate followers. Under Norman methods the manor was the unit of local government and jurisdiction, and when land was given away by the king the gift invariably took the form of a grant of one or more manors.

When he brought England into subjection the Conqueror's main idea was to exalt the central power of the Crown at the expense of its feudatories, and the first two centuries following the conquest tell one long tale of opposition by the great tenantsin-chief to a steadily growing and unifying royal pressure. With this idea of royal supremacy firmly fixed in his mind, William's grants, excepting outlying territory such as the marches of Wales or the debateable ground of the Scottish border, which needed special consideration, were seldom in bulk, but took the form of manors scattered over many counties. Under such conditions it was practically impossible for a great tenant to set up a powerful imperium in imperio (such as the fiefs of Normandy, Brittany and Burgundy), as his forces were distributed over the country, and could be reached by the long arm of royal power, acting through the sheriff of every county, long before they could effectively come together for fighting purposes. The tenants-in-chief were termed generally barons (see BARON) and may be regarded historically as the parents of the peers of later days. The pages of Domesday (1086), the early Norman fiscal record of England, show how unevenly the land was distributed; of the fifteen hundred odd tenants mentioned the majority held but two or three manors, while a favoured few possessed more than a hundred each. Land was then the only source of wealth, and the number of a baron's manors might well be regarded as a correct index of his importance.

The king's tenants owed yet another duty, the service of attending the King's Court (curia regis), and out of this custom

Court.

grew the parliaments of later days. In theory all The King's the king's tenants-in-chief, great and small, had a right to be present as incident to their tenure. It has therefore been argued by some authorities that as the Conqueror's system of tenure constituted him the sole owner of the land, attendance at his courts was solely an incident of tenure, the Church having been compelled to accept the same conditions as those imposed on laymen. But, as already pointed out, the change in tenure had not been immediate, and there had been no general forfeiture suffered by ecclesiastical bodies;

some of the English bishops and abbots attended his courts as much by virtue of their personal and ecclesiastical importance as by right of tenure. The King's Court was held regularly at the three great festivals of the Church and at such other times as were deemed advisable. The assembly for several generations neither possessed nor pretended to any legislative powers. Legislative power was a product of later years, and grew out of the custom of the Estates granting supplies only on condition that their grievances were first redressed. The great bulk of the tenants were present for the purpose of assenting to special taxation above and beyond their ordinary feudal dues. When necessary a general summons to attend was sent through the sheriff of every county, who controlled a system of local government which enabled him to reach every tenant. In course of time to a certain number of barons and high ecclesiastics, either from the great extent of their possessions, their official duties about the king or their personal importance, it became customary to issue a personal writ of summons, thus distinguishing them from the general mass summoned through the sheriff. That this custom was in being within a century of the Conquest is clear from an incident in the bitter fight for supremacy between Archbishop Becket and Henry II. in 1164 (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 504), it being recorded that the king withheld the Archbishop's personal summons to parliament, and put upon him the indignity of a summons through the sheriff. During the succeeding fifty years the line becomes even more definite, though it is evident that the Crown sometimes disregarded the custom, as the barons are found complaining that many of their number deemed entitled to a personal summons had frequently been overlooked.

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The sequel to these complaints is found in Magna Carta, wherein it is provided that the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and greater barons are to be called up to the Magna Carta council by writ directed to each severally; and all and Personal who hold of the king in chief, below the rank of Summons greater barons, are to be summoned by a general Majores writ addressed to the sheriff of their shire.1 Magna Barones. Carta thus indicates the existence of two definite sections of the king's tenants, a division which had evidently persisted for some time. The "greater barons are the immediate parents of the peerages of later days, every member of which for more than four centuries had a seat in the House of Lords. As for the rest of the tenants-in-chief, poorer in estate and therefore of less consequence, it is sufficient here to note that they fell back into the general mass of country families, and that their representatives, the knights of the shire, after some hesitation, at length joined forces with the city and burgher representatives to form the House of Commons.

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of 1254.

In 1254, instead of the general summons through the sheriff to all the lesser tenants-in-chief, the king requires them to elect two knights for each shire to attend the council as Parliament the accredited representative of their fellows. In the closing days of 1264 Simon de Montfort summoned to meet him early in 1265 the first parliament worthy of the name, a council in which prelates, earls and greater barons, knights of the shire, citizens and burghers were present, thus constituting a representation of all classes of people. It has been argued that this assembly cannot be regarded as a full parliament, inasmuch as Simon de Montfort summoned personally only such members of the baronage as were favourable to his cause, and issued writs generally only to those counties and cities upon which he could rely to return representatives in support of his policy. Stubbs holds the view that the first assembly we ought to regard as a full parliament was the Model Parliament which met at Westminster in 1295. This Model parliament, unlike Simon's partisan assembly of Parliament 1265, was free and representative. To every spiritual of 1295. Et ab habendum commune consilium regni . . . summoneri barones sigillatim per litteras nostras et praeterea faciemus summoneri faciemus archiepiscopos, episcopos, abbates, comites et majores in generali per vicecomes et ballivos nostros omnes illos qui de nobis tenent in capite (cited in Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 547 n.).

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