=Inherited Public Office associated with the Title or Property.=—The story of Ela of Salisbury illustrates the views with which the early Normans regarded heiresses. She was born in 1188. Her father, the Earl of Salisbury, died 1196, leaving her sole heir. She inherited both title and lands before his three brothers. Her mother conveyed her away secretly to a castle in Normandy, to save her from possible dangers during her minority. An English knight, William Talbot, romantically undertook, as a troubadour, to discover her whereabouts, and, after two years, brought her back to England. King Richard betrothed her as a royal ward to his half-brother, William Longespée, son of Fair Rosamund, who became, through her, Earl of Salisbury. At King John’s coronation at Westminster, William, Earl of Salisbury, is noted as being present among the throng of nobility. (_See_ “Roger Hoveden.”) He died 1226, leaving four sons and four daughters. Though besieged with suitors, Ela preferred a “free widowhood” to selecting another Earl Salisbury. When her son came of age he claimed investiture of the Earldom, but the King refused it _judicialiter_, by the advice of the Judges, and according to the dictates of Law. The Earldom and the government of the Castle of Sarum were vested in Ela, not in her dead husband. =The office of Sheriff of Wiltshire=, her right by inheritance, she exercised in person until 21 Hen. II., when, probably to facilitate her son’s entrance into the Earldom, she retired as Abbess to the Abbey of Lacock, founded by herself. Even then, however, the youth did not receive the title, and she survived both son and grandson. The note to this Biography adds, “Though the law of female descent, as applied to baronies by writ, has long ceased to govern the descent of earldoms, it certainly did during the first centuries after the Norman conquest.” (Bowle’s “History of Lacock Abbey.”) Isabella and Idonea de Veteripont, who afterwards married Roger de Clifford, and Roger de Leybourn jointly held the office of =High Sheriff of Westmoreland=, and insisted on the Burghers bringing their cases to them personally, 15 Ed. I. The office was held afterwards, also in person, during the reigns of the Stuarts, by the brave Anne de Clifford, Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, and Baroness of Westmoreland. In virtue of her office, she sat on the Bench of Justices in the Court of Assizes at Appleby. (Durnford and East’s “Term Reports,” p. 397; Nicholson’s “History of Westmoreland,” vol. ii., p. 20.) “As the King came out of Scotland, when he lay at York, there was a striffe between my father and my Lord Burleigh, who was then President, who should carie the sword; but it was adjudged to my father’s side, because it was his Office by Inheritance, and so it is lineally descended on me” (Anne Clifford’s Diary, Harl. MSS., 6177). We may add here, though belonging properly to the following chapter, a parallel case: