Passing from these perplexing cases, on which we need fuller knowledge, we have a simple example in 12 Hen. III., when, on the death of the Earl of Essex (February 15, 1228), his annual third penny, as £40 10_s._ 10_d._, was allowed to count, for his heirs, towards the payment of his debts to the Crown.[871] A much later and most important instance is that of Devon, where Hugh de Courtenay, as the heir of the Earls of Devon, is found receiving their "third penny" in 8 Edw. III., though not an earl, a state of things which provoked a protest, a decision against him, and, eventually, his elevation to comital rank. [848] _Constitutional History_, i. 139. [849] _Ibid._, i. 363. [850] This insured him his participation _pro rata_ in any future increase ("crementum") of the render. [851] _Const. Hist._, i. 361. [852] _Ibid._, p. 113. [853] We must, further, observe that, of these six, Lewes, of which we are not told if, or how, its _redditus_ was divided before the Conquest, and Shrewsbury, of which we are told that the "third penny" of its redditus went, not to the earl, but to the sheriff ("Tempore Regis E ... duas partes habebat rex et _vicecomes_ tertiam") are not in point for the earl's share. [854] _Exeter_, p. 43 (cf. p. 55). [855] This passage appears to imply that Dr. Stubbs, who sees in the "third penny" of the county the perquisite of the earl, would look on that of the borough as the perquisite of the sheriff. But the latter, as we have seen, was held, as a rule, by the earl, though occasionally by the sheriff. [856] This has been strangely misunderstood by Mr. Eyton in his analysis of the Staffordshire survey. See my paper in _Domesday Studies_. [857] _Domesday_, ii. 280, 294. We read of Alan's heir, Conan, in 1156, "Comiti Conano de tercio denario Comit' ix _li._ et x _sol_" (_Rot. Pip_, 2 Hen. II., p. 8). It is a singular circumstance that Robert de Torigny alludes to this under 1171, when, at the death of Conan, "tota Britannia, et _comitatus de Gippewis_ [Ipswich], et honor Richemundie" passed to the king,—and still more singular that his latest editor, Mr. Howlett, identifies "Gippewis" with Guingamp (p. 391). [858] _Will. Rufus_, i. 40. [859] _Domesday_, i. 38 _b_, 101, 87 _b_, 186 _b_, 253; ii. 294 _b_. [860] _Baronia Anglica_, pp. 137, 138. [861] _Exeter_, p. 55. [862] _Const. Hist._, i. 139. [863] The Palatinate of Chester is, of course, anomalous, and does not, strictly, tell either way. [864] In the third and fifth years the Earl of Arundel is entered as receiving the third penny "per breve regis." [865] _Dialogus de Scaccario_, ii. 17. [866] _Reports on the Dignity of a Peer_, iii. 68.