It seems, with much deference to more learned investigators, rather improbable that, either before or after the regular admission of the knights and burgesses by representation, and consequently the constitution of a distinct lords' house of parliament, a writ of summons could have been lawfully withheld at the king's pleasure from any one holding such lands by barony as rendered him notoriously one of the _majores barones_. Nor will this be much affected by arguments from the inexpediency or supposed anomaly of permitting the right of sitting as a peer of parliament to be transferred by alienation. The Lords' committee dwell at length upon them. And it is true that, in our original feudal constitution, the fiefs of the crown could not be alienated without its consent. But when this was obtained, when a barony had passed by purchase, it would naturally draw with it, as an incident of tenure, the privilege of being summoned to parliament, or, in language more accustomed in those times, the obligation of doing suit and service to the king in his high court. Nor was the alienee, doubtless, to be taxed without his own consent, any more than another tenant _in capite_. What incongruity, therefore, is there in the supposition that, after tenants in fee simple acquired by statute the power of alienation without previous consent of the crown, the new purchaser stood on the same footing in all other respects as before the statute? It is also much to be observed that the claim to a summons might be gained by some methods of purchase, using that word, of course, in the legal sense. Thus the husbands of heiresses of baronies were frequently summoned, and sat as tenants by courtesy after the wife's death; though it must be owned that the committee doubt, in their Third Report (p. 47), whether tenancy by courtesy of a dignity was ever allowed as a right. Thus, too, every estate created in tail male was a diversion of the inheritance by the owner's sole will from its course according to law. Yet in the case of the barony of Abergavenny, even so late as the reign of James I., the heir male, being in seisin of the lands, was called by writ as baron, to the exclusion of the heir general. Surely this was an authentic recognition, not only of baronial tenure as the foundation of a right to sit in parliament, but of its alienability by the tenant.[469]