not be pretended that every fraction of a barony gave a right to summons; and, on the other hand, alienations of parcels, and descents to coparceners, must have been common, and sometimes difficult to disprove. It was held, indeed, by some, that the _caput baroniæ_, or principal lordship, contained, as it were, the vital principle of the peerage, and that its owner was the true baron; but this assumption seems uncertain. It is not very easy to reconcile this peremptory denial of peerage by tenure with the proviso in the recent statute taking away tenure by knight-service, and, inasmuch as it converts all tenure into socage, that also by barony, "that this act shall not infringe or hurt any title of honour, feudal or other, by which any person hath or may have right to sit in the lords' house of parliament, as to his or their title of honour, or sitting in parliament, and the privilege belonging to them as peers." (Stat. 12 Car. II. c. 24, s. 11.) Surely this clause was designed to preserve the incident to baronial tenure, the privilege of being summoned to parliament, while it destroyed its original root, the tenure itself. The privy council, in their decision on the Fitzwalter claim, did not allude to this statute, probably on account of the above proviso, and seem to argue that, if tenure by barony was no longer in being, the privilege attached to it must have been extinguished also. It is, however, observable that tenure by barony is not taken away by the statute, except by implication. No act indeed can be more loosely drawn than this, which was to change essentially the condition of landed property throughout the kingdom. It literally abolishes all tenure _in capite_; though this is the basis of the crown's right to escheat, and though lands in common socage, which the act with a strange confusion opposes to socage _in capite_, were as much holden of the king or other lord as those by knight-service. Whether it was intended by the silence about tenure by barony to pass it over as obsolete, or this arose from negligence alone, it cannot be doubted that the proviso preserving the right of sitting in parliament by a feudal honour was introduced in order to save that privilege, as well for Arundel and Abergavenny as for any other that might be entitled to it.[470] NOTE X. Page 142.