One constituent branch of the great councils held by William the Conqueror and all his successors was composed of the bishops and the heads of religious houses holding their temporalities immediately of the crown. It has been frequently maintained that these spiritual lords sat in parliament only by virtue of their baronial tenure. And certainly they did all hold baronies, which, according to the analogy of lay peerages, were sufficient to give them such a share in the legislature. Nevertheless, I think that this is rather too contracted a view of the rights of the English hierarchy, and, indeed, by implication, of the peerage. For a great council of advice and assent in matters of legislation or national importance was essential to all the northern governments. And all of them, except, perhaps, the Lombards, invited the superior ecclesiastics to their councils; not upon any feudal notions, which at that time had hardly begun to prevail, but chiefly as representatives of the church and of religion itself; next, as more learned and enlightened counsellors than the lay nobility; and in some degree, no doubt, as rich proprietors of land. It will be remembered also that ecclesiastical and temporal affairs were originally decided in the same assemblies, both upon the continent and in England. The Norman Conquest, which destroyed the Anglo-Saxon nobility, and substituted a new race in their stead, could not affect the immortality of church possessions. The bishops of William's age were entitled to sit in his councils by the general custom of Europe, and by the common law of England, which the Conquest did not overturn.[5] Some smaller arguments might be urged against the supposition that their legislative rights are merely baronial; such as that the guardian of the spiritualities was commonly summoned to parliament during the vacancy of a bishopric, and that the five sees created by Henry VIII. have no baronies annexed to them;[6] but the former reasoning appears less technical and confined.[7] Next to these spiritual lords are the earls and barons, or lay peerage of England. The former dignity was, perhaps, not so merely official as in the Saxon times, although the earl was entitled to the third penny of all emoluments arising from the administration of justice in the county-courts, and might, perhaps, command the militia of his county, when it was called forth.[8] Every earl was also a baron, and held an honour or barony of the crown, for which he paid a higher relief than an ordinary baron, probably on account of the profits of his earldom. I will not pretend to say whether titular earldoms, absolutely distinct from the lieutenancy of a county, were as ancient as the Conquest, which Madox seems to think, or were considered as irregular so late as Henry II., according to Lord Lyttelton. In Dugdale's Baronage I find none of this description in the first Norman reigns; for even that of Clare was connected with the local earldom of Hertford.