Thus in the Paston letters we find several proofs of the importance attached to parliamentary elections by the highest nobility.[290] [Sidenote: Constitution of the house of lords.] The house of lords, as we left it in the reign of Henry III., was entirely composed of such persons holding lands by barony as were summoned by particular writ of parliament.[291] Tenure and summons were both essential at this time in order to render any one a lord of parliament--the first by the ancient constitution of our feudal monarchy from the Conquest, the second by some regulation or usage of doubtful origin, which was thoroughly established before the conclusion of Henry III.'s reign. This produced, of course, a very marked difference between the greater and the lesser or unparliamentary barons. The tenure of the latter, however, still subsisted, and, though too inconsiderable to be members of the legislature, they paid relief as barons, they might be challenged on juries, and, as I presume, by parity of reasoning, were entitled to trial by their peerage. These lower barons, or more commonly tenants by parcels of baronies,[292] may be dimly traced to the latter years of Edward III.[293] But many of them were successively summoned to parliament, and thus recovered the former lustre of their rank, while the rest fell gradually into the station of commoners, as tenants by simple knight-service. [Sidenote: Baronial tenure required for lords spiritual.] As tenure without summons did not entitle any one to the privileges of a lord of parliament, so no spiritual person at least ought to have been summoned without baronial tenure. The prior of St. James at Northampton, having been summoned in the twelfth of Edward II., was discharged upon his petition, because he held nothing of the king by barony, but only in frankalmoign. The prior of Bridlington, after frequent summonses, was finally left out, with an entry made in the roll that he held nothing of the king. The abbot of Leicester had been called to fifty parliaments; yet, in the 25th of Edward III., he obtained a charter of perpetual exemption, reciting that he held no lands or tenements of the crown by barony or any such service as bound him to attend parliaments or councils.[294] But great irregularities prevailed in the rolls of chancery, from which the writs to spiritual and temporal peers were taken--arising in part, perhaps, from negligence, in part from wilful perversion; so that many abbots and priors, who like these had no baronial tenure, were summoned at times and subsequently omitted, of whose actual exemption we have no record. Out of one hundred and twenty-two abbots and forty-one priors who at some time or other sat in parliament, but twenty-five of the former and two of the latter were constantly summoned: the names of forty occur only once, and those of thirty-six others not, more than five times.[295] Their want of baronial tenure, in all probability, prevented the repetition of writs which