ADVENTURE IN SCHOLARSHIP

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4264, 26 May 1936, Page 7

ADVENTURE IN SCHOLARSHIP

the complete peerage An adventure in scholarship has produced one more instalment. Volume nine of the new edition of ‘ The Complete Peerage ’ will, in other words, shortly he ready for publication, says the ‘ Observer.’ Baldly stated, such an announcement might ring dully in the ears of all except the titled or the curious-minded. But that hero is a rare adventure, no one who has met Mr H. A. Doubleday, joint editor with Lord Howard de Walden, of the new edition, can doubt. Mr Doubleday has been at work on ‘ The Complete Peerage ’ for 28 years, and since IMIS has been almost solely responsible for its editing. He sits with his documented files neatly ranged about him. his proofs be fore iiim on a desk stripped for action, bare of litter, and his eight pipes, mellow. generous, bowl by bowl, waiting their turn. The adventure began in the ’Bo’s of the last century with the compilation, by the late Mr G. E. Cokayne, Clarenceaux King-of-Arms, of the first edition, eight volumes, of ‘ The Complete Peerage.’ The new edition, the first volume of which was issued in 1910 by Mr Cockayne’s nephew, the late Mr V'icary Gibbs, in conjunction .vith Mr Doubleday, bares the origins >f our peerage, from the 11th century inwards, much more completely. Where some of “ G.E.C.’s ” family Histories and biographies occupied seven or eight lines, there are now many pages, and “ G.E.C.’s ” eight volumes will become, in the course of the next II) years, 14. The proofs which lie before Mr Doubleday carry his work from the peerage of Moate, at the end of the eighth volume, to the peerage of Nugent, at the end of the ninth. Between the two, and in the appendices which follow, as in the histories and appendices of all other volumes, lies the story of the passionate search for truth among our public records made by Mr Doubleday and his staff. Mr Doubleday does not merely seek truth. Tie fights for it. The light of battle is in his eyes. ‘ The Complete Peerage ’ is not mere work of reference. It is a national record, sponsored by a committee of which the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor arc members, vigorously ■ommentating, from contemporary letters, diaries, and memoirs, upon the personalities and the social, political, and economic life of the centuries. Therefore Mr Doubleday scorns all bias. He will have no lawyer’s interpretations, such as peerage lawyers like Sir Harris Nicolas have imported into the subject. “Law and history,” he says, “ are in conflict on the early history of some of the peerages. From the time of Edward I. a great number of men were summoned to Parliament by individual writ. Modern law holds that peerages were so created. But the idea that Edward 1. and Edward 11., who were always fighting their barons, should create 70 or 80 in one day is laughable.” At least one famous peerage dispute will be revived in one of Mr Doubleday’s appendices to the ninth volume. Another appendix will deal controversially with the English peerages created by Henry VIII. Whether Henry VIIL ever created any English baronies by writ of summons is, thinks Mr Doubleday, extremely doubtful. He is determined to establish if possible the point :n our history at which the international creation of peerages by writ of summons really did begin. This elaborate research among the records of many thousands of individuals is costly. It has received ranch needed help from generous donors, such as Lord Leverhulme, who recently gave £2300, iu addition to £2,000 from a special fund settled by his father. But very often one line of search may mean great expense without adding a word to ‘ The Complete Peerage.’ Now and then, however, triumph comes. Mr Doubleday told of one discovery which will enliven the pages of the ninth volume. He had pounced upon it joyfully because it points his argument that peerage decisions in the House of Lords often conflict with history. In 1877 the abeyance in the barony if Mowbray was determined in favour if Lord Stourtou, as co-heir to that barony. It was held that the abeyance had really been determined, in the ■eign of Richard ill., in favour of -John Howard, first Duke of Norfolk, who had become Lord Mowbray and Segrave. “ Terrific nonsense,” chuckled Mr Doubleday. “ The joke is that we have found a document dated long after the first Duke of Norfolk is supposed to have become Lord Mowbray and Segrave, in which his descendant, the duke, in 1528, is named as trustee for Lord Berkeley, Mowbray, and Segrave. How could he have been Lord Mowbray when ho was trustee for Lord Mowbray!-'” ( Such is the stuff of scholarly adventure.