180 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the summons to any Peer? On behalf of the Peers it was contended that only Peers who held their Peerage by what is called tenure by Barony were entitled to summons and that no other Peer was entitled to summons, nor was the King free to address the summons to a Peer who fell outside that class. On the other hand it was contended on behalf of the King that the writ was not a special privilege confined to Peers by Barony nor was there any limitation upon the King’s right to address the summons to the Peers. The controversy was in the long run settled and two rules can now be laid down as rules governing the right to writ by Peers whose Peerage is not evidenced by Letters Patent.
(1) Tenure by Barony is no ground for a claim to a writ from the King.
(2) The King was bound to summon by a writ to sit in the House of Lords a descendant of a person, who had received a writ and taken his seat in that House in accordance therewith. In other words the descendant of a person, however distant and whatever the break in the interval, who can be proved to have received a writ from the King can claim a similar writ by a hereditary right. The English Peerage, therefore, is a hereditary Peerage and all heriditary English Peers are, therefore, entitled by their hereditary right to a writ of summons from the king and be members of the House of Lords.
(3) Although the right is a hereditary right it is subject to two rules, (1) The rule of Primogeniure and (2) The rule of male descendant.
Representative Peers
The representative peers fall into two classes. Representative Peers of Scotland and representative Peers of Ireland. The title of the representative Peers of Scotland is founded on the treaty of Union between England and Scotland which took place in 1707 and which made them into a Common Kingdom under a Common King and was called the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Prior to its Union with England, Scotland had its own Peerage with its hereditary right to sit. The Union of Ireland with Great Britain