THE ONLY SURVIVING SON OF WILLIAM EARL OF LOVELACE, ON HIS CLAIM TO THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF LORD WENTWORT H. LONDON: PRINTED BY CHARLES FRANCIS HODGSON, GOUGH SQUARE, FLEET STREET. En the House of Lords. CASE ON BEHALF OF THE HONOURABLE RALPH COMMONLY CALLED VISCOUNT OCKHAM, THE ONLY SURVIVING SON OF WILLIAM EARL OF LOVELACE, ON HIS CLAIM TO THE HONOUR AND DIGNITY OF LORD WENTWORTH. THE Dignity of Lord Wentworth was created by Writ of Summons to Parliament in the Twenty-first year of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth. The Parliament which assembled in the 21st of Henry VIII., was convened by Writs of Summons dated on the 9th of August in that year. After the enrolment of those Writs had been made up, the King created six Peerages by Special Writs of Summons, but no memorandum of the issue of those Writs was added to the enrolment, nor was any separate record made in relation to them. The Lords' Journals are not extant from the 7th to the 25th of Henry VIII. The Parliament which sat in the latter year formed a Session of that summoned in the 21st, and in the 25th the six Peers created in the 21st appear by the Journals to have sat in their due precedency in the House of Lords.* It was decided in 1839 by the House of Lords upon a claim to the Peerage of Braye, one of the six Dignities, that that Honour was created in the 21st of Henry VIII.; and it appears to have been admitted by the Resolution of the House upon the claim of Dame Martha Johnson to the Peerage of Wentworth in 1702, that that Dignity was also created in the 21st of Henry VIII. SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH of Nettlested, who was created Lord Wentworth in the 21st of Henry VIII., was summoned to and sat in Parliament in the *The six Peerages were those of Hussee, Windsor, Wentworth, Borough, Braye, and Mordaunt. Three of them, Windsor, Wentworth, and Braye, are now extant. The Title of Hussee was forfeited in the 28th of Henry VIII., 1536. The Dignity of Borough fell into abeyance on the death of the Fourth Lord in his minority in 1598; that of Mordaunt on the death of the Duke of Gordon in 1836. B |