ABSTRACT
When Queen Elizabeth died the peerage was a small but a powerful body. The House of Lords contained fifty-nine lay peers, and of those only eight had been raised to the peerage during the forty-four years of the Queen’s reign. But James was as lavish in his creation of peerages as Elizabeth had been sparing. During the twenty-two years he reigned he made about sixty peers, and at his death the House of Lords contained about a hundred lay peers. To some extent this increase was demanded both by justice and expediency. The English peers, as the obnoxious practice did not cease, made a second protest in the reign of Charles I. In the second period of the reign of Charles I, that is, during the seven years which elapsed between the beginning of the Civil War and the King’s death, he created nearly as many peers as he had done in the previous seventeen.
