A peer when indicted, is bound, like any commoner, to plead to the indictment; and if convicted, is liable to be punished precisely like any other man (4 and 5 Vict. c. 22).
From what has been said, it will be seen that the civil rights of peers are pretty much the same as those of all other subjects. What privileges the most exalted peer possesses are rather of an ornamental than a substantial character. And as every man, however humble may be his origin, has a chance of becoming a peer, the complaints sometimes heard about peers being a privileged class, &c., have, apart from political considerations, but little foundation. Their so-called privileges may thus be enumerated: They are exempt from arrest for debt; they have a hereditary place in parliament, and, unlike members of the House of Commons, they may vote by proxy, and may record their ‘protest’ against proceedings in their own House in its journals; as permanent counsellors of the sovereign, they have an individual right of access to the sovereign’s presence and audience while there; they may wear coronets appropriate to their peerage rank, and scarlet cloth robes marked in accordance with their degree; they are entitled to be called ‘Your Grace’ or ‘Most Honourable,’ ‘Your Lordship’ or ‘Right Honourable,’ according to circumstances. And when addressed by the sovereign, they are styled his or her ‘cousin,’ with a variety of ceremonious and endearing epithets prefixed to that term, more or less so according to their rank. They may also sit in courts of law with their hats on, if they like, during the proceedings.[5] And this will explain why a peer is always accommodated with a seat on the bench in court, when plain Mr Smith is either incapable of getting in at all, or if in, is relegated to the gallery or other portion of the court set apart for the public.
A man may be a peer by prescriptive right, by creation, or by hereditary right; and peers are created in two ways, either by the ancient mode of writ of summons, or by letters-patent. At the present day, persons are almost invariably ennobled by the latter process. For if a person summoned by the sovereign to attend parliament as a peer, should die before he can take his seat, the peerage so created would fail, and would, therefore, not descend to his heir. On the other hand, a peerage created by letters-patent descends to the heir of the person so ennobled under any circumstances. The writ of summons, however, is not obsolete, and is used when, for some reason, it is deemed desirable to call the eldest son of a peer to the Upper House of parliament during his father’s lifetime. In this case, whether the person summoned does or does not take his seat, is obviously immaterial, so far as the descent of the father’s peerage is concerned, because, if the eldest son has a son, the grandfather’s title will descend to him, if he outlives his grandfather. When the eldest son of a peer is summoned to the Upper House in his father’s lifetime, he sits by the baronial title of the peerage. Thus, the Earl of Albemarle, who is also Viscount Bury and Baron Ashford, being, in 1876, advanced in years, his eldest son, Viscount Bury, was summoned to the House of Lords, not, however, as such, but as Baron or Lord Ashford.