The status of non-blue blood feudal and/or territorial titles is widely misunderstood, for the

greater part because throughout the last thousand years the meanings of the terms associated

with them have been almost as inconsistent as mediaeval spelling. Many commonly believed

to be exact were in fact used for all purposes which at that time seemed convenient and, as

with the similarly undisciplined orthography, with no thought to the problems created for

scholars and lawyers in later centuries. In consequence, terms which need particular care in

their interpretation are: territorial princes for both principalities and/or houses of, barony,

lordship, manor, honour and nobility. That care should be exercised in the knowledge that

although the feudal system was to be found throughout Western Europe from the beginning

of the second millenium, its operation did differ from region to region, those differences led

to nuances of meaning in the application of various terms, and the use of Latin as the sole

international language tended to remove in translation some of the meaning (the broad use

of dominus being a prime example). With the passage of time there was some tendency towards

greater precision, but this could be reversed, as happened with the application of the term

"baron" within Scotland.

The title of Baron is the most widely recognised and yet least understood of all titles.

Men who justify the use of the word "baron" as a description exist today in all structured societies -

in the old German nobility, as Tuans in Malaysia, as leaders of trade unions in Great Britain or as newspaper owners in Australia - for

the word carries the general meaning of a powerful man. This has been true since its introduction into the British Isles in the eleventh

century, but there are also more specific meanings for the word "baron" - and these can confuse.  In classical Latin baro means dunce

or fool. In Low Latin baro means slave or servant - but servants in the houses of the greater nobles of the eleventh century tended to be

young men from noble families. As the feudal system became entrenched in Europe, integrating its three essential components (the concepts

of land ownership, of hereditary rights and of service), a "baron" became a "man" (as in the popular play of the 'thirties "My Man Godfrey";

"My man Jeeves" as Bertie Wooster of the P.G. Wodehouse books might say), one on whom a superior relied - he was the superior's man

and had taken the oath of fealty.

The feudal system allowed the territorial prince and/or baron baron to hold land

as a tenant-in-chief of his "master lord & prince". This is another word with a wide

range of meanings, but here it is used to denote a ruler who holds his lands of no one.

He need not be a king; he could be a bishop; the essence is that he is sovereign in

his principality. In the early feudal times this was extended to allow the king's

barons, his tenants-in-chief, to have their own barons through a process of subinfeudation,

but the continuation of this practice was restricted in England when King Edward I

recognised the danger it represented to his centralised power and fiscal efficiency.

In Scotland, where the geophysical factors and harsh winters created different political

problems, it continued for longer.

In England the kings ruled in council, first summoning some of the greater barons

(i.e. the more powerful barons) to attend and advise them, and then, while retaining

the Privy Council, extending the principle to bring to their Parliament larger

numbers of barons, together with the representatives of the church and the boroughs

and the Knights of the Shires. The concept of peerage did not develop immediately,

and its subsequent evolution was haphazard and irrational. (As Vicary Gibbs observed when Editor of The Complete Peerage, "it is

impossible to reconcile the facts of history with the Law of Peerage" and even Parliament itself has never been defined by the Committee

for Privileges, the body responsible for the organization of the British Peerage in Parliament.) Those princes & barons who first attended

the Norman kings in council came as territorial magnates holding their lands of the king in accordance with a loosely hereditary system,

but if the barony, which was the lands, passed to another, the rank of baron and the privileges dependent on it passed also. Such barons

were Barons by Tenure.

After the concept of the Peerage had taken root in England, it was argued

that those feudal barons, Barons by Tenure, who had been summoned to the

early Parliaments were ipso facto peers, Barons by Writ. (It is most unlikely

that the king who summoned them believed he was thus creating peers, or

that those summoned suspected that posterity, through the future Committee

for Privileges, would retrospectively award them such promotion.) Later,

kings created new peers of landless men they considered would make valuable

contributions to their government, and these became Barons by Patent.

Subsequently, Letters Patent became the usual way to create new peers or to

promote existing ones.

In Scotland, in the early days, it was quite impossible to distinguish clearly between Barons who were the equivalent of peers and those who

were simply Barons by Tenure. Until the statute of 1428, which recognised the burden carried by those poorer Barons with the smaller estates,

all were expected to attend Parliament, but thereafter they were classified either as Greater Barons, the "Lords of Parliament," or as Lesser

Barons, who could, but need not, attend Parliament. (The Scots Parliament assembled in a single chamber, and consisted of the Prelates, the

Barons and the Burgesses - the Earls sitting as Barons, i.e. as those holding their lands in baroniam.) But despite the importance of land and

the significance of the barony, a Baron in Scotland did not necessarily hold a territorial barony. Feudal Law gives the title of Baron to all

those who hold the absolute jurisdiction which is carried by the grant of furca et fossa - the power to hang men, and to drown women, found

guilty of capital offences by a baronial court.

    King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia

(To understand the relationship between Territorial Princes, Barons, Lords and Earls in the

feudal system it should be remembered that the rank came from the lands held: Territorial Princes

held feudal Principalities or Houses of, Barons held baronies, Lords the lordships, and Earls the

earldoms. As has been implied already, princes, lordships and earldoms are lands held in baroniam,

and thus lordships are baronies of a higher rank, and earldoms are baronies of an even higher rank.

Lordships were created by uniting and integrating an existing barony with another barony or with

some other feudal title, and earldoms could be created similarly, perhaps by uniting lordships.

Many of the Scottish earldoms of the middle ages actually predated the introduction of feudal

law into Scotland, but were absorbed into the system in a manner similar to the absorption of the

clan structure into the feudal society.)

Thus the term "baron" started with a broad meaning, and in Scotland the Act of 1428 helped to

make it a little more precise, but the subsequent slow decline of the law-enforcing powers of the

Barons, which powers were almost wholly terminated by the Abolition of Heritable Jurisdictions

Act of 1747, so reduced the importance of the baronies that the term "baron" became a

synonym for freeholder. This can be seen in various Acts on Parliamentary representation,

where the term is used to designate both county freeholders who had the franchise, and those

who represented the shires in Parliament. The present century has seen another change in Scotland.

The influence of the modern Peerage and its use of Baron as a rank equivalent to a

Scottish Lord of Parliament, together with the survival of the Scottish feudal Baronage

as a recognised body and the diminished use of the unqualified term "baron" as a description

of anything other than a feudal baron, has enhanced its prestige. This development has

been assisted by the activities of the Convention of the Scottish Baronage and by the

Lord Lyon's continued use of the chapeau as armorial recognition of a feudal Baron's rank.

In brief: a feudal title is a territorial dignity which passes with the ownership of the

lands to which it is attached; a peerage title is a personal dignity which will pass,

if it is not a life peerage, according to the "remainder" or "destination" specified at the

time of its creation. But despite this clear distinction there are titles whose classification

may be obscure or contentious - for example, the Barony of Renfrew, before it was settled

in 1469 by Act of Parliament on the firstborn Princes of the Kings of Scotland forever

(it is now held by the Prince of Wales), was a feudal territorial dignity, not personal, not a peerage title, but some scholars hold that the Act of 1469

elevated it to peerage rank, others hold that it became a peerage title with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, while others hold that owing to the

uncertainty about the meaning of the 1469 text, the title is still territorial. Renfrew serves to justify, to some extent, the warning that in the study of feudal

titles, great care is always needed.