by writ of summons to parliament, but by a patent, in which it was declared that he was advanced to the same state, style, and diguity of a baron, and that the same state, style, and dignity should descend to the male heirs of his body. Thus and at this time the class of barons by patent arose. The precedent thus set was, with very few exceptions, followed in the subsequent reigns; and by far the great majority of persons who now occupy the barons' bench in parliament are the inale representatives of persons on whom the dignity has been conferred, accompanied by a patent, which directs the course of its descent to be in the male heirs for the time being of the original grantee; and that should it ever happen that they are exhausted, the dignity becomes extinct.

It is unnecessary to enter into any examination of the privileges of the barons, which in no respect differ from those of the other component parts of the House of Peers. [PEERS OF THE REALM.]

6

The principal writers upon the subject of this article are, John Selden, in his work entitled Titles of Honour,' first published in 1614; Sir Henry Spelman, in his work entitled 'Archæologus, in modum Glossarii,' folio, 1626; Sir William Dugdale, in his Baronage of England,' 3 volumes, folio, 1675 and 1676; and in his Perfect Copy of all Summonses of the Nobility to the Great Councils and Parliament of this realm, from the 49th of Henry II. until these present times,' folio, 1685; Proceedings, Precedents, and Arguments ou Claims and Controversies concerning Baronies by Writ, and other Honours,' by Arthur Collins, Esq.,' folio, 1734; A Treatise on the Origin and Nature of Dignities or Titles of Honour,' by William Cruise, 8vo., 2nd edit., 1823; Report on the Proceedings on the Claim to the Barony of Lisle, in the House of Lords,' by Sir N. H. Nicolas, 8vo., 1829. But the most complete information on this subject is contained in the printed Report from the Lords' Committees, appointed search the Journals of the House, and Rolls of Parliament, and other Records and Documents, for all matters touching the Dignity of a Peer of the Realm.'

The word Barony is used in the pre

|

ceding article only in its sense of a dignity inherent in a person: but the ancient law-writers speak of persons holding lands by barony, which means by the service of attending the king in his courts as barons. The research of the Lords" Committees has not enabled them to trace out any specific distinction between what is called a tenure by a barony and a tenure by military and other services incident to a tenancy in chief. The Hiltons in the north, who held by barony, have been frequently called the Barons of Hilton, though they had never, as far as is known, summons to parliament, or enjoyed any of the privileges which belong to a peer of the realm. Burford in Shrop shire is also called a barony, and its former lords, the Cornwalls, who were an illegitimate branch of the royal house of England, were called, in instruments of authority, barons of Burford, but had never summons to parliament nor privi leges of peerage. Barony is also some times, but rarely, used in England for the lands which form the tenancy of a baron, and especially when the baron has any kind of territorial addition to his name taken from the place, and is not summoned merely by his Christian and surname. This seems, however, to be done rather in common parlance than as if it were one of the established local designations of the country. The head of a barony (caput baronia) is, however, an acknowledged and well-defined term. It designates the castle or chief house of the baron, the place in which his courts were held, where the services of his tenants were rendered, and where, in fact, he resided. The castles of England were heads of baronies, and there was this peculiarity respecting them, that they could not be put in dower, and that if it happened that the lands were to be parti tioned among co-heiresses, the head of the barony was not to be dismembered, but to pass entire to some one of the sisters.

Barony is used in Ireland for a subdivision of the counties; they reckon 252 of the districts called baronies. Barony here is equivalent to what is meant by hundred or wapentake in England.

It remains to notice three peculiar uses of the word Baron :—

1. The chief citizens of London, York, and of some other places in which the citizens possess peculiar franchises, are called in early charters not unfrequently by the name of " the barons" of the place. This may arise either from the circumstance of the persons only being intended ho were the chief men of the place; or that they were, in fact, barons, homagers of the king, bound to certain suit and service to the king, as it is known the auzens of London were and still are.

2. The Barons of the Cinque Ports are so called, probably for the same reasons that the citizens of London and of other privileged places are so called. The Cinque Ports, which were Hastings, Dover, Hythe, Romney, and Sandwich (to which afterwards Rye and Winchilsea were added), being ports opposite to France, were regarded by the earlier kings as places of great importance, and were consequently put under a peculiar governance, and endowed with peculiar privileges. The freemen of these ports were barons of the king, and they had the service imposed upon them of bearing the canopy over the head of the king on the day of his coronation. Here was the feudal service which marked them as persons falling within the limits of the king's barons. Those sent of themselves to parliament, though sitting in the lower house, might be expected to retain their appellation of barons.

3. The Barons of the Exchequer. The four judges in that court are so called, and one of them the Chief Baron. The court was instituted immediately after the Conquest, and it is probable that the judges were so denominated from the beginning. They are called barons in the earliest Exchequer record, namely, the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I. It may here mean no more than the men, that is, the chief men, of the Exchequer. For their functions and duties see EXCHEQUER.

BA'RONAGE. This term is used, not so much to describe the collective body of the barons in the restricted sense which now belongs to the word as signifying a component part of the hereditary nobility of England, but the whole of that nobility taken collectively, without regard to the distinction of dukes, marquesses,

earls, viscounts, and barons, all of whom form what is now sometimes called the baronage.

In this sense the term is used in the title of one of the most important works in the whole range of English historical literature, for the sake of giving a short notice of which, we have introduced an article under this word. We allude to the 'Baronage of England,' by SirWilliam Dugdale, who was the Norroy King at Arms, and one of the last survivors of one of those eminent antiquarian scholars who, in the seventeenth century, raised so high the reputation of England for that particular species of learning.

Sir William Dugdale was the author of many other works, but his history of the baronage of England is the one to which reference is more frequently made; and there is this peculiarity belonging to his labours, that the Baronage' is quoted by all subsequent writers as a book of the highest authority; and it has, in fact, proved a great reservoir of information concerning the families who, from the beginning, have formed the baronage o England, from which all later writers have drawn freely.

The first volume was published ir 1675; the second and third, which form together a volume not so large as the first, in 1676. The work professes to contain an account of all the families who had been at any period barons by tenure, barons by writ of summons, or barons by patent, together with all other families who had enjoyed titles of higher dignity, beginning with the earl of the Saxon times.

But Sir William Dugdale has collected from the chronicles, from the chartularies of religious houses, with which he became acquainted while preparing his great work on the history of the monasteries, from the rolls of parliament, in his time only to be perused in manuscript, and from the public records, which he could consult only in the public repositories, or in the extracts made from them by his fellow-labourers in historical research, and finally from the wills in the various ecclesiastical offices throughout the kingdom, the particulars of the lives of the most eminent men of our nation.

Not the least, merit of the work is the | careful reference to authorities. One passage in the preface to the Baronage contains a striking truth: "As the historical discourse will afford at a distance some, though but dim, prospect of the magnificence and grandeur wherein the most ancient and noble families of England did heretofore live, so will it briefly manifest how short, uncertain, and transient carthly greatness is; for of no less than two hundred and seventy in number, touching which this first volume doth take notice, there will hardly be found above eight which do to this day continue; and of those not any whose estates, compared with what their ancestors enjoyed, are not a little diminished; nor of that number, I mean two hundred and seventy, above twenty-four who are by any younger male branch descended from them, for aught I can discover."

BARONET, an English name of dignity, which in its etymology imports a Little Baron. But we must not confound it with the Lesser Baron of the middle ages [BARON], with which the rank of baronet has nothing in common; nor again with the banneret of those ages [BANNERET]; though it does appear that in some printed books, and even in the contemporary manuscripts, the state and dignity of a banneret is sometimes called the state and dignity of a baronet, by a mere error, as Selden promptly asserts (Titles of Honour,' p. 354), of the scribe.

The origin of this rank and order of persons is quite independent of any previous rank or order of English society. It originated with King James I., who, being in want of money for the benefit of the province of Ulster in Ireland, hit upon the expedient of creating this new dignity, and required of all who received it the contribution of a sum of money, as much as would support thirty infantry for three years, which was estimated at 10957., to be expended in settling and improving the province of Ulster.

The principle of this new dignity was to give rank, precedence, and title without privilege. He who was made a baronet still remained a commoner. He acquired no new exemption or right to

take his seat in any assembly in which he might not before have been seated. What he did acquire we can best collect from the terms of the patent which the king granted to all who accepted the honour, to them and the heirs male of their bodies for ever:-1. Precedence in all commissions, writs, companies, &c., before all knights, including knights of the Bath and bannerets, except such knights bannerets as were made in the field, the king being present; 2. Precedence for the wives of the baronet to follow the precedence granted to the husband; 3. Precedence to the daughters and younger sons of the baronet before the daughters and younger sons of any other person of whom the baronet himself took precedence; 4. The style and addition of Baronet to be written at the end of his name, with the prefix of Sir; 5. The wife of the baronet to be styled Lady, Madam, or Dame. It was stipulated on the part of the king, that the number of baronets should never exceed two hundred; and that, when the number was diminished by the natural process of extinction of families, there should be no new creations to supply the places of those extinct, but that the number should go on decreasing. Further, the king bound himself not to create any new order which should lie between the baron and the baronet.

Another distinction was soon after granted to them. A question arose respecting precedency between the newlycreated baronets and the younger sons of viscounts and barons, which the king disposed of by his own authority, in favour of the latter; and in the same instrument in which he declared the royal pleasure in this point, he directed that the baronets might bear, either on a canton or in an escutcheon on their shield of arms, the arms of Ulster, which, symbolical it seems of the lawless character of the inhabitants of that province, as is set forth in the preamble of the baronet's patent, was a bloody hand, or, in the language of heraldry, a hand gules in a field argent. And further, the king "to ampliate his favour, this dignity being of his Majesty's own creation, and the work of his hands," did grant that every baronet, when he had attained the age of twenty