Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/594

 57^ APPENDIX D EARLDOMS CREATED BY STEPHEN AND THE EMPRESS MAUDO A complete list of the Earldoms conferred by King Stephen (nine, all of which were conferred in the short space of three years, 1 138-41) is given in Appendix D (entitled "The ' Fiscal ' Earls") to J. Horace Round's Geoffrey de Mandeville: a Study of the Anarchy (i 892). This work effectually disposes of many delusions which hang over Stephen's troublous reign. Among others (i) is the term "Fiscal," as applied to the Earls of Stephen's creation under the [erroneous] impression that they were provided for "by pensions on the Exchequer," whereas " the term fiscus was used, at the time, in the sense of Crown demesne" and " no such beings as fiscal Earls ever existed"; another such delusion (2) is that "to abolish the fiscal Earldoms [i.e. the Earldoms of Stephen's creation] was among the first of Henry's reforms," whereas not " a single man who enjoyed Comital rank at the death of Stephen can be shewn to have lost that rank under Henry II." Another delusion, and one that, in an account of the Peerage, is more especially noteworthy, is (3) "a most extraordinary" one. It is " based on the radically false assumption of the poverty of Stephen's Earls," whence it is assumed that they were " taken from the ranks," whereas " they belonged, in the main, to that class of magnate from whom, both before and after his time, the Earls were usually drawn." The names Aubigni, Aumale, Beaumont, Bigod, Clare [2], Ferrers, Mandeville, and Roumare (being those of King Stephen's Earls) " are those of the noblest and wealthiest houses in the Baronage of Stephen's realm." To the nine Earldoms created by Stephen himself should be added six created by the Empress Maud, in or shortly after 1141, "the titles conferred by the rival competitors to the Crown " being " chosen from those portions of the Realm in which their strength respectively lay. Nor do they seem to have encroached upon the sphere of one another by assigning to the same county rival Earls," while also the Earls themselves (") The Editor is- indebted to J. H. Round for kindly revising this Appendix. VG.