Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/671

 APPENDIX H 653 here to give the barest outlines of the circumstances which affect our enquiry in the period covering the gestation of peerage as an institution, but even a very slight sketch will show in startling relief the misconceptions on which popular ideas and modern legal doctrines of heritable nobility arc based. Tenure of land was the basis of Norman administration: the whole body of the State was upheld by it. It was the qualification for attendance in the National Assembly, as it was afterwards for the receipt of a writ of summons to Parliament, and, joined to hereditary succession, it was the root of all power and dignity. The whole country was organised for fiscal and military purposes. When the land of the conquered was distributed among the conquerors, William imposed on most of the recipients military service as the condition of tenure. Thus was established knight's service, the amount of service to the King being expressed in knights' fees, a term that survived long after the system which originated it fell into decay. Most of the King's tenants-in-chief, from whose ranks the baronage emerged, held their land by knight's service. But we do not know how much service entitled a man to claim or the King to insist that he held by barony. It is In this system of tenure that earldoms and baronies meet on common ground. All earls held some of their lands by barony — that is to say, an agglomeration ot knights' tees which was called a barony or an honour. After they lost their official character it does not appear that the service they owed differed from that owed by a baron. While the term baronage probably included all, or nearly all, the tenants-in-chief when the settlement after the Conquest was in progress, we find that after a time most of them dropped out of sight, and only the largest tenants, whose great possessions brought them within the King's circle, retained their place in the class which became part of one of the estates of the realm. The word "baron" was not exactly descriptive of the status of a man at any given time; and it was applied to men who differed widely in wealth and social consideration. (*) For us it must have a definite meaning; it will be used of those who were next in place to the earls in the Constitution, but it must be noted that there is no evidence that the men so called as yet possessed a heritable dignity. There were one or two features in holding by barony which acquire considerable importance in view of the nature of our enquiry. We cannot do better than quote Pollock and Maitland: Always or generally some castle or some manor is regarded as the head of the barony, and it would seem that for some fiscal or administrative purposes the whole barony was treated as lying in the county that contained its head. Then again a widow is not to be endowed with the caput haronia,!^) and the caput barom<e is not (") See J. H. Round's illuminating paper on "The Origin of the House of Lords," in Peerage and Pedigree, vol. i, pp. 339-342. C") The observance of this and other laws depended, of course, entirely on the caprice of the sovereign and the power of his favourites. A striking instance of the violation of the rule as to dower is to be found in 121 8. Margaret, widow of Baldwin de Reviers [s. and h. of William de Reviers, called de Vernon, d. Sep. 121 7], who ,/. v.p. Sep. I 2 16, married Faukes de Breauti!-. On 30 Mar. i 2 i 7/8, after the death of