Book Hunt - Subject: the english baronage

[agnosticnixie]

I'm trying to find specific info on the English baronage - not the peerage, but non-peer barons and baronies, which seems to be entirely ignored due to the modern peculiarities of the british nobiliary system.

[wozza]

I'm trying to find specific info on the English baronage - not the peerage, but non-peer barons and baronies, which seems to be entirely ignored due to the modern peculiarities of the british nobiliary system.

Barons should be included in a peerage guide surely? Or do you mean baronets?:confused:

[agnosticnixie]

Barons should be included in a peerage guide surely? Or do you mean baronets?:confused:

That's the problem, not all english medieval barons became peers; there's a lot of baronies by writ which are basically just "we summon lord X baron of y to parliament" and which aren't so much peerage as we know it now as the king calling some aristocrat for his counsel.

The Percys, for example, were baron of Alnwick before the patents for "Baron Percy" were ever written, and prior to inheriting the earldom of Devon (which was initially built from the Redvers barony of Plympton) the Courtenay were barons of Okehampton without there being such a peerage: they held the land per baroniam, paid baronial relief, etc. Basically, initially, there was a similar distinction between a peer and a baron to what you get in scottish nobility between barons and lords of parliament. Only earls, dukes, and later marquesses were automatically in the peerage (similar to how all spanish dukes are automatically grandees).

Then at some point people got the idea that the only true nobility in England was the peerage, which was a relatively new development but which peerage studies now apply as though it had, legally, always been true (it's only been true since the abolition of baronial relief and feudal tenure in 1660). Which means finding anything on feudal lords in England, when the official history has long been that feudalism was abolished far earlier than it really was, is pretty hard.

Wikipedia has an article on the subject, seems to have only one book available for a source, and a list of 66 of the lot (given that there were 12 or 13 in Devon alone, it's mildly incomplete). Also it's vaguely mentioned in Magna Carta in that it seems that a barony was possibly assumed to be 20 times a knight's fee (since baronial relief was fixed at 20 times a knight's relief).