Baronetcy

“ His brilliant prospects dated from the death of his brother, who had no children, had indeed steadily refused to marry. When I say brilliant prospects, I mean the vision of the baronetcy, one of the oldest in England, of a charming seventeenth-century house, with its park, in Dorsetshire, and a property worth some twenty thousand a year. ”

“ But if you would do me the favour of reading our memorial.”
“The proposition is not one adapted to our present civilisation,” said Lady Joan. “A baronetcy has become the distinction of the middle class; a physician, our physician for example, is a baronet; and I dare say some of our tradesmen; brewers, of people of that class. An attempt to elevate them into an order of nobility, however inferior, would partake in some degree of the ridiculous.”
“And has the duke escaped his gout this year?” enquired Lord Marney of Lady de Mowbray. ”

“ Wintering in Italy he passed through Paris in April, and finally returned to London, after an absence of thirty-three years. No 'honours,' in the vulgar sense of the word, awaited him. A baronetcy had already been declined by his friends, with his cordial acquiescence. ”

“ Pocket and Drummle while I was attentive to my knife and fork, spoon, glasses, and other instruments of self-destruction, that Drummle, whose Christian name was Bentley, was actually the next heir but one to a baronetcy. ”

“ An elder line of this family, on whom the Baronetcy, created in 1611, has descended, is said to be resident in Maryland, in the United States of America.
See Leland's Itinerary, vol. iv. pl. i.; Whitaker's Richmondshire, vol. i. p. 322; and Wotton's Baronetage, vol. i. p. 232.
Arms.—Gules, three chevronels interlaced vaire, and a chief or. The arms are founded upon the coat of Fitz Hugh, and may be taken as a proof of high antiquity. ”

“ Of these the oldest is that of “count,” which goes back to the comites (companions) of the early Roman emperors (see Count) ; the second is “baron,” originally meaning no more than “man” and so, under the feudal system, the king's “men” par excellence, the great tenants-in-chief of the crown (see Baron) . In England the barons formed and form the body of the peerage, “peer” not being a title of honour, but the description of a status and function bestowed by their creation upon all barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses and dukes (see Peerage) . ”

“ Earls or Counts as distinguished from Barons—The office of Counts—Their condition after the conquest—Counties Palatine in England—Counties Palatine in Ireland—Spiritual Peers—The trials of Noblemen.
In my last lecture I treated of baronies, which are the lowest rank of peerage, and of the right whereby this class of nobles sits in the great council of the nation, and also of the various methods that have prevailed in different ages of creating them; but before I have done with the higher nobility, it will be necessary to say something of earls or counts as distinguished from barons ”

“ The oldest title borne by a member of the House of Lords under which he sits and votes is that of De Ros, this barony having been created 1264, but after that of Le Despencer.
Earls, Viscounts, Barons, and Baronesses are entitled to be styled ‘Right Honourable;’ a Marquis is ‘Most Honourable,’ or ‘Most Noble and Puissant Prince;’ a Duke is ‘Most Noble,’ or ‘Most High, Potent, and Noble Prince.’ All peers except barons are by the etiquette of heraldry regarded and styled as cousins of the sovereign. ”

“ Now, from all I heard of the baronet when I was in the country last week, I take him to be a hardfisted, penurious curmudgeon, who, to judge from his style of living, must be laying by several thousands a year—though, why he should care to do so, goodness only knows, seeing that he has nobody he cares about to leave his savings to—the next heir being a half-cousin with whom he has been at outs for the last thirty years. ”

“ Lords of Parliament or Peers—Earls and Barons—The earlier state of Baronies in England—The Barones majores & minores—Barons by writ and by letters patent—The different ranks of Nobility.
Next in rank to the king are the lords, that held immediately of him by military service, as long as that species of tenure subsisted; and whom, from their privilege of sitting in parliament in their own rights, are frequently called Lords of Parliament, and in common speech are called Peers, though that word properly signifies any co-vassals to the same lord. ”

“ The baronets of fiction are, like their congeners in real life, a numerous and a motley band. Lord Beaconsfield described, with a brilliancy of touch which was all his own, the labours and the sacrifices of Sir Vavasour Firebrace on behalf of the Order of Baronets and the privileges wrongfully withheld from them. "They are evidently the body destined to save this country; blending all sympathies—the Crown, of which they are the peculiar champions: the nobles, of whom they are the popular branch; the people, who recognize in them their natural leaders.... ”

“ A baronet's rank is exceedingly nice, But the title's uncommonly dear at the price! Ye well-to-do squires, who live in the shires, Where petty distinctions are vital, Who found Athenaeums and local museums, With a view to a baronet's title— Ye butchers and bakers and candlestick makers Who sneer at all things that are tradey— Whose middle-class lives are embarrassed by wives Who long to parade as "My Lady", Oh! ”

“ No person should be eligible to represent a county unless previously adorned with the honour either of knighthood or of the baronetage, or unless the younger son of a peer of the realm; and indeed the attaching of titles of nobility to the possession of estates of a certain value and fixity of tenure, and the annexing of baronetcies to similar properties, would put all the principal country gentlemen in a position suited to the duties of a knight of the shire. ”

“ All dukes, marquisses, earls, viscounts, and barons are not only peers of the realm, but peers amongst themselves; so that the most inferior baron is the peer of the greatest duke. The rest of the people are called the commoners, without distinction, by which the poorest labourer is the peer of every one under the degree of a baron. The peers of the realm from this noble privilege, established or revived by King Alfred, are judged by those of their own rank; that is, by the rest of the lords ”

“ Lodge’s Peerage and Baronetage is acknowledged to be the most complete, as well as the most elegant, work of the kind. As an established and authentic authority on all questions respecting the family histories, honours, and connections of the titled aristocracy, no work has ever stood so high. It is published under the especial patronage of Her Majesty, and His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, and is annually corrected throughout, from the personal, communications of the Nobility. ”

“ A low laugh issued from the cottage as the same voice replied to this appeal with the following words:—
“Oh mighty are Barons in battle array, Full swift are their steeds and full sharp are their swords; But the heart of a maiden must have its own way, And Love is far stronger than Barons and Lords. He climbs the high walls of the castle so strong, In vain your defences your treasure to shield; To words which are whispered by lover’s true tongue, The peeress and peasant will equally yield.” ”

“ There was a middle-aged peer, and a young and wealthy baronet, and a simple esquire, enormously rich in everything but brains, and a captain of dragoons, the nephew and presumptive heir to a duke, who, to say the truth, was the best of the party, for he was a man of feeling, of character, and of thought, a little enthusiastic, indeed, in his notions, but whose imagination, in all its flights, soared heavenward. ”

“ Those lords, whose respect royalty had difficulty in keeping when they were at their castles, having come to court, prostrated themselves before the throne, and yielded obedience with their whole hearts. A few words will describe this Court. The king lodged and fed in his own large palace, which was fitted for the purpose, the flower of the French nobility. Some of these lords were in his service, under the title of officers of his household--as chamberlains, purveyors, equerries, &c. Large numbers of domestic offices were created solely as an excuse for their presence. ”

“ We called unto us the inhabitants of every barony severally. . . We had present certain of the clerks or scholars of the country, who know all the septs and families, and all their branches, and the dignity280 of one sept above another, and what families or persons were chief of every sept, and who were next, and who were of a third rank, and so forth, till they descended to the most inferior man in all the baronies; moreover, they took upon them to tell what quantity of land every man ought to have by the custom of their country, which is of the nature of gavelkind. ”

“ Least of all have those baronets of later creation, men who have made large sacrifices and rendered inestimable services to their country. On these the rank of baronet conferred no real dignity which they did not before possess, but it served as an acknowledgment of their worth in the eyes of their fellow-men. ”

“ Many other baronets have at one time or another assumed supporters without any official warrant or authority in consequence of certain action taken by an earlier committee of the baronetage, but cases of this kind are slowly dropping out of the Peerage books, and this, combined with the less ostentatious taste of the present day in the depicting of armorial bearings upon carriages and elsewhere, is slowly but steadily reducing the use of supporters to those who possess official authority for their display. ”

“ Of these there were, antiently, two ranks only, in England, Earls and Barons. Indeed, abroad also, to speak properly, there were but two likewise: for there was no difference in power and privilege between the dukes and counts, or earls. But as every earl is a baron, and something more, and as it is a maxim of our law, that every lord of parliament sits there by virtue of his barony, it will, in the first place, be necessary to see what a baron is. ”

“ A baron appoints three chaplains; a viscount four; an earl and a marquis five; a duke six.
"A peer cannot be put to the rack, even for high treason. A peer cannot be branded on the hand. A peer is a clerk, though he knows not how to read. In law he knows.
"A duke has a right to a canopy, or cloth of state, in all places where the king is not present; a viscount may have one in his house; a baron has a cover of assay, which may be held under his cup while he drinks. A baroness has the right to have her train borne by a man in the presence of a viscountess. ”

“ The House of Lords.The House of Lords is a direct descendant of the barons of the thirteenth century. The eldest son of a baron, earl, marquis or duke inherits the right to receive from the King a letter calling him by name to Parliament whenever it meets. The King can ‘create’ a man a baron, and the creation carries with it this right to receive the letter of summons. Perhaps there were nearly two hundred great barons in Henry II’s reign ”

“ Are you in a position to judge of the wants of artizans—of hand-loom weavers—you, who never knew the want of a meal in your lives, do you presume to know when the people want bread? The right honourable baronet is the cause—yes, I say he is the cause of our present position, and, upon his shoulders will the people rest the the whole of the responsibility. ”

“ A guardian could get one tenth of the income of the property during the wardship and a substantial marriage amount when the ward married.
Most earldoms and many baronages came into the royal house by escheat or marriage. The royal house employed many people. The barons developed a class consciousness of aristocracy and became leaders of society. Many men, no matter of whom they held land, sought knighthood. ”

“ Tuke dryly.
“You’d not think it, eh? It’s truth, sir. Why,” said the baronet, “I don’t s’pose the fellow’s ever fired a fowling-piece in his life; but he knows more of the habits of animals, ground and winged, than any dozen sportsmen in the parish. ”

“ The history of the baronetage was uneventful till 1783, when in consequence of the wrongful assumption of baronetcies, an old and then increasing evil, a royal warrant was issued (6th of December) directing that no one should be recognized as a baronet in official documents till he had proved his right to the dignity, and also that those created in future must register their arms and pedigree at the Heralds’ College. ”

“ You must understand that the great Barons, who held very extensive domains, gave [73] small estates out of them to men who were not so high in rank as themselves, on the same conditions as the king had given the large baronies to them, so that the lesser nobles were the vassals of the great ones, and were bound to aid them with men and money when required.
19. Then all the nobles, from the highest to the lowest degree, were the absolute lords of all the common people that dwelt on their lands, and could make them do just whatever they pleased, as I told you they could in the Saxon times ”

“ If a man holds lands of any ‘escheat’ such as the ‘honour’ of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other ‘escheats’ in our hand that are baronies, at his death his heir shall give us only the ‘relief’ and service that he would have made to the baron, had the barony been in the baron’s hand. ”

“ And now, good my liege, forgive me one sentence more. Heaven forefend that I should stand in the way of thy princely favours. A king's countenance is a sun that should shine on all. But bethink thee well, the barons of England are a stubborn and haughty race; chafe not thy most puissant peers by too cold a neglect of their past services, and too lavish a largess to new men. ”