Baron

Baron, Barony. The word baron is of great antiquity, and has in England and Scotland always denoted one belonging to a particular class. The barons were those who held lands of a superior by military or other honourable services, and were bound to do homage in the courts of their superiors and to assist in the business there transacted. The court in which these tenants performed their services is known as the Court Baron, more precisely "The Court of the Barons." Baron is the most general and universal title of nobility, for anciently everyone of the peers of superior rank had also a barony annexed to his other titles. Earls and barons were the only titles of nobility at the time of the Conquest, and in the character of barons most of the peers temporal and spiritual sit in Parliament. "But it has sometimes happened that when a peer with barony annexed has been raised to a new degree of peerage, in the course of a few generations the two titles have descended differently, one, perhaps, to the male descendants, the other to the heirs general; whereby the earldom or superior title has subsisted without a barony. And there are also modern instances where earls and viscounts have been created without annexing a barony to their other honours, so that the rule does not universally hold that all peers are barons." (Stephen's Blackstone's Commentaries.)