BARON
[Latin baro, or vir, a man, German
bar, a freeman, Spanish varo, a stout
noble person], a feudal honour of great antiquity.
Barons were those who held their lands of a superior
by military and other services. For some time before
the Norman Conquest this name was commonly used in
France to denote a person of the first dignity; but
after that event it was introduced into England, and
used to signify an immediate vassal of the Crown,
bound for his lands to give personal service to the
king in his wars, to attend at his court and council
when summoned, and to do homage to him and
acknowledge himself his “man” or baron. The
name is now used as the title of the lowest order of
the nobility.
The feudal system, of which the baronage
formed so important a part, and which exerted so
beneficial an influence on Scottish civilization,
was, as exhibited in its most flourishing state
during the middle ages, introduced into Scotland by
the Anglo-Norman adventurers (a term used to
distinguish not only Normans, but French, Flemings,
and others speaking the French language, all,
however, knights of reputation), who accompanied
David the First, when, after spending his youth and
receiving his education in England, he, as
independent Count or Prince of Cumbria, undertook
the subjugation of the West Lothians and Galloway,
as well as afterwards on his accession to the
throne, and to whom he granted lands in all parts of
the country. “His education and tastes,” says Mr.
Burton, (Life of Lord Lovat, page 3.)
“Attached him to the gallant race who, wherever they
went, were first in arms and arts, and mingled the
sternest powers of man with his finest social
enjoyments. He courted the presence of the lordly
Normans. They had nearly exhausted England; and the
new territory opened to them, if less rich and
fertile, was still worth commanding. The charters
and other law documents anterior to the war of
independence, are full of high-sounding Norman
names, many of which subsequently disappeared from
the Scottish nomenclature – Morevilles, De Viponts,
D’Umfravilles, DeQuinceys, D’Angains, & c.” In
reference to this remark it may be stated that,
except ecclesiastics, from David the First
downwards, none were admitted as witnesses in the
royal charters but tenants in capite, barons
or magnates. “It was chiefly,” continues Mr. Burton,
“in the fertile plains of the south, and in the
neighbourhood of the English border, that they (the
Anglo-Norman knights) were most thickly congregated;
but some of them had found their way far north, to
the wild districts beyond the Grampians, where the
greatness of the estate was some compensation for
its barrenness. But wherever their lot was cast –
among the Saxons of Mid-Lothian, the Celts of
Inverness, or their brother Norsemen of Caithness –
these heroes, who united the courage and fierceness
of the old sea-king to the polished suavity of the
Frank, became the lords of the land, and the old
inhabitants of the soil became their subordinates.”
These Anglo-Norman barons and their successors, in
the then state of society in Scotland, acquired
powers and privileges of a high order, and in some
sense, were independent even of the monarch
to whom they owed their homage, and who possessed
the right of resumption of their lands. Partly by
direct grants, but more frequently by marriages with
the heiresses of Celtic nobles, the entire nobility
and great part of the baronage of the kingdom had
soon nearly become Norman in name as well as in
blood.
The powers of a feudal baron were very great.
Within his own lands he had high and even sovereign
jurisdiction, both civil and criminal, which in the
general sense he might exercise, either by himself
or by his deputy, called a bailie. His
criminal jurisdiction, in particular, was most
extensive. According to the laws ascribed to Malcolm
M’Kenneth (c. 13) it reached to all crimes except
treason, and what lawyers call the four pleas of the
crown, namely, robbery, murder, rape, and
fire-raising; and even in some cases he could judge
as to the latter, and in processes for breaking of
orchards, destroying of green wood and of planting,
provided the offenders were taken in the fact, and
in riots and bloodwits, the fines of which he had
the power to appropriate to himself. [Erskine’s
Institutes, Book I, Title iv. p. 91.]
Our parliaments or national councils, for the
word parliament was not in use till long after,
consisted at first only of the king’s barons, or
freeholders, and under the same appellation, it
would seem that the dignified clergy were included,
on account of their freeholds. [Erskine’s
Institutes, Book I. Title iii. p. 50] Every
Scottish baron, whatever were his holdings, if he
had a barony and the power of pit and gallows, had a
right to sit and vote in the national council. Few
or none of the smaller lairds, however, availed
themselves of a privilege involving the obligation
of distant journeys and much expense, and the
consequence was a great accession of power to the
higher nobles. Hence came the distinction of the
greater and lesser barons, which was not known in
Scotland till towards the end of the reign of James
the First. In a general council held at Perth, on
the 1st March 1427, an act was passed
dispensing with the attendance of the lesser barons
and free tenants in parliament, on condition of
their electing from each sheriffdom, in proportion
to its extent, two or more commissioners as their
representatives. [Act 1427. c. 101.] From this
dispensation, however, the greater barons were
expressly excepted. These were sufficiently
distinguished from the lesser barons by their grants
or patents of peerage, whereby they were dignified
by the titles of duke, earl, or baron.
In England the distinction between greater and
lesser barons seems to have arisen from the latter
holding of the former. Dugdale says, “Those who were
the king’s chief tenants, id est, his
principal freeholders, had the title of barones
majores. And as they thus holding of the king
in capite by barony were called his barons, so
had most of the great earls, in those elder times,
their great freeholders under them, whom they also
called barons, as is evident by their charters,
wherein they usually wrote Omnibus Baronibus
suis, tam Francis quam Anglicis, &c. And as
these great tenants of the king, who had their
titles from their principal seats or heads of their
baronies, were called his barones majores, so
were his other tenants or freeholders who held of
him by military service in capite termed
barones minores; of which two sorts of tenants,
together with the bishops and earls, the parliaments
of this realm did anciently consist, only the
barones majores had summons by several writs,
and the others, who held by military service in
capite, by one general summons from the sheriff
in each county.” [Preface to Baronage, p. 3]
It is worthy of notice, that while the English
feudal barons are frequently styled lords by the
English genealogists, as Lord Percy, Lord Neville,
Lord Mowbray, & c., it was not usual so to designate
the Magnates Scotiae, or great barons of
Scotland, although their tenure, status, and rank
were precisely the same. On this point Lord Lindsay
aptly remarks: “There might have been differences in
wealth and power, but all the magnates, strictly
speaking, were peers. Neither the Bruces till the
marriage of the elder Bruce with the countess of
Carrick, nor the Baliols till their elevation to the
throne, nor the High Stewards till after the middle
of the fourteenth century, possessed any title
higher than that of ‘Sire,’ or Seigneur – like the
de Coucys of France.” [Lives of the Lindsays,
vol. i. p. 57. note.] It may be added, that of the
thirteen competitors for the Scottish crown, on the
death of Margaret of Norway, eight were untitled
barons, while two others were styled lords of their
respective possessions, as Comyn, lord of Badenoch,
and Bruce, lord of Annandale.
In England the barons ceased to be peers,
unless so created, during the thirteenth century,
but in Scotland, up to the year 1587, – in which
year, various acts, drawn up by Lord Menmuir [see
article
BALCARRES] were passed for regulating the form and
order of parliament and the vote of the barons,– the
title of baron was common to all the landed
proprietors or lairds, holding their lands directly
of the Crown. As one object of these acts was to
free the barons from their dependence on noblemen,
they were bitterly opposed by the nobility, headed
by the earl of Crawford who, in name of his order,
protested against their receiving the small barons
to a voice in parliament by their commissioners.
Under the feudal system, the king, when he
gave a grant of lands for military service,
conferred on the grantee a jurisdiction within them
of sheriffship, barony, or regality, and as they
descended to his heirs, each new possessor, on
inheriting the lands, doing homage for them, the
jurisdiction also became heritable.
Regalities were feudal rights of land
granted by the king in liberam regalitatem.
Those to whom they were granted, though sometimes
only commoners, were called “lords of regality,” on
account of the high and regal jurisdiction which
they conveyed. The civil jurisdiction of a lord of
regality was in all respects equal to that of a
sheriff; but his criminal was, as Erskine observes,
“truly royal.” He had, says Burton, “at least as
many of the privileges of an independent prince as a
Margrave or Pfalzgrave. His courts were competent to
try all questions, civil or criminal, that of high
treason against the sovereign alone excepted. He
appointed judges and executive officers, who were
responsible only to himself. He had within his
territory a series of municipal systems –
corporations with their municipal officers,
privileged markets, harbours, and mills, with
internally administered regulations fo police,
applicable to weights and measures, fishing
privileges, and other like useful institutions. He
could build prisons and coin money. When any of his
people were put on trial before the king’s courts he
could ‘repledge’ the accused to his own court, only
finding recognizances to execute justice in the
matter,– a nominal check, which would seldom divert
the lord and his ‘bailie’ or judge from acting
according to their own particular views.” [Burton’s
Life of Simon Lord Lovat, p. 162.] “An Analogy,”
adds Mr. Burton in a note, “will be seen between the
regalities and the palatinates created in England.
The jealousy with which any dispersal of the
privileges of the Crown among the great barons was
watched in England brought back two of the three
palatinates to the king at a very early period,
while the third (Durham) being in the hands of a
bishop, could not be the means of throwing any
dangerous power into the hands of a particular
house, and remained in existence till the year
1836.” Mr. Riddell, in his Remarks on peerage law
(p. 57), observes, “Although we had, in fact, many
palatinates, according to English notion, that is to
say, fiefs invested with royal jurisdiction, yet the
term was almost wholly unknown in Scotland. Only one
earldom, that of Strathern, was styled a palatinate;
but what the peculiar nature of the distinction was
does not appear.”
Some ecclesiastics, as bishops and abbots,
possessed the rights of barons, and some of the
abbeys had a right of regality over their lands.
These hereditary jurisdictions passed from hand to
hand with the lands to which they were attached; and
the regality of Dunfermline abbey continuing
attached to the temporal lordship after the
dissolution of the monasteries, we find the
newspapers, so late as the year 1732, recording a
conviction by the judge of the regality, of some
gypsies who lived in a cave and plundered the
neighbourhood, in these terms: “This day was
finished here a very tedious trial of four gypsies,
(or gypsies habit and repute,) strollers, or
vagabonds, which lasted between eighteen and
nineteen hours, by the honoured Captain Halkett,
James Dewar of Lassodie, and Henry Walwood of
Garvock, deputies of the most honourable the marquis
of Tweeddale, as heritable bailie of the justiciary
and regality courts of Dunfermline, when on a full
and plain proof, James Ramsay, one of the gang, was
sentenced to be hanged the 22d of March next,
and the other three to be whipped, the first
Wednesday of each month, for one half year, and
afterwards to be banished the regality for ever.” [Extract
from Caledonian Mercury, Chalmers, p. 246.]
The power which their heritable jurisdictions
conferred on the greater barons became at last
formidable to the state, and enabled some of them
openly to defy the law. The history of the reigns of
the first Jameses is but the record of the struggle
of the Crown against the feudal aristocracy.
Immediately upon the forfeiture of the earl of
Douglas, June 10, 1455, an act was passed whereby it
was ordained that no regality should be granted for
the future without the authority of parliament; and
another that no office should be given afterwards in
fee or heritage. Our sovereigns, nevertheless,
continued to make grants of heritable jurisdictions,
most of which were confirmed by parliament; others,
without such ratification, were strengthened by the
immemorial exercise of their jurisdictions, till it
became at last the general opinion that those
statutes of 1455 had lost their authority. By the
treaty of Union, article 20, all heritable offices
and jurisdictions were reserved to the owners as
rights of property. The heritable jurisdictions in
Scotland were finally abolished in 1747, the holders
of them receiving compensation for the same,
parliament having voted one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds sterling for the purpose. By the act
abolishing them (20 George II. c. 43) the civil
jurisdiction of a baron in Scotland was reduced to
the power of recovering from his vassals and tenants
the rents of his lands, and of condemning them in
mill services; and also of judging in causes where
the debt and damages do not exceed forty shillings
sterling. His criminal jurisdiction was, by the same
statute, limited to assaults, batteries, and other
smaller offences, which may be punished by a fine
not exceeding twenty shillings sterling, or by
setting the offender in the stocks (now disused).
The obligation which was long imposed by the law of
Scotland on barony vassals to attend the baron’s
head courts was about the same time prohibited.
The power of the high feudal aristocracy
within their own territories was as great as that of
the monarch himself, and many of them, as the
Douglases, the Lindsays, the Hamiltons and others,
affected a state and magnificence equal to those of
the sovereign. An account of the feudal state of one
of the great barons will be found under the head of
the earl of Crawford as described by Lord Lindsay
[see CRAWFORD, earls of]. The picture drawn by him
bears a close resemblance to the feudalism of
England and the continent. “But,” adds his lordship,
“owning to the mixture of Celtic and Norman blood, a
peculiar element mingled from the first in the
feudality of Scotland, and has left its indelible
impress on the manners and habits of thought of the
country. Differently from what was the case in
England, the Scoto-Norman races were peculiarly
prolific, and population was encouraged as much as
possible. This was evinced by the ramifying tendency
of the Scotch Stuarts, Douglases, Hamiltons,
Lindsays, & c., as compared with the Howards,
Percies, Mowbrays, De Veres, & c., many of which
houses have become entirely extinct, while most of
the old Scottish families number their hundreds and
thousands, in every class and station of life. The
earl or baron bestowed a fief, for example, on each
of his four sons, who paid him tribute in rent and
service; each son subdivided his fief again among
his own children, and they again among theirs, till
the blood of the highest noble in the land was
flowing in that of the working peasant, at no remote
interval. This was a subject of pride, not shame, in
Scotland.” [Lives of the Lindsays, vol. i. p.
117.]
A BURGH OF BARONY was a corporation holding of
a baron within his domain and governed by
magistrates, the right of electing whom was
sometimes vested in the inhabitants themselves and
sometimes in the baron their superior. The ground
granted to the burgh, and on which it was erected,
continued as truly a portion of the barony as if it
were the holding of a single vassal. When the
magistrate who ruled such a burgh was appointed by
the superior he was styled a baron bailie, and, as
the baron’s deputy, possessed within the burgh all
the rights belonging to the baron himself. This was
a class of magistrates peculiar to Scotland. The
right of the barons, and some of them of no great
note, to constitute burghs, and appoint magistrates,
or to give authority to the feuars of burgesses to
elect their own magistrates, who, by such authority
only, were legally authorised to administer justice
and pass laws for maintaining peace and order in the
burgh, is one proof of the great and peculiar powers
of the Scottish aristocracy, which distinguishes
Scotland from all the other nations of Europe.
Greenock, now a flourishing seaport, and the sixth
town in Scotland in point of population, is a case
in point. In 1635, being then a mere village, it was
erected into a burgh of barony holding of John Shaw,
proprietor of the barony, and till 1741 the affairs
of the burgh were superintended by the superior or
by a baron bailie appointed by him. By a charter
dated in that year, and by another in 1751, Sir John
Shaw, the superior, empowered the feuars and
subfeuars to meet yearly for the purpose of choosing
nine feuars residing in Greenock to be managers of
the burgh funds, of whom two were to be bailies, one
treasurer, and six councillors. The last-mentioned
charter gave power to hold weekly markets, to
imprison and punish delinquents, to choose officers
of court, to make laws for maintaining order, and to
admit merchants and tradesmen as burgesses on
payment of a small sum. This instance is one of many
that might be cited of the extent to which the pure
feudal system had prevailed, and of its continuance
in Scotland after it had disappeared everywhere else
in Europe. The Burgh Reform act of 1833 put the
jurisdiction and government of Greenock on a
different footing, as it did all the other burghs of
Scotland.
________
BARON, not generally spelled Barron, a surname
derived from the feudal title of Baron. A family of
this name formerly possessed the lands of Kinniard
in Fife. In the time of James the Fifth, Magdalen,
prioress of Elcho, feued these lands to Alexander
Leslie, whose grand-daughter and heiress married
James Baron, merchant in Edinburgh, who thus
acquired the lands. Of this family were two learned
doctors of divinity, named John and Robert Baron.
The latter was professor of theology in Marischal
College, Aberdeen, and the author of various
philosophical works. He was elected bishop of
Orkney, but died at Berwich in 1639, before he could
be consecrated. The son of Mr. Baron disposed the
lands to Sir Michael Balfour of Denmiln, the father
of Sir James Balfour, lord Lyon. Sir James was,
during his father’s life, invested with the lands of
Kinniard, and was always designed of Kinniard.
There was a family of the name of Baron in the
dukedom of Florence, from Scotland. The first of
them is said to have accompanied William, the
brother of Achaius, to assist Charlemagne in his
wars, and he settled in Italy. His family continued
for a long time, but failed at last, much regretted
by a Florentine author, Ugolinus Verinius, (De
Reparatione Florentiae, lib. iii.) In these
verses:
“Clara potensque diu, sed
nune est nulla BARONUM
Extra progenies, extremisque
orta Britannis.”
