[HPforGrownups] Re: Titled characters (WAS Voldemort's "lordship")

[MadameSSnape at aol.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 86159

In a message dated 11/30/2003 8:17:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
gbannister10 at aol.com writes:
Geoff:
Speaking as a UK resident, my comment would be that the title Baron 
is fairly rare - Baronet and also Baroness is not. Earl, Lord and 
Duke are reasonably common and the wife of an Earl, for example, 
might be styled Countess.

+++++++++++++

Sherrie here:

Is this in modern Britain, or historical Britain?  Was the title of "Baron" 
more common during earlier centuries (I'm thinking 12th or 13th - Henry 
II/Richard I)?  According to Burke's (online at 
http://www.burkes-peerage.net/sites/peerage/sitepages/page66-baron.asp):

"baron: holder of lowest rank of dignity, called a barony, in the peerage (2) 
of England, Great Britain, Ireland or United Kingdom (but almost never of 
Scotland, for which see lord). A related term is the now obsolescent 'baronage', 
meaning either the collective noun for the order of barons or a reference 
dealing with them.
"In early medieval society in England a baron was a man who held land 
directly from a sovereign. The sovereign not necessarily the king. He might be a 
Count Palatine, for instance the Earl of Chester, or a Palatine Bishop, for 
instance that of Durham (see VERNON, B. for an example of a holder of baronial rank 
in such circumstances), both of whom at that time wielded massively devolved 
powers because of the important positions of their domains on the borders with 
Wales and Scotland respectively. But on a national scale barons comprised not 
just the body of men who were later to become barons in the sense of holders 
of a peerage (1) title of that rank but also every earl, or strictly speaking 
every such earl as held land directly from the King (which in practice amounted 
to all of them), for an earl at that time was primarily an official rather 
than a nobleman who possessed a personal dignity with a certain rank in the 
peerage."

Somehow, I've always pictured the Bloody Baron as hailing ca. Magna Carta, or 
maybe earlier - sometime in the early Plantagenet years, at all events.  Not 
as late as Sir Nick... if you'll pardon the pun.

Sherrie


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