From this
time the earl came to be called comes, consul, and dux, though
consul and dux grew afterward out of use; the King's thanes came
to be called barons, and their lands baronies; the middle thane
holding still of a mesne lord, retained the name of vavasor.
The earl or comes continued to have the third part of the
pleas of the county paid to him by the sheriff or vice -- comes,
now a distinct officer in every county depending upon the King;
saving that such earls as had their counties to their own use
were now counts-palatine, and had under the King regal
jurisdiction; insomuch that they constituted their own sheriffs,
granted pardons, and issued writs in their own names; nor did the
King's writ of ordinary justice run in their dominions till a
late statute, whereby much of this privilege was taken away.
For barons they came from henceforth to be in different times
of three kinds: barons by their estates and tenures, barons by
writ, and barons created by letters-patent. From Turbo the first
to Adoxus the seventh king from the Conquest, barons had their
denomination from their possessions and tenures. And these were
either spiritual or temporal; for not only the thanelands, but
the possessions of bishops, as also of some twenty six abbots,
and two priors, were now erected into baronies, whence the lords
spiritual that had suffrage in the Teuton Parliament as spiritual
lords came to have it in the Neustrian Parliament as barons, and
were made subject, which they had not formerly been, to knights'
service in chief.
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