But to return to the 'barons', Professor Burrows, discussing the title, writes thus:[12]
It is admitted that the title was at first only held by the Portsmen in common with the citizens of several other places, as that of a responsible man in a privileged community, of a 'baro' or 'vir' of some dignity; but, of course, not in the least in the sense of a 'baron' such as the word came to mean in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
I do not know which were these 'several other places'; but I think the word 'baron' can be shown to have here had a definite connotation. The exemption from 'wardship and marriage', for instance, granted by Edward I (1278), implies that these 'barons' were subject to the burdens of tenants-in-chief, while their extraordinary appeal, after the battle of St Mahé (1293), to 'the judgment of their peers, earls, and barons'[13] has not, so far as I know, received the attention it deserves. By such a phrase the Cinque Ports 'barons' virtually claimed the privilege of peers of the realm.
But one must not wander too far along these tempting paths. When tradition is replaced, as it may be in part, by evidence, we shall have, not improbably, to unlearn much that now passes current as genuine Cinque Ports history. On the other hand, there may be in store for us glimpses of much that is interesting and new.[14]
Apart, however, from problems as yet difficult and obscure, we shall be standing on sure ground in asserting that the charter of Edward I is the first that was granted to the Ports collectively, and that the rights and liberties it confirmed were those which had been granted to the separate ports by Henry II and John, and which it then made uniform and applicable to the whole confederation. As at London,[15] we have always to remember that communal institutions might develop locally before their existence is proved by the crown's formal recognition. Delay in that recognition is not proof of their non-existence. What complicates so greatly the study of the Cinque Ports polity is the difficulty of disentangling its three component elements: the old English institutions common to other towns; the special relation to the crown in connection with their ship-service; and the foreign or communal factor on which I have myself insisted. No impartial student, I believe, will deny that I have fairly established the existence of this third element. Its relative importance and its sphere of action must remain, of course, as yet matter of conjecture.
[1] Archæological Review, iv. 439-44.
[2] ibid., p. 441.
[3] The Cinque Ports, p. 64.
[4] Had he seen them all, the wording would have run, 'per cartas eorundem, quas iidem', etc.
[5] The Cinque Ports, p. 63.