Origin of the Title of Earl.
During the government of the Anglo-Saxons Earldoms of counties were not merely dignities of honour, but officers of justice; each person having the charge and custody of the county of which he was Earl; and for their assistance in the discharge of this duty, they had also deputies, or vicecomes, as they were denominated, appointed, which office still continues to be executed by the Sheriffs annually chosen for the different counties of England and Wales. The Earls, in recompense for their travelling expenses, and other charges incidental to the affairs of this important office, had originally a salary derived from the profits of the third penny of the county[14] granted to them; and this custom continued for a long time after the conquest, and was formerly inserted as a princely benevolence in their patents of creation. These salaries were at a later period changed into pensions for the better support of their dignity, as appears by many ancient records. The word Earl, by the Saxons was called Erlig, or Ethling; by the Germans, Grave, as Landgrave, Margrave, &c. and by the Dutch, Eorle: but upon the conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy, in 1066, and the subsequent settlement of the Normans in this country they were called Comes, or Comites, and for consequence in State affairs were usually styled Comes Illustres. Formerly Kings were addressed by the title of Your Grace. Henry VIII. was the first, says Houssaie, who assumed the title of Highness; and at length Majesty. It was Francis I. who began to give him this last title, in their interview in the year 1520.
[14] Third part of fines arising from law-suits, the other two going to the King.
Thought.
Il est des âmes que le malheur peut abattre, mais qu’il n’avilit jamais.
James II.
The Diary of James II. which from his earliest youth he had kept, he, at the time of his abdication, as one of his last acts, confided to the Count of Therese, by whose means the papers were sent to Italy; and afterwards found their way to the Scotch College at Paris. About the beginning of the French revolution, the original MSS. were sent to St. Amiens, secreted in a cellar, afterwards buried in a garden of a country house, and it is supposed were taken up and destroyed; but copies were previously taken and formed into a life of James II. which, with other papers termed the “Stuart Manuscripts,” were published.