Cromwell created a few baronets, but at the Restoration the honour was bestowed so lavishly that a letter to Sir Richard Leveson (3rd of June 1660) describes it as "too common," and offers to procure it for any one in return for £300 or £400. Sir William Wiseman, however, is said to have given £500.
The history of the baronetage was uneventful till 1783, when in consequence of the wrongful assumption of baronetcies, an old and then increasing evil, a royal warrant was issued (6th of December) directing that no one should be recognized as a baronet in official documents till he had proved his right to the dignity, and also that those created in future must register their arms and pedigree at the Heralds' College. In consequence of the opposition of the baronets themselves, the first of these two regulations was rescinded and the evil remained unabated. Since the union with Ireland (1800) baronets have been created, not as of Great Britain or of Ireland, but as of the United Kingdom.
In 1834 a movement was initiated by Mr Richard Broun (whose father had assumed a Nova Scotia baronetcy some years before), to obtain certain privileges for the order, but on the advice of the Heralds' College, the request was refused. A further petition, for permission to all baronets to wear a badge, as did those of Nova Scotia, met with the same fate in 1836. Meanwhile George IV. had revoked (19th of December 1827), as to all future creations the right of baronets' eldest sons to claim knighthood. Mr Broun claimed it as an heir apparent in 1836, and on finally meeting with refusal, publicly assumed the honour in 1842, a foolish and futile act. In 1854 Sir J. Kingston James was knighted as a baronet's son, and Sir Ludlow Cotter similarly in 1874, on his coming of age; but when Sir Claude de Crespigny's son applied for the honour (17th of May 1895), his application was refused, on the ground that the lord chancellor did not consider the clause in the patent (1805) valid. The reason for this decision appears to be unknown.
Mr Broun's subsequent connexion with a scheme for reviving the territorial claims of the Nova Scotia baronets as part of a colonizing scheme need not be discussed here. A fresh agitation was aroused in 1897 by an order giving the sons of life peers precedence over baronets, some of whom formed themselves, in 1898, into "the Honourable Society of the Baronetage" for the maintenance of its privileges. But a royal warrant was issued on the 15th of August 1898, confirming the precedence complained of as an infringement of their rights. The above body, however,
has continued in existence as the "Standing Council of the Baronetage," and succeeded in obtaining invitations for some representatives of the order to the coronation of King Edward VII. It has been sought to obtain badges or other distinctions for baronets and also to purge the order of wrongful assumptions, an evil to which the baronetage of Nova Scotia is peculiarly exposed, owing to the dignity being descendible to collateral heirs male of the grantee as well as to those of his body. A departmental committee at the home office was appointed in 1906 to consider the question of such assumptions and the best means of stopping them.
All baronets are entitled to display in their coat of arms, either on a canton or on an inescutcheon, the red hand of Ulster, save those of Nova Scotia, who display, instead of it, the saltire of that province. The precedency of baronets of Nova Scotia and of Ireland in relation to those of England was left undetermined by the Acts of Union, and appears to be still a moot point with heralds. The premier baronet of England is Sir Hickman Bacon, whose ancestor was the first to receive the honour in 1611.
See Pixley's History of the Baronetage; Playfair's "Baronetage" (in British Family Antiquity, vols. vi.-ix.); Foster's Baronetage; G. E. Cokayne's Complete Baronetage; Nichols, "The Dignity of Baronet" (in Herald and Genealogist, vol. iii.)
(J. H. R.)
BARONIUS, CAESAR (1538-1607), Italian cardinal and ecclesiastical historian, was born at Sora, and was educated at Veroli and Naples. At Rome he joined the Oratory in 1557 under St Philip Neri (q.v.) and succeeded him as superior in 1593. Clement VIII., whose confessor he was, made him cardinal in 1596 and librarian of the Vatican. At subsequent conclaves he was twice nearly elected pope, but on each occasion was opposed by Spain on account of his work On the Monarchy of Sicily, in which he supported the papal claims against those of the Spanish government. Baronius is best known by his Annales Ecclesiastici, undertaken by the order of St Philip as an answer to the Magdeburg Centuries. After nearly thirty years of lecturing on the history of the Church at the Vallicella and being trained by St Philip as a great man for a great work, he began to write, and produced twelve folios (1588-1607). In the Annales he treats history in strict chronological order and keeps theology in the background. In spite of many errors, especially in Greek history, in which he had to depend upon secondhand information, the work of Baronius stands as an honest attempt to write history, marked with a sincere love of truth. Sarpi, in urging Casaubon to write against Baronius, warns him never to charge or suspect him of bad faith, for no one who knew him could accuse him of disloyalty to truth. Baronius makes use of the words of St Augustine: "I shall love with a special love the man who most rigidly and severely corrects my errors." He also undertook a new edition to the Roman martyrology (1586), which he purified of many inaccuracies.
His Annales, which end in 1198, were continued by Rinaldi (9 vols., 1676-1677); by Laderchi (3 vols., 1728-1737); and by Theiner (3 vols., 1856). The most useful edition is that of Mansi (38 vols., Lucca, 1738-1759), giving Pagi's corrections at the foot of each page.