[367]. E.g. Gloucester and Battle Abbeys: see Round, ibid., 299.
[368]. See Round, Feudal England, 294, and Pollock and Maitland, I. 235.
[369]. See Pollock and Maitland, I. 262, and authorities there cited. “An honour or barony is thus regarded as a mass of lands which from of old have been held by a single title.” An exact definition is, perhaps, impossible: the term was first applied in early days without any technical meaning; in later days each “honour” had separately established its position by prescriptive usage. See also Pike, House of Lords, pp. 88-9, on the difficulty of defining “an entire barony.”
[370]. This change was not complete in 1215, but Magna Carta, when it uses “barones” alone, seems to refer to “barones majores” only (see cc. 2, 21, 61). In c. 14, “barones majores” are contrasted with “barones minores.”
[371]. See Coke on Littleton, II. iv. s. 112, and ibid. Second Institute, p. 7. Founding on the later practice of the exchequer, which exacted one hundred marks of relief from a barony, and one hundred shillings from a knight’s fee, he assumed the false equation "1 barony = 13⅓ knight’s fees." If he had known of the earlier practice, which followed the rule of John’s Charter, he might have jumped to another equation, equally false, namely that "1 barony = 20 knight’s fees." There is, in reality, no fixed proportion between the two, either as to extent or value.
[372]. In the Inspeximus of Edward I., however, the word comitatus (earldom) displaces the baronia comitis of the text. See Statutes of Realm, I. 114.
[373]. See Pike, House of Lords, 57.
[374]. See Pike, House of Lords, 63. This term comitatus was a word of many meanings. Originally designating the “county” or “the county court,” it came to mean also the office of the earl who ruled the county, and later on it might indicate, according to context, either his titular connection with the shire, his estates, his share of the profits of justice, or his rank in the peerage.
[375]. This was specially affirmed in 1164 by article 11 of the Constitutions of Clarendon, which stipulated that each prelate should hold his lands sicut baroniam, merely a restatement of existing law.
[376]. Sicut per barones meos disposui. The writ is given in Heming’s Cartulary, I. 79-80, and reprinted by Round, Feudal England, 309.