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Barons from what I gather, were under direct obligation to the king.

What was the position of counts or dukes? Was their position that of viceroy? As in the barons in the area under the county/duchy answered to the count rather than the king?

Or was it a title of recognition only, and the most powerful barons were counts/dukes/earls, and held more knight's fees and wealth generating fiefs under them as compared to the other barons?

Complementary Question

  • What do you think about the feudal structure in the game Crusader Kings 2?
  • What was the significance of shires and sheriffs, when all land was enoffed to barons?
Rohit
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  • What I'm asking is, is it can report to or exclusively report to? – Rohit Jun 29 '19 at 04:31
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    The exact relationships change through history so you'll need to specify a period smaller than the middle-ages (which covers a thousand years). Also the complementary questions really should be asked separately. – Steve Bird Jun 29 '19 at 07:42
  • @SteveBird I assume a person familiar enough with the subject to write an answer would also be able to weigh on the evolution of the system through the feudal period of middle ages, if any. Also, the complementary questions don't have legs enough to stand on their own, I feel. I'd remove them if they are in violation of some rules. – Rohit Jun 29 '19 at 07:55
  • @Denis de Barnardy And by "latter" you mean "former", yes? – C Monsour Jun 29 '19 at 11:58
  • What research have you done? – MCW Jun 29 '19 at 21:19
  • @MarkC.Wallace I researched this for for 17 years at the University of Gondolin; But all my work got lost during the Fall. Plis snd help... – Rohit Jun 29 '19 at 23:44
  • The mnemonic "Do Men Ever Visit Boston" reminds one of the (descending) hierarchy of the British Peerage: Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, Baron. All tenants-in-chief of the monarch are barons (in the generic sense), though many hold additional titles. Prior to the conquest many Anglo-Saxon Eorldoms comprised numerous shires (ie Eorl of Wessex), but the introduction of Dukedoms by William I was accompanied by all Earldoms shrinking to a single shire. Marquess was added as a title intermittently between the mid-14th and mid-15 century, finally established permanently by Henry VI. – Pieter Geerkens Jul 01 '19 at 01:01
  • Most Ducal titles have been Royal - held by members of the royal family - sine the conquest. Most other Barons have been non-royal. More information is available by looking up each title in Wikipedia under British Peerage. This question and its answers describes some of the complexities of the Holy Roman Empire Peerage, and its differences from that of Britain. – Pieter Geerkens Jul 01 '19 at 01:05
  • @PieterGeerkens so essentially counts and dukes etc. were counts and dukes on top of being barons? Did dukes etc. have any baron sized(in terms of size of fief) vassals under them? – Rohit Jul 01 '19 at 02:02
  • @Rohit: Not in England - from the Conquest one was a baron solely by being a tenant-in-chief of the monarch. However the sons/daughters of every peer were entitled to a courtesy title if their parent had additional substantive titles junior to their most senior one. – Pieter Geerkens Jul 01 '19 at 04:52
  • @PieterGeerkens Got it . CK2 had me in confusion for quite a while. – Rohit Jul 01 '19 at 05:25
  • @Rohit: The Holy Roman Empire is very different from England: (1) In England only eldest son inherits land/titles; in HRE all sons do. (2) In HRE tenants-in-chief are princes of the empire, and rapidly become essentially sovereign. They in turn were, I believe, capable of ennobling vassals within their own territory. Possibly this varies by stem duchy and/or circle (which I think denotes the set of descendant fiefs of each stem duchy. The emperor being elected, albeit from traditional families, makes the imperial / royal / noble distinction more complex in the HRE. – Pieter Geerkens Jul 01 '19 at 06:02

1 Answers1

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It is a very complex question.

Real short answer:

In the medieval feudal system in continental Europe the owner of a manor was a feudal lord. The feudal ruler of an ancient Roman city state or its equivalent in a non Roman region was a count. The feudal ruler of a large area was a Duke.

Ideally all lords were vassals of their count, all counts were vassals of their duke, and all dukes in a kingdom were vassals of their king. Thus the feudal hierarchy would be simple with only four steps, from lord to count to duke to king.

A baron was a lord not dependent on any lord except for the King.

In England nobody was considered a noble unless he was a baron or higher, and all nobles were more or less directly subordinate to the king & not subordinate to other nobles.

Of course the feudal system was more like the feudal lack of system, and it got a lot more complicated than this.

For example, a lord could acquire a bunch of lordships and become a vassal to a number of different lords, counts, and dukes. Thus the numbers of steps between a lord and his king could be different for each lordship that he owned, and a lord could acquire lordships in different kingdoms.

An example of the accumulation of titles and fiefs is from Henry VI Part 1 when Sir William Lucy meets the French leaders after the Battle of Castillion:

LUCY But where's the great Alcides of the field, 60

Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury,

Created, for his rare success in arms,

Great Earl of Washford, Waterford and Valence;

Lord Talbot of Goodrig and Urchinfield,

Lord Strange of Blackmere, Lord Verdun of Alton, 65

Lord Cromwell of Wingfield, Lord Furnival of Sheffield,

The thrice-victorious Lord of Falconbridge;

Knight of the noble order of Saint George,

Worthy Saint Michael and the Golden Fleece;

Great marshal to Henry the Sixth 70

Of all his wars within the realm of France?

JOAN LA PUCELLE Here is a silly stately style indeed!

The Turk, that two and fifty kingdoms hath,

Writes not so tedious a style as this.

Him that thou magnifiest with all these titles 75

Stinking and fly-blown lies here at our feet.

http://www.shakespeare-online.com/plays/1kh6_4_7.html1

Of course since those were English titles the Earl of Shrewsbury was directly subordinate to the King instead of to other lords for all of them.

And similarly counts, margraves, dukes, other nobles, and kings often acquired various lordships, counties, duchies, fiefs, principalities, and kingdoms. Thus someone could be the vassal of another lord in respect of a fief he held from that other lord, while that other lord could be a vassal of the first lord for another fief. And someone could become the vassal of himself, or the vassal of someone who was a vassal of himself.

Here is a list of the titles claimed by Emperor Charles V about 1530-1556:

Emperor of the Romans;

King in Germany, of Castilia, Aragon, Leon, both Sicilies, Jerusalem, Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Sardinia, Cordova, Corsica, Murcia, Jaen, the Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Islands of Canary , of the Indies, Mainland of the Ocean sea;

Archduke of Austria;

Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lotharingia, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Athens, Neopatria, Württemberg;

Landgrave of Alsace;

Prince of Swabia, Asturia, Catalonia;

Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Zutphen,

Margrave of Burgau, Oristano, Gociano, the Holy Roman Empire;

Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli, Mechelen;

http://eurulers.altervista.org/emperors.html2

Obviously Charles V was his own vassal many times over, and the vassal of other rulers for some of his fiefs.

In another example, there were the princes of the Holy Roman Empire. The princes were a group of nobles having various titles but all having more or less the same powers as dukes and were immediate vassals of the emperor.

From lowest to highest the titles used by princes of the Holy Roman Empire were princely count, landgrave, margrave (equivalent to the English marquess), count palatine, prince, duke, grand duke, and archduke.

Even though a duke had a higher rank than a landgrave, a duke would not have a landgrave as his vassal, since a landgrave was a prince of the empire and an immediate vassal of the emperor. Even though a duke could have ordinary counts as vassals, he wouldn't have a princely count as his vassal since a princely count would be a vassal only of the emperor.

MAGolding
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