The monarchy of the Teutons had stood in this posture about 220 years; when Turbo, Duke of Neustria, ****** his claim to the crown of one of their kings that died childless, followed it with successful arms, and, being possessed of the kingdom, used it as conquered, distributing the earldoms, thane-lands, bishoprics, and prelacies of the whole realm among his Neustrians. From this time the earl came to be called comes, consul, and dux, though consul and dux grew afterward out of use; the King's thanes came to be called barons, and their lands baronies; the middle thane holding still of a mesne lord, retained the name of vavasor.
The earl or comes continued to have the third part of the pleas of the county paid to him by the sheriff or vice -- comes, now a distinct officer in every county depending upon the King;saving that such earls as had their counties to their own use were now counts-palatine, and had under the King regal jurisdiction; insomuch that they constituted their own sheriffs, granted pardons, and issued writs in their own names; nor did the King's writ of ordinary justice run in their dominions till a late statute, whereby much of this privilege was taken away.
For barons they came from henceforth to be in different times of three kinds: barons by their estates and tenures, barons by writ, and barons created by letters-patent. From Turbo the first to Adoxus the seventh king from the Conquest, barons had their denomination from their possessions and tenures. And these were either spiritual or temporal; for not only the thanelands, but the possessions of bishops, as also of some twenty six abbots, and two priors, were now erected into baronies, whence the lords spiritual that had suffrage in the Teuton Parliament as spiritual lords came to have it in the Neustrian Parliament as barons, and were made subject, which they had not formerly been, to knights'
service in chief. Barony coming henceforth to signify all honorary possessions as well of earls as barons, and baronage to denote all kinds of lords as well spiritual as temporal having right to sit in Parliament, the baronies in this sense were sometimes more, and sometimes fewer, but commonly about 200 or 250, containing in them a matter of 60,000 feuda militum, or knights' fees, whereof some 28,000 were in the clergy.
It is ill-luck that no man can tell what the land of a knight's fee, reckoned in some writs at ?0 a year, and in others at ?0, was certainly worth, for by such a help we might have exactly demonstrated the balance of this government. But, says Coke, it contained twelve plough-lands, and that was thought to be the most certain account. But this again is extremely uncertain; for one plough out of some land that was fruitful might work more than ten out of some other that was barren.
Nevertheless, seeing it appears by Bracton, that of earldoms and baronies it was wont to be said that the whole kingdom was composed, as also that these, consisting of 60,000 knights' fees, furnished 60,000 men for the King's service, being the whole militia of this monarchy, it cannot be imagined that the vavasories or freeholds in the people amounted to any considerable proportion. Wherefore the balance and foundation of this government were in the 60,000 knights' fees, and these being possessed by the 250 lords, it was a government of the few, or of the nobility, wherein the people might also assemble, but could have no more than a mere name. And the clergy, holding a third of the whole nation, as is plain by the Parliament-roll, it is an absurdity (seeing the clergy of France came first through their riches to be a state of that kingdom) to acknowledge the people to have been a state of this realm, and not to allow it to the clergy, who were so much more weighty in the balance, which is that of all other whence a state or order in a government is denominated. Wherefore this monarchy consisted of the King, and of the three ordines regni, or estates, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons; it consisted of these, I say, as to the balance, though, during the reign of some of these kings, not as to the administration.
For the ambition of Turbo, and some of those that more immediately succeeded him, to be absolute princes, strove against the nature of their foundation, and, inasmuch as he had divided almost the whole realm among his Neustrians, with some encouragement for a while. But the Neustrians, while they were but foreign plants, having no security against the natives, but in growing up by their princes' sides, were no sooner well rooted in their vast dominions than they came up according to the infallible consequence of the balance domestic, and, contracting the national interest of the baronage, grew as fierce in the vindication of the ancient rights and liberties of the same, as if they had been always natives: whence, the kings being as obstinate on the one side for their absolute power, as these on the other for their immunities, grew certain wars, which took their denomination from the barons.
