Origin
The term originated at a time when there was only one substantive degree of nobility, that of the feudal baron. The feudal baron held his lands directly from the king as a tenant-in-chief by the feudal land tenure per baroniam. This gave him the obligation to provide knights and troops for the royal feudal army. Barons could hold other executive offices apart from the duties they owed the king as a tenants-in-chief, such as an earldom. Immediately after the Norman Conquest of 1066 a very few barons held the function of earldom, then not considered as a separate degree of nobility per se. An earl was at that time the highest executive office concerned with the administration of a shire. The earl held higher responsibilities than the sheriff (from shire-reeve). In Latin, a sheriff was referred to as vice-comes, meaning a deputy-count, that is to say a deputy-earl, "count" being the Norman-French term for the Anglo-Saxon "Earl". This later developed into the English peerage title of viscount.
Read more about this topic: Baronage
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