Paramount (derived from the Anglo-French word paramont, which means up above, or par a mont, meaning up or on top of the mountain), is the highest authority, or that being of the greatest importance. The word was first used as a term of feudal law, of the lord, the lord paramount, who held his fief from no superior lord, and was thus opposed to mesne lord, one who held from a superior. To those who held their fiefs from one who was not a lord paramount was given the correlative term paravail, (from par d val, meaning in the valley). The word was confused by English lawyers with "avail," help, assistance, profit, and applied to the actual working tenant of the land, the lowest tenant or occupier.
A well-documented example of paramountcy is the Lordship of Bowland. In 1311, it was subsumed as part of the Honor of Clitheroe into the Earldom of Lancaster. After 1351, it was administered as part of the Duchy of Lancaster, with the Duke (from 1399, the Sovereign) acknowledged lord paramount over the Forest of Bowland and the ten manors of the Liberty of Bowland. As lord paramount, he was styled Lord King of Bowland.
Famous quotes containing the words lord and/or paramount:
“But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest:
Time is our tedious song should here have ending;
Heaven’s youngest teemed star,
Hath fixed her polished car,
Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending;
And all about the courtly stable,
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“If all political power be derived only from Adam, and be to descend only to his successive heirs, by the ordinance of God and divine institution, this is a right antecedent and paramount to all government; and therefore the positive laws of men cannot determine that, which is itself the foundation of all law and government, and is to receive its rule only from the law of God and nature.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)