Baronage Renamed
The modern peerage system is a continuation and renaming of the baronage which existed in feudal times. The requirement of attending Parliament was at once a liability and a privilege for those who held land as a tenant-in-chief of the king per baroniam, that is to say under the feudal contract of being one of the king's barons, responsible for raising knights and troops for the royal feudal army. Certain other classes such as the higher clerics and freemen of the Cinque Ports were deemed barons. This right, entitlement or "title", began to be granted by decree in the form of the writ of summons from 1265 and by letters patent from 1388, and the barony started to become personal rather than territorial. Feudal baronies had always been hereditable by an eldest son under primogeniture, but on condition of payment of a fine termed "relief", derived from the Latin verb levo to lift up, meaning a "re-elevation" to a former position of honour. Baronies and other titles of nobility became unconditionally hereditable on the abolition of feudal tenure by the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660 and non-hereditable titles began to be created in 1876 for law lords, and in 1958 for life peers.
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