Under the feeble successors of Charlemagne, the dukes, marquises, and counts of the empire encroached more and more on the royal authority; and in course of time many of them openly asserted an independence and sovereignty with little more than a nomi nal reservation of superiority to the king. By the end of the 9th c. the Carlovingian empire had been parceled into separate and independent principalities, under the domin ion of powerful nobles, against whom, in Germany, the crown never recovered its power. In France, however, the royal authority gradually revived under the Capetian race, the great fiefs of the higher nobility being one by one absorbed by the crown. In Eng land, where the subjection of the feudal aristocracy to the crown always was, and con tinued to be a reality, the resistance of the nobles to the royal encroachments was the means of rearing the great fabric of constitutional liberty. All those who, after the conquest, held in capite from William belonged to the nobility. Such of them as held by barony (the highest form of tenure) are enumerated in Domesday. Their dignity was territorial, not personal, having no existence apart from baronial possession. The comes was a baron of superior dignity and greater estates; and these were in England the only names of dignity till the time of Henry III. The rest of the landholders, who held by other tenures than barony, also belonged to the nobility or gentry.
After the introduction of heraldry, and its reduction to a system, the possession of a coat of arms was a recognized distinction between the noble and the plebeian. In the words of sir James Lawrence (Nobility of the British Gentry): individual who dis tinguishes himself may be said to ennoble himself. A prince judging an individual worthy of notice gave him patent letters of nobility. In these letters were blazoned the arms that were to distinguish his shield. By this shield he was to be known or /wird/8. A plebeian hid no blazonry on his shield, because he was ignobilis, or unworthy of notice. Hence arms are the criterion, of nobility. Every nobleman must have a shield of arms. Whoever has a shield of arms a nobleman. In every country of Europe, without exception, a grant of arms, or letters of nobility, is conferred on all the descend ants." On the continent the term noble is still generally used in this sense; in England it is now more common to restrict the words noble and nobility to the five ranks of the peerage constituting the greater nobility, and to the head of the family, to whom alone the title belongs. Gentility, in its more strict sense, corresponds to the nobility of sir J. Lawrence and of continental countries. This difference of usage is a frequent source of misapprehension on both sides of the channel; at some of the minor German courts the untitled member of an English family of ancient and distinguished blood and lineage has sometimes been postponed to a recently-created baron or " herr von," who has received that title, and the gentility accompanying it, along with his commission in the army. It has been taken for granted that the latter belongs to the " adel" or nobility, and not the former.
The original higher nobility of Germany consisted of the dynasty nobles, i.e., the electoral and princely houses of the realm, with those counts and barons who had a seat in the diet or estates of the realm. These last have. since 1815, all been elevated to higher titles; most of the counts, in recompense for their acquiescence in the abolition of the German empire, receiving the diploma of prince, a title to which our dukes, mar quises, and earls have also an undoubted right. The lower German nobility, corre sponding to our gentry, were the merely titular counts and barons (i.e., those who had no scat in the diet), thaedel-herrett and,bannet9ierren (something like our bannerets) tint knights of the holy Iteinan empire, the "ecilen volt" (who now' take the style of baron), and the common nobles distinguished only by the prefix "von." Throughout the middle ages the lesser nobility of Britain preserved a position above that of most continental countries, being, unlike the corresponding class in Germany, allowed to intermarry with the high nobility, and even with the blood-royal of their country.
The higher nobility, or nobility in the exclusive sense of England, consist of the five temporal ranks of the peerage—duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron) in the restricted signification of the word), who are members of the upper house of parliament. For
merly all the barons or tenants-in-chief of the sovereign were bound to attend his coun cils; but after the reign of Edward I. only a select number of them were summoned, the rest appeared by representatives—the former were considered the greater, the latter the lesser barons. Sce .Mixon BARONS. In Scotland the whole barons continued to sit in parliament till a much later period; and after the minor barons attended only by representatives from their body, these representatives sat in the same house with the greater nobility, and, up to the union, their votes were recorded as those of the " smal., barrounis." By the act of union between England and Scotland the Scotch peers elect 16 of their number to represent their body in the house of lords in each parliament. The peers of Ireland, in virtue of the Irish act of union, elect 23 of their number to sit in the house of lords for life. The act of union with Scotland has been understood to debar the sovereign from creating any new Scotch peerages; all peers created in either England or Scotland between that date and the union with Ireland are peers of Great Britain; and peers created in any of the three kingdoms subsequently to the union with Ireland are peers of the United Kingdom, with this exception that one new peerage of Ireland may be created on the extinction of three existing peerages. When the Irish peers are reduced to 100, then, on the extinction of one peerage another may be created. All peers of Great Britain or of the United Kingdom have a seat in the house of lords. A Scotch peer, though not one of the 16 representative peers, is debarred from sitting lie the house of commons, a disability which does not attach to Irish peers. The peerage is, from time to time, recruited by new additions, the persons selected being in general peers of Scotland or Ireland; younger members of the families of peers; persons distin guished for naval, military, political, or diplomatic services; eminent lawyers promoted to high judicial appointments; persons of large property and ancient family, noble in the more extended sense; and occasionally, bat rarely, persons who have by commerce acquired large fortunes and social importance. At present the peerage comprehends about 555 individuals—the number of peerage titles being much greater, as several titles, often merge in one person. Five royal dukes arc included in this enumeration, as also 87 peers of Scotland and 183 of Ireland. Only 25 of the present Scotch and 89 Irish peers are without seats in the house of lords, in consequence of there being, besides the representative peers, 40 peers of Scotland and 80 of Ireland who are at the same time peers either of England, Great Britain, or of the United Kingdom. The privileges belonging to peers as members of parliament will be explained under as peers, they also possess the following immunities: They can only be tried by their peers for felony, treason, or misprision of treason when the whole members of the peerage are summoned, and the accused is acquitted or condemned by the voice of the majority, given not on oath, but "on honor." This privilege, which extends to peeresses, either in their own right or by marriage, is in Scotland further regulated by act 6 Geo. IV. c. 66. A peer answers to bills in chancery upon his honor, and not on oath; but when examined as a witness in civil or criminal cases, or in parliament, lie must be sworn. He cannot be bound over to keep the peace elsewhere than in the court of queen's bench or of chancery. Scandal against a peer is "scandalum magnatum," a more heinous offense than slander against another person, and subjects the offender, ley various Eng lish acts. to statutory punishments. All the privileges belonging to the English peers, except the right of sitting in the house of lords, were extended to the peers of Scotland by the treaty of union. A peer who has different titles in the peerage takes in ordinary parlance his highest title, one of the inferior titles being given by courtesy to his eldest son. Certain courtesy titles (q.v.) belong also to the daughters and younger sons of a peer, but do not extend to their children.