4. The name of vice-comes or viſcount was afterwards made uſe of as an arbitrary title of honour, without any ſhadow of office pertaining to it, by Henry the ſixth; when in the eighteenth year of his reign, he created John Beaumont a peer, by the name of viſcount Beaumont, which was the firſt inſtance of the kind[1].
5. A baron's is the moſt general and univerſal title of nobility; for originally every one of the peers of ſuperior rank had alſo a barony annexed to his other titles[2]. But it hath ſometimes happened that, when an antient baron hath been raiſed to a new degree of peerage, in the courſe of a few generations the two titles have deſcended differently; one perhaps to the male deſcendants, the other to the heirs general; whereby the earldom or other ſuperior title hath ſubſiſted without a barony: and there are alſo modern inſtances where earls and viſcounts have been created without annexing a barony to their other honours: ſo that now the rule doth not hold univerſally, that all peers are barons. The original and antiquity of baronies has occaſioned great enquiries among our Engliſh antiquarians. The moſt probable opinion ſeems to be, that they were the ſame with our preſent lords of manors; to which the name of court baron, (which is the lord's court, and incident to every manor) gives ſome countenance. It may be collected from king John's magna carta[3], that originally all lords of manors, or barons, that held of the king in capite, had ſeats in the great council or parliament, till about the reign of that prince the conflux of them became ſo large and troubleſome, that the king was obliged to divide them, and ſummon only the greater barons in perſon; leaving the ſmall ones to be ſummoned by the ſheriff, and (as it is ſaid) to ſit by repreſentation in another houſe; which gave riſe to the ſeparation of the two houſes of parliament[4]. By degrees the title came to be confined to the greater barons, or lords of parliament only; and there
