barons

The name was first used loosely to mean any great landowners or lords and then acquired a precise meaning as the lowest of the five ranks in the peerage. The word came into use after the Conquest to describe the more important tenants- in-chief. In time a class of greater barons emerged who were summoned specifically to the host or the king's council. The emergence of Parliament in the 13th cent. meant that barons were summoned by writ to the House of Lords and then sought to make the privilege hereditary. But from 1385, the establishment of superior titles of duke, marquis, and viscount pushed barons into the lowest rank of the nobility.