The fallen Roman Empire was broken into countless fragments, which became feudal baronies.

An ecclesiastical barony of the Middle Ages; the bishopric of Bayeux, 1066-1204.

These concurring causes gave the feudal governments so strong a bias towards aristocracy, that the royal authority was extremely eclipsed in all the European states; and, instead of dreading the growth of monarchical power, we might rather expect, that the community would every where crumble into so many independent baronies, and lose the political union by which they were cemented.

SEE Life on a mediaeval barony.

The mutual relations of rival baronies were by no means like those of rival clans or tribes in pre-Roman days.

Lanfranc, we are told, turned the drengs, the rent-paying tenants of his archiepiscopal estates, into knights for the defence of the country; he enfeoffed a certain number of knights who performed the military service due from the archiepiscopal barony.

When in the depression that followed the extravagance of the pyramid age the central monarchy lost its power, Egypt broke up into a series of tribal baronies (nomes).

"By the mass but that must be the work of Mynheer von Heidelberger himself, for no one in my own broad barony can wind that blast save Rudolf Wurtzheim."

But the Earldom of Pendennyss, with numerous ancient baronies, were titles in fee; and together with his princely estates had descended to his daughter as heir-general of the family.

But they had passed a brilliant year, their arrival in the great cities had had its effect, and especially since Natasha had become a person of title; in the course of the year she succeeded in purchasing an Austrian barony at a very reasonable figurea barony which, of course, only existed on paper.