note f: 2 Inst. 5.]

3. AN _earl_ is a title of nobility so antient, that it's original
cannot clearly be traced out. Thus much seems tolerably certain: that
among the Saxons they were called _ealdormen_, _quasi_ elder men,
signifying the same as _senior_ or _senator_ among the Romans; and
also _schiremen_, because they had each of them the civil government
of a several division or shire. On the irruption of the Danes, they
changed the name to _eorles_, which, according to Camden[g], signified
the same in their language. In Latin they are called _comites_ (a
title first used in the empire) from being the king's attendants; "_a
societate nomen sumpserunt, reges enim tales sibi associant_[h]."
After the Norman conquest they were for some time called _counts_, or
_countees_, from the French; but they did not long retain that name
themselves, though their shires are from thence called counties to
this day. It is now become a mere title, they having nothing to do
with the government of the county; which, as has been more than once
observed, is now entirely devolved on the sheriff, the earl's deputy,
or _vice-comes_. In all writs, and commissions, and other formal
instruments, the king, when he mentions any peer of the degree of an
earl, always stiles him "trusty and well beloved _cousin_:" an
appellation as antient as the reign of Henry IV; who being either by
his wife, his mother, or his sisters, actually related or allied to
every earl in the kingdom, artfully and constantly acknowleged that
connexion in all his letters and other public acts; from whence the
usage has descended to his successors, though the reason has long ago
failed.

[Footnote g: _Ibid._]

[Footnote h: Bracton. _l._ 1. _c._ 8. Fleta. _l._ i. _c._ 5.]

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[i].

[Footnote i: 2 Inst. 5.]

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[k]. 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