to obtain badges or
other distinctions for baronets and also to purge the order of wrongful
assumptions, an evil to which the baronetage of Nova Scotia is peculiarly
exposed, owing to the dignity being descendible to collateral heirs male of
the grantee as well as to those of his body. A departmental committee at
the home office was appointed in 1906 to consider the question of such
assumptions and the best means of stopping them.

All baronets are entitled to display in their coat of arms, either on a
canton or on an inescutcheon, the red hand of Ulster, save those of Nova
Scotia, who display, instead of it, the saltire of that province. The
precedency of baronets of Nova Scotia and of Ireland in relation to those
of England was left undetermined by the Acts of Union, and appears to be
still a moot point with heralds. The premier baronet of England is Sir
Hickman Bacon, whose ancestor was the first to receive the honour in 1611.

See Pixley's _History of the Baronetage_; Playfair's "Baronetage" (in
_British Family Antiquity_, vols. vi.-ix.); Foster's _Baronetage_; G. E.
Cokayne's _Complete Baronetage_; Nichols, "The Dignity of Baronet" (in
_Herald and Genealogist_, vol. iii.)

(J. H. R.)

BARONIUS, CAESAR (1538-1607), Italian cardinal and ecclesiastical
historian, was born at Sora, and was educated at Veroli and Naples. At Rome
he joined the Oratory in 1557 under St Philip Neri (_q.v._) and succeeded
him as superior in 1593. Clement VIII., whose confessor he was, made him
cardinal in 1596 and librarian of the Vatican. At subsequent conclaves he
was twice nearly elected pope, but on each occasion was opposed by Spain on
account of his work _On the Monarchy of Sicily_, in which he supported the
papal claims against those of the Spanish government. Baronius is best
known by his _Annales Ecclesiastici_, undertaken by the order of St Philip
as an answer to the _Magdeburg Centuries_. After nearly thirty years of
lecturing on the history of the Church at the Vallicella and being trained
by St Philip as a great man for a great work, he began to write, and
produced twelve folios (1588-1607). In the _Annales_ he treats history in
strict chronological order and keeps theology in the background. In spite
of many errors, especially in Greek history, in which he had to depend upon
secondhand information, the work of Baronius stands as an honest attempt to
write history, marked with a sincere love of truth. Sarpi, in urging
Casau