What is a barony in Scotland?

The meaning of barony, in the words of the sources

Two official descriptions give the meaning plainly.

“A barony title is an estate created by direct grant from the Crown, and has been described as ‘the highest and most privileged tenure of land known to the Scottish Feudal System’ and came with a number of special rights and advantages.” Registers of Scotland, registration manual, L33 Barony Titles, para. 33.1 ↗ (a paragraph the manual keeps “for historical information”)

“The term is used in two senses. The first sense refers to the actual title to the land. This must have originally been granted by the Crown by a feudal grant which specifically conferred baronial privileges and responsibilities. The conveyancing terminology varied from time to time but a standard form of wording came to be a grant of all and whole the lands and barony of X to be held in free barony (in liberam baroniam). … The second sense of ‘barony title’ refers to the right to use the title or appellation ‘Baron’” Scottish Law Commission, Report on Abolition of the Feudal System (Scot Law Com No 168, 1999), para. 2.33 ↗

So a barony was first a thing: lands held of the Crown in a particular way. The title of baron went with it.

How a barony was made

A barony was made by the Crown. The charter named the lands, united them, erected them into one free barony and often named the house that was to be its head.

The Great Seal charter of 19 December 1623 to John Forbes of Leslie is a plain example. The King

“incorporavit in liberam baroniam de Leslie-Forbes, ordinando turrim et maneriem de Leslie principale fore messuagium” Register of the Great Seal, RMS viii, no. 548, p. 187: that is, he incorporated the lands into the free barony of Leslie-Forbes, ordaining the tower and manor of Leslie to be its principal messuage. See the barony of Leslie-Forbes →

Each page of this Index gives the references found for one barony: its charters in the Register of the Great Seal, its Retours and its Lyon records.

The caput

The principal messuage is the caput, the head of the barony. Before 2004 it mattered a great deal:

“To remain as ‘Baron’, the proprietor had to retain ownership of a portion of the barony known as the ‘caput’ (literally ‘head’).” Registers of Scotland, registration manual, L33 Barony Titles ↗

The baron’s court

A barony carried a jurisdiction. The same manual describes a baron who could “hold a baron’s court, appoint a baron baillie to be judge and exercise a minor civil and criminal jurisdiction”. That jurisdiction ended on 28 November 2004:

“Any jurisdiction of, and any conveyancing privilege incidental to, barony shall on the appointed day cease to exist; but nothing in this Act affects the dignity of baron or any other dignity or office (whether or not of feudal origin).” Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, s. 63(1) ↗

The Association’s paper on the baron’s court and its officers ↗ tells that story.

Were Scottish feudal baronies abolished?

Yes. Until 28 November 2004 a barony was a feudal estate, held of the Crown, and “feudal barony” was the right name for it. On that day the Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 abolished the feudal system. The feudal barony ceased to exist; only the dignity of baron remains, and it is no longer attached to land:

“When, by this Act, an estate held in barony ceases to exist as a feudal estate, the dignity of baron, though retained, shall not attach to the land; and on and after the appointed day any such dignity shall be, and shall be transferable only as, incorporeal heritable property” Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, s. 63(2) ↗

The Explanatory Notes to the Act say of the retained dignity:

“It will be a floating dignity which can be bought and sold as incorporeal heritable property and may be bequeathed by will in the normal way.” Explanatory Notes to the Act, para. 198 ↗

The Scottish Law Commission, whose report led to the Act, had put the choice plainly:

“In our view the Scottish Parliament could, if it wished, abolish feudal baronies altogether as part of a reform of the feudal system of land tenure. If that is so then it is even more clear that it can take baronies out of the system of land tenure and land registration, while allowing the dignity of baron, derived from the former connection with the Crown as feudal superior, to continue as a floating dignity.” Scottish Law Commission, Report on Abolition of the Feudal System (Scot Law Com No 168, 1999), p. 23 ↗

So the correct terms today are Scottish barony and Scottish baron. “Feudal barony” and “feudal baron” describe the history of a barony before 2004, not the dignity as it stands. Lord Lyon Sellar, in 2009, called them “quondam feudal baronies”, quondam meaning “formerly” (as quoted in Donald Draper Campbell, Scottish Armory and Heraldry, 2019, p. 82). In the petition of Sturzenegger of Arran he wrote:

“Anachronistic and anomalous the position of the former feudal baron may be, but there can be no doubt about the thread of continuity from the earliest days of feudalism in Scotland until the present day.” Lord Lyon Sellar, Court of the Lord Lyon, petition of Sturzenegger of Arran

His Letters Patent thereafter dropped the older descriptive wording, “a feudal baron in the baronage of Scotland”, and recognised the petitioner simply as “Baron of X”. The Roll of Scottish Barons puts it as a rule:

“The correct term is Scottish barony or Scottish baron (or baron, lord or earl in the Baronage of Scotland, collectively the minor barons of Scotland); never ‘feudal baron’.” The Roll of Scottish Barons, note on terminology ↗

For the baron rather than the barony (how a baron is styled and addressed, the Lord Lyon and recognition) see the Association’s explainer ↗.

Can a barony be inherited or transferred?

In law, yes. The dignity “shall be, and shall be transferable only as, incorporeal heritable property” (s. 63(2)); the Explanatory Notes add that it “can be bought and sold … and may be bequeathed by will in the normal way”, and that if a baron dies without a will the barony passes “to the eldest son or other heir in accordance with the pre-1964 rules on intestate succession”, which the Succession (Scotland) Act 1964 preserved for dignities. It carries no land.

Many holders have chosen otherwise. 139 entries on the Roll of Scottish Barons are pledged: many holders have signed the Baronial Pledge ↗, a declaration made in honour, not in law, committing the barony to descent within the family line. The Roll states:

“Pledged baronies are treated by the Roll as hereditary and not in commercio, and forfeit recognition on the Roll if ever conveyed outside the family.” The Roll of Scottish Barons, how entries are verified ↗

The Pledge does not change the law. In the Roll’s words, it “cannot legally alter a barony or create an entail; it can only effect recognition”.

Who holds a barony today?

This Index records baronies and their history. It does not establish who holds a dignity today. That is the work of the Roll of Scottish Barons ↗, a public roll kept by the Association on which each title is verified against documentary evidence, published beside the entry. The Roll separates recognition from legal title: “Recognition and legal title are independent of one another”, and it “claims no power over legal title”.

The baronies in this Index with an entry on the Roll →

Barony, lordship, earldom and regality

Most baronies were plain baronies. Of the 1,872 entries in this Index, some are also recorded in a higher form: 105 as a regality, 34 as a lordship and 13 as an earldom.

Barony and county: the difference

A county was the district of a sheriff. A barony was an estate with its own court, lying within a county or across more than one. Charters place a barony by its county, written vic. for vicecomitatus, the sheriff’s district: the 1623 charter describes lands “infra baroniam de Leslie … vic. de Abirdene”, within the barony of Leslie in the county of Aberdeen.

This Index lists every barony under its county or counties. Browse the 32 counties →

How many baronies were there?

It is believed that nearly three thousand baronies were erected in Scotland by Crown charter over some 800 years. This Index records 1,872 of them so far, each with its county, its variant spellings and the references found.

What became of most of them?

Of the 1,872 baronies in this Index, 270 have an entry on the Roll of Scottish Barons today and 162 an entry on its Pending List; the Roll itself counts 301 verified baronies. Set against the nearly three thousand believed to have been erected, that is about one in ten. The records show what happened to the rest.

Many were united into larger baronies. A charter could gather several baronies into one. In 1467 James III granted Thomas Boyd the lands of the barony of Kilmarnock with the baronies of Dalry, Kilbride and Noddsdale, “quas omnes terras rex incorporavit et univit dicte baronie de Kilmarnok” (RMS ii, no. 915 ↗). In 1541 James V confirmed to the Earl of Argyll a long list of lands and baronies, among them Over Cowal and Otterinverane, “quas rex de novo incorporavit in liberam baroniam de Lochhow” (RMS iii, no. 2306 ↗). Union did not always end the smaller barony: Otterinverane is still named “terris et baronia de Otterinveran” in a retour of 1695 (Retours, Argyll, no. 99 ↗) and has an entry on the Roll’s Pending List today. Whether a barony so absorbed went on as a dignity in its own right is a question for its own records. A great house might hold many at once: the Roll’s entry for the Baron of Carnwath ↗ lists seven more baronies beside it.

Forfeiture took others to the Crown. In 1483 the lands of Pinkerton, in the barony of Dunbar, “que ad manus regis devenerunt ratione forisfacture Alexandri olim ducis Albanie, comitis Marchie” (which had come to the king’s hands by the forfeiture of Alexander, formerly Duke of Albany and Earl of March), were regranted and united “in unam liberam baroniam de Pinkartoun” (RMS ii, no. 1564 ↗). A forfeited barony might be regranted under a new name, or never again.

The courts were taken away. After the rising of 1745, the Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 ↗ abolished the heritable jurisdictions and provided that charters “for uniting or erecting lands into baronies” were “to grant jurisdictions only for the recovery of rents and duties”. What remained of the baron’s court ended in 2004, as set out above.

Estates were broken up. Because the proprietor “had to retain ownership of a portion of the barony known as the caput” to remain the baron, a barony whose lands were sold off piece by piece, with no owner keeping the caput, fell dormant: a name in the charters with no one entitled to it.

Most simply pass out of the record. For the greater part of the baronies in this Index the last reference found is a charter or a retour centuries old. They are listed here so that the record of them is not lost, and so that a barony that has in fact descended can be traced.

Search the Index   All baronies, A to Z

Sources

• Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000, section 63 ↗ and its Explanatory Notes, paras. 195–198 ↗ (legislation.gov.uk). The appointed day was 28 November 2004.
• Scottish Law Commission, Report on Abolition of the Feudal System, Scot Law Com No 168 (1999) ↗, paras. 2.33 and 2.44 and the note on clause 63 (archived copy).
• Registers of Scotland, registration manual, L33 Barony Titles ↗.
• Heritable Jurisdictions (Scotland) Act 1746 ↗ (legislation.gov.uk).
• Court of the Lord Lyon, Lord Lyon Sellar in the petition of Sturzenegger of Arran, as recorded by the Association.
• Register of the Great Seal of Scotland (Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum), vol. ii, nos. 915 and 1564; vol. iii, no. 2306; vol. viii, no. 548, p. 187, read on the printed page ↗.
• Lord Lyon W. D. H. Sellar (2009), “quondam feudal baronies”, as quoted in Donald Draper Campbell, Scottish Armory and Heraldry (2019), p. 82.
• The Roll of Scottish Barons: how entries are verified ↗ and the note on terminology ↗; the Baronage of Scotland Association, the Baronial Pledge ↗.

This page is general education. It does not address the history or the holder of any individual barony.