BARON, a degree of nobility next below a viscount, and above a baronet. It is probable that formerly all those were barons who had lordships with courts; baron, and soon after the conquest all such sat in the house of peers; but they being very numerous, it grew an order and custom, that none should sit but such as the king thought fit to call up by writ, which ran pro hac vice tantum. This state of nobility being very precarious, they at length obtained of the king letters patent; and these were called barons by patent, or creation, the only way now in use of making barons, unless when the son of a lord, in his ancestor's life-time, is summoned by a writ.
On solemn occasions, barons wear a coronet, represented in Plate LI. fig. 19.