Baronia, or Baronagium, the lordship or fee of a baron, either temporal or spiritual. Baronies, in their first creation, proceeded from the king himself; the chief lord of the whole realm, and could be held immediately of no other lord. Thus the king enfeoffed a man of a great seigniory in land, to be held by the person enfeoffed and his heirs, of the king and his heirs, by baronial service; that is, by the service of so many knights as the royal act appointed. In the ages immediately succeeding the Conquest, such seigniory was called a barony, but more commonly an honour; as the honour of Gloucestershire, of Wallingford, &c. In England these were sometimes called by Norman or other foreign designations, when the same person was lord of an honour in Normandy, or some other foreign country, and also of an honour in England. Thus, William de Forz, de Force, or de Fortibus, was lord of the honour of Albemarle in Normandy, and also of the honours of Holderness and of Skipton in England, and these latter were sometimes called by the Norman name, as the honour of Albemarle, or the honour of the Earl of Albemarle.