count

count, European title of nobility, equivalent to a British earl, ranking in modern times after a marquess or, in countries without marquesses, a duke. The Roman comes was originally a household companion of the emperor, while under the Franks he was a local commander and judge. The counts were later slowly incorporated into the feudal structure, some becoming subordinate to dukes, although a few counties (or countships), such as those of Flanders, Toulouse, and Barcelona, were as great as duchies. The reassertion of royal authority over the feudatories, which took place at different times in the different kingdoms and led to the formation of centralized states of the modern type, meant that most counts lost their political authority, though they retained their privileges as members of the nobility.

France

French counts became vassals of dukes by 900 at the latest; but, as the process of feudalization continued, the counts tended to lose their official character and to become the hereditary lords of little territories. In France this development is already discernible in the 11th century, and with its devaluation there arose the practice of applying the title of count very loosely. By the 12th century any lord of moderate status might style himself count, no less than the truly great feudatories of Flanders and Toulouse; and even in the 13th century, when the organization of the French kingdom became more stable, the title might mean much or comparatively little.

The development of the system of royal bailliages from the beginning of the 13th century onward served progressively to restrict the counts’ rights of legislation, judiciary, and private war. (Later, in the 16th century, the counts lost their right to mint money.) Moreover, gradually the great fiefs were reunited under the French crown, after which they were granted only in appanage (the territory itself being administered as a province of the kingdom); counts simply retained various privileges. Later countships, under the First Empire and the subsequent monarchies and empire, had no territorial significance but were made hereditary in order of primogeniture.

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Germany

Although in Germany the title of count (Graf) had become hereditary in most cases as early as the 10th century, the counts retained something of an official character rather longer than in France. In the 12th century, however, seemingly by Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), they were given authority to maintain the public peace in the district under their control—an authority that until 1100 had belonged to the dukes. Thenceforward the term countship signified the territory within which the count had powers of life and death.

From the beginning of the 12th century, a number of counts appeared in western Germany, taking their titles simply from the castles they held, and having no obvious connection with any official status. In Frederick Barbarossa’s time certain freemen of the higher class, such as Vögte, or “advocates,” began to style themselves as counts. In the 13th and 14th centuries there are instances of new countships received as fiefs from dukes.

Within the Holy Roman Empire there gradually developed distinctions between ordinary counts and counts of the empire (Reichsgrafen), who became members of the college of counts (Grafenkollegium), a component of the Diet of the empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the counts of the empire were mediatized—i.e., made subject to the sovereigns of the various German states instead of being “immediate” subjects of the emperor alone. The federal Diet, in 1829, however, recognized their right to the special style of Erlaucht (“Illustrious Highness”).

Italy

With the decay of Carolingian authority, a system of countships based on cities grew up in Italy. Probably none were dependent on dukes, the ducal title being then comparatively rare, especially in northern Italy. The rise of communes meant the end of the countship’s former significance, but as a mark of privilege, the title of count was quite liberally bestowed by the popes and other sovereigns of the peninsula well into modern times.

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Spain

In Spain the countship developed under Visigothic influence in the kingdom of Asturias-León and under Frankish influence in Catalonia and in the country immediately south of the Pyrenees. By uniting the Catalan countships, the counts of Barcelona made themselves into near sovereign princes, comparable at least to the powerful counts of Flanders and Toulouse; and the Carolingian countship of Aragon was the nucleus of the kingdom of that name. The countship of Castile, on the other hand, from which the kingdom of Castile emerged, was originally a frontier district of the kingdom of Asturias-León. Here the official character of the counts as district administrators appointed by the kings was preserved until the end of the 11th century, when the principle of hereditary lordships of one sort or another emerged and ultimately prevailed. Under the Spanish monarchies of the Renaissance and later, the title of count was infrequently conferred.

Russia and Poland

In Russia, where the title of count was not introduced until Peter the Great’s time, it came to be given usually to officials of a certain rank in the government service. In Poland there were no counts before the partitions of the late 18th century, when the title was introduced by the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians.

England’s earls

The title of earl (the English equivalent of count, from the Danish jarl) was first introduced into England under King Canute of Denmark and of Norway (king of England 1016–35), but prior to this the duties of an earl, the administration of a shire or province on behalf of the king, were performed by ealdormen. Earl is thus the oldest title and rank of English nobles extant today. It was also the highest until as late as 1337, when Edward, the Black Prince, was created Duke of Cornwall by his father, Edward III.

Initially the earls wielded administrative authority over several (modern) counties, but, after the Norman Conquest in 1066, the earl’s duties were theoretically restricted to a single county, although some were earls of more than one county. Under the Norman kings earldoms became hereditary, but their representation of the king was lost to the sheriffs, and then in 1328, with the creation of Roger Mortimer as Earl of March, the essential association of earldoms with specific territories was abandoned. From the 18th century the practice developed of simply adding the grantee’s surname (imitating a style of the 11th–12th centuries, when, for example, the Earl of Buckingham was styled Earl Giffard), so that the style of the Earl of Place-name was now supplemented by that of Earl Surname.

The rules of succession to earldoms were originally those for the inheritance of fiefs in feudal law, so that, for example, an earldom might pass to a woman, her husband receiving the title of earl in her right, but from the reign of Richard II earldoms could be created for life (Sir Guichard d’Angle, Earl of Huntingdon in 1377) or with inheritance limited to male heirs. By the 1963 Peerage Act, an earl, in common with other British peers, may, within one year of inheriting his title, renounce it for life; then, during his lifetime, it remains dormant.

Scotland’s earls

While England’s shires were ruled for the king by ealdormen, the Pictish provinces in the north of what subsequently became Scotland were ruled by the mormaers, the Great Stewards. At the beginning of the 12th century, in the reign of Alexander I, they became known as earls, seven of whom formed a Carolingian style of peerage known as the Seven Earls of Scotland. With the adoption of the Saxon title of earl (undoubtedly owed to the influence of Alexander’s Saxon mother, the sainted Queen Margaret) and its integration with the Celtic mormaer, these powerful men added a personal title of dignity to their territorial title and judicial status. Their successors under Alexander’s brother, King David I, were integrated into the Flemish-Norman system of feudalism so that the lands for which they were responsible, and which had been held by the tribes they ruled, now became their own as tenants-in-chief of the crown. More earldoms were created in the following reigns, until there were 13, but the Seven Earls (chosen as needed from the eventual 13) had become a constitutional and privileged body of great power acting as guardians of the realm and principal lay advisers to the king. However, at the end of the 13th century, at the time England’s King Edward I was attempting to subdue and conquer Scotland, the political turmoil was such that the power of the earls was reduced to that of those of England.

Equivalent terms

This table provides a list of terms in various European languages that are equivalent to count (or earl) and countess in English.