Why is the lowest Scottish peer a Lord of Parliament, not a baron?

In England a baron is the lowest rank of the peerage. The Peerage of Scotland has no such rank: its lowest is the Lord of Parliament, and “baron” stayed with the baronage. This paper shows how the line was drawn, from the Great Seal, and why it matters to the standing of a Scottish baron.

The short answer

• The Peerage of Scotland has no baron. Its ranks are duke, marquis, earl, viscount and Lord of Parliament. A woman holding the lowest rank sat in the Lords as “Lady Saltoun of Abernethy”, not “Baroness”.
• The baronage came first. “Baron” was the name of the whole order. Sir Alexander Forbes held a free barony by 1429 and became a lord of parliament only in 1444 or 1445.
• The honour was added. A Great Seal charter of 1583 makes Andrew Keith lord and baron of Dingwall, “who should have the honour of a lord of Parliament”.
• So a Scottish baron is no lesser copy of an English peer. In England the word names a rank of the peerage. In Scotland it names a dignity of its own, which the Act of 2000 keeps by name.

“Baron” meant the whole order

Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate, wrote in 1680: “Under the Word Baron all our Nobility are comprehended”.¹ A Lord Lyon said the same two centuries later: “The Earls belonged to the order of Barons.”² Parliament counted the barons in the nobility: “every noble man, such as an earl, lord, knight and baron” in 1540, “a part of the nobility” in 1567, and “the nobility, earls, lords and barons” in 1592.³ Tenure gave the name. William Borthwick wrote in 1775 that a man holding in free earldom was marked earl, in free lordship lord, and in free barony baron.⁴

An honour added to the lordship

The Act of 1428 excused the small barons from Parliament and kept the great men to it, the “lords of parliament” among them, summoned by the King’s “special precept”.⁵ The first named creations follow in the 1440s. Forbes is the clear case: a free barony in 1429, the honour of Parliament in 1444 or 1445.⁶

The Register of the Great Seal shows that lordship and the honour of Parliament were separate things. A charter could give the one without the other.

“in free lordship and barony … the said Andrew to be called lord and baron of Dingwall, who should have the honour of a lord of Parliament”

Charter of 18 March 1583, in modern English⁷

• 1583, Dingwall. A lord and baron by charter, with the honour named as something further.
• 1587, Paisley. A free temporal lordship and barony, with “the title and honour of a free baron and lord of parliaments”.⁸
• 1591, Balquhidder. Sir John Murray, a knight, in free lordship. No honour of Parliament.⁹
• 1631, Fenton. James Maxwell of Innerwick, in free lordship and barony. No honour of Parliament.¹⁰

So “lord” alone did not make a peer. The peerage rank needed its fuller name, Lord of Parliament, because lords held territorially in the baronage. It was at first an honour added to such a lordship, and only later given by patent alone: in 1627 Sir Thomas Fairfax, an Englishman, was made Lord Fairfax of Cameron with no lands.¹¹

What the Union changed

England took another road. There “baron” became the lowest rank of the peerage, and at Westminster a baron was a peer. The Peerage of Scotland closed at the Union of 1707, and no Scottish peerage has been created since. The Stair Encyclopaedia puts it in a line: the lowest rank in the peerage was “lord” in Scotland before the Union, and has been “baron” since.¹²

That is why the King’s Scale of 1905 lists “Barons of Scotland” among the peers: it uses the British name for the lords of parliament.¹³ The holders themselves stayed Lords, and the women show it best. The Peerage Act 1963 gave a woman holding a peerage in her own right a seat in the Lords.¹⁴ Within months the House had “Baroness Strange of Knokin”, in an English barony, and “The Lady Kinloss”, in a Scottish lordship. Hansard’s “Lord Saltoun” of 1955 was followed by “Lady Saltoun of Abernethy”.¹⁵ The Scottish holders were Ladies, not Baronesses: the peerage of Scotland has no such rank.

Debrett’s table for England now gives them a line of their own, “Lords of Parliament, Scotland”.¹⁶

Why it matters

The common objection runs: a baron is a peer, so a Scottish baron who is not a peer is no real baron. That is English usage. In Scotland the word never passed to the peerage, because the baronage already held it.

Stair warns that the title “should not be confused with a dignity in the peerage of Scotland”.¹⁷ That is right, and it is the point. A Scottish baron does not claim a rank of the peerage. He holds a dignity older than the peerage: the Act of 2000 preserves “the dignity of baron”, and in 1943 the Lyon Court found the minor barons “a ‘titled nobility’”.¹⁸

What the record does not say

• No source gives the reason in terms. The charters show the separation. That the rank took its name from it is our reading.
• The word still crosses over. Debrett’s table for Scotland reads “Barons or Lords of Parliament (Scotland)”.
• The phrase is older than the first named creations. The Act of 1428 has “lords of parliament”; the first named creations are of the 1440s.

The Roll and the Pledge

The Baronage of Scotland Association keeps the Roll of Scottish Barons, which enters a holder only on evidence, and offers the Pledge: an undertaking, in honour and not in law, to preserve a barony within the family for future generations and to uphold the Baronial Code of Honour.