Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Baughn
In a kingdom of several million people, I'd expect there to be something like (order of magnitude): - Ten thousand barons
- One thousand viscounts
- One hundred counts or earls
- Ten dukes
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Mediaeval England had about sixty barons (including earls), and until very late in the mediaeval period there were only earls or barons. There were no dukes in England until 1337, nor marquesses until 1385, nor viscounts until 1440.
At the Model Parliament in 1295 (at which the right of lords to be summoned to Parliament was established) there were 49 barons (including the earls), I think 26 bishops, and 292 commons (two knights from each shire, two burgesses from each borough).
In a mediaeval kingdom of several million population, in an area that favours broad-field agriculture, there are probably several thousand villages. Each village corresponding inexactly to a manor and to a parish. The average population of a village is probably more than 1,200 but fewer than 2,000, including women, children, servants, and landless labourers.
Depending on how the country is run, about a quarter of the manors might be royal demesnes (run by bailiffs answering to the Steward). Up to a third of the manors might belong to institutions and officials of the Church — and that’s not counting the priest’s glebe in each parish. (Church holdings tended to increase monotonically because they never escheated and were never forfeited, but whenever they reached a third of a kingdom that was destabilising, and half of them would be confiscated and distributed to royal accomplices who could perform military and court service for them.)
That leaves perhaps a couple of thousand manors in the possession of lay landlords, who were mostly knights (and later, when knighthood became an expensive nuisance, squires). A knight who owned five manors was on the margin of being considered a lord. If he played his political cards right he might get a licence to crenellate and a summons to parliament; but he was not so important that he had to get them even if the king disliked him. For that you needed ten or more. I’d say about five hundred landed knights averaging two manors each and fifty lords averaging twenty manors each.