Stigand's position as archbishop was canonically suspect, and as earl Harold had not allowed Stigand to consecrate one of the earl's churches, it is unlikely that Harold would have allowed Stigand to perform the much more important royal coronation.

On 4 August 1265 Montfort faced an army led by Prince Edward ( the later King Edward I ) and the powerful earl of Gloucester, who had recently defected to the royalist side, at the Battle of Evesham.

In April 1267, the earl of Gloucesterwho had been central both to the royal victory at Evesham and to the drafting of the Dictumturned against the king.

But by 1050, relations between the king and the earl had soured, culminating in a crisis in 1051 that led to Godwin and his family's exile from England.

Godwin returned from exile in 1052 with armed forces and a settlement was reached between the king and the earl, with the earl and his family being restored to their lands and the replacement of Robert of Jumièges, a Norman whom Edward had named Archbishop of Canterbury, with Stigand, the Bishop of Winchester.

Godwin, the powerful earl of Wessex, had been complicit in the crime as he had handed over Alfred to Harold, and Queen Emma charged him in a trial before Harthacnut and members of his council.

Although Warwick's force had more men than Edward's army, the earl refused the challenge.

Thus every earl had an association with some shire, and very often a new creation of an earldom would take place in favour of the county where the new earl already had large estates and local influence.

In a few cases the earl was traditionally addressed by his family name, e. g. the " earl Warenne " ( in this case the practice may have arisen because these earls had little or no property in Surrey, their official county ).

The king's conduct, however, drew him to the side of the earl, and he had already joined Edward's enemies when, in October 1321, his wife, Margaret de Clare refused to admit Queen Isabella to her husband's castle at Leeds in Kent.

She had been widowed by an earl, and was searching for a husband.

Hayward had dedicated his version to Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex and when Essex was arrested for rebellion in February 1601 Hayward had already been imprisoned, to strengthen the case against the earl for " incitement to the deposing of the Queen ".

Marshal did not obtain Pembroke and the title of earl, which his father-in-law had enjoyed, until 1199, as it had been taken into the king's hand in 1154.

He and the king had a falling out in the aftermath of the loss of the duchy, when he was sent with the earl of Leicester as ambassadors to negotiate a truce with King Philip II of France in 1204.

The marriage of Hubert de Burgh's daughter Margaret ( or Megotta as she was also known ) to Richard of Clare, the young Earl of Gloucester, brought de Burgh into some trouble in 1236, for the earl was as yet a minor and in the king's wardship, and the marriage had been celebrated without the royal license.

Tostig was from the south of England, a distinctly different culture from the north, which had not had a southern earl in several lifetimes.

However, just five weeks into his reign as earl, Copsi was murdered by Osulf II of Bamburgh.

A British earl is entitled to a coronet bearing eight strawberry leaves ( four visible ) and eight silver balls ( or pearls ) around the rim ( five visible ).

He succeeded his older brother William, the 6th earl, in 1771 while he was only five.

As acting emperor, Wang reinstituted the Zhou system of five grades of nobility — duke ( 公, gong ), marquess ( 侯, hou ), earl ( 伯, bo ), viscount ( 子, zi ), and baron ( 男, nan ).

He writes of the battle of Otterburn and the death of James, Earl of Douglas: " I, author of this book, in my youth had ridden nigh over all the realm of Scotland, and I was then fifteen days in the house of earl William Douglas, father to the same earl James, of whom I spake of now, in a castle of five leagues from Edinburgh which is called in the country Dalkeith.

" By her he had besides five daughters, two sons, of whom the eldest, Roger ( 1646-1681 or 1682 ), succeeded as 2nd earl of Orrery.

* that of an earl has eight strawberry leaves ( four visible ) and eight " pearls " raised on stalks, of which five are visible ( an example of one actually being worn can be seen here );

On 21 December 1443 he was sworn to the statutes by Bishop Bekynton and the earl of Suffolk, the king's commissioners, and himself administered the oath to the other members of the foundation, then only five fellows and eleven scholars over fifteen years of age.

The son of Aubrey de Vere II and Adeliza of Clare, probably the fourth of five sons, and brother of Aubrey de Vere III first earl of Oxford, de Vere spent part of his youth at the court of King Henry I of England and his second wife, Queen Adeliza of Leuven.

Lord Munster's great-grandson, the fifth earl ( who succeeded his uncle ), was a prominent Conservative politician and held ministerial office under five Prime Ministers.

However, the eighth earl ’ s grandson, the eloquently titled Silken Thomas was executed in 1537, with his five uncles, for leading an uprising against the English.

John Erskine, 3rd Earl of Mar ( c. 1585 – 1654 ), his only son by his first wife, succeeded to his earldom ; by his second wife he had five sons, among them being James ( died 1640 ), earl of Buchan ; Henry ( died 1628 ), whose son David succeeded to the barony of Cardross ; and Charles, the ancestor of the earls of Rosslyn.

When Charles became king, he gave the castle to his wife, Henrietta Maria ; he bestowed the stewardship on Robert Carey, earl of Monmouth, and gave it to Carey's sons, Henry and Thomas, after their father's death.

The eldest son of an earl, though not himself a peer, is entitled to use a courtesy title, usually the highest of his father's lesser titles ( if any ); younger sons are styled The Honourable, and daughters, The Lady ( Lady Diana Spencer being a well-known example ).

Also part of this family are the Earls Manvers, whose title became extinct in 1955 due to the last earl having no sons.

Each of William's sons did become earl of Pembroke and marshal of England, and each died without issue.

Robert's sons, John, earl of Carrick, had become the foremost Stewart magnate south of the Forth just as Alexander, Earl of Buchan was in the north.

Yet power was not handed back to Robert II but to Carrick's younger brother, Robert, earl of Fife which once again saw the king at the disposition of one of his sons.

Robert II's policy of building up Stewart domination in Scotland through the advancement of his sons saw Carrick as the pre-eminent Stewart magnate south of the Forth-Clyde line just as his younger brother Alexander, earl of Buchan, lord of Badenoch and Ross was in the north.

The title may pass through the female line when there is no male heir, and accordingly, when the 3rd earl, Edward Manners ( c. 1548 – 1587 ), left no sons, the barony of Ros passed to the family of his daughter Elizabeth ( d. 1591 ) who became the wife of William Cecil, Earl of Exeter.

By his first marriage Sorley Boy had several sons ( known as the MacSorleys ): two were killed, and Randal, who was created earl of Antrim, is the ancestor of the present holder of that title.

Erskine's eldest brother the 11th earl of Buchan had no legitimate sons and was succeeded by a nephew, the son of Erskine's brother Henry.

Here he gave some attention to literature and the classics as well as to law, but in the latter he made such progress that his employer, Salkeld, impressed by Yorke's powers, entered him at the Middle Temple in November 1708, and soon afterwards recommended him to Lord Chief Justice Parker ( afterwards earl of Macclesfield ) as law tutor to his sons.

He married, on 16 October 1735, Rebecca Samborne Le Bas ( died 16 January 1765 ), daughter and heiress of Charles Samborne Le Bas, of Pipewell Abbey, Northamptonshire, by whom he had two daughters, Lady Elizabeth ( 18 June 1739-21 January 1811, buried at Hartwell ), married on 20 June 1763 Sir William Lee, 4th Baronet, of Hartwell ( 12 September 1726-6 July 1799 ) and Lady Anne ( 1741 – 1746 ), and two sons, George Simon and William, who succeeded him as 2nd and 3rd earl respectively.

His sons succeeded to the earldom: Thomas, as seventh earl and Henry, as eighth earl.

The earl had two sons and two daughters:

However, the ninth earl, although he had his own sons, named the Wicked Master's son David as his heir ; thus, in 1558, at the ninth Earl's death, the earldom returned to the main branch of the family.

One of Birger Brosa's sons, Philippus Birgersson, became Sverre's earl.

The presumed successors of the 7th marquess in the Earldoms of Ormonde and Ossory have been the 17th and 18th Viscount Mountgarret, descending in the male line from a younger son of the 8th Earl, but the claim has not been proven, because there is still the chance of possible male descendants of sons of the 9th earl.

In 1051, with the exile of Godwin, Earl of Wessex and his sons and the forfeiture of their earldoms, a man named Odda was appointed earl over a portion of the lands thus vacated: this comprised Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and " Wealas ".

He married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir John Banks of Aylesford, by whom, besides six daughters, he had three sons, of whom the eldest, Heneage, succeeded him as 2nd earl of Aylesford.

Robert died without sons in October 1667, and his cousin John Maxwell, 7th Lord Herries ( d. 1677 ), became third earl.

The natural heir, a younger son of the fifth earl however, was subsequently confirmed in his lands and titles by the Parliament of Scotland, so on 13 August 1681, Campbell obtained a new patent which made him Earl of Breadalbane and Holland, Viscount of Tay and Paintland, and Lord Glenorchy, Benederloch, Ormelie and Wick, in the Peerage of Scotland, with special power to nominate his successor from among the sons of his first wife.