<P> Historically, feudal barons were the king's tenants - in - chief, that is to say men who held land by feudal tenure directly from the king as their sole overlord and were granted by him a legal jurisdiction (court baron) over their territory, the barony, comprising several manors . Such men, if not already noblemen, were ennobled by obtaining such tenure, and had thenceforth an obligation, upon summons by writ, to attend the king's peripatetic court, the earliest form of Parliament and the House of Lords . They thus formed the baronage, which later formed a large part of the peerage of England . </P> <P> English feudal baronies (and all lesser forms of feudal tenure) were abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660, but long before then the royal summons to attend parliament had been withheld from all but the most powerful feudal barons and had been extended to persons with lesser feudal tenures who had personal qualities fitting them to be royal councillors and thus peers . These latter were barons by writ . </P>

What did the barons do in the feudal system