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The royal procession to Parliament at Westminster, 4 February 1512. Left to right: The Marquess of Dorset, Earl of Northumberland, Earl of Surrey, Earl of Shrewsbury, Earl of Essex, Earl of Kent, Earl of Derby, Earl of Wiltshire. From: Parliament Procession Roll of 1512

An Earl or Jarl was an Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian title meaning "chieftain" and referring especially to chieftains set to rule a territory in a king's stead. In Scandinavia, it became obsolete in the Middle Ages and was replaced with duke (hertig/hertug), whereas, in Britain, it became synonymous with the continental count.

Today, an earl is a member of the British peerage and ranks below a Marquess and above a Viscount. Since there is no feminine form of Earl, the wife of an Earl bears the rank of Countess (the continental equivalent).

See Ríg for the account in Norse mythology of the warrior Jarl or Ríg-Jarl presented as the ancestor of the class of warrior-nobles.

The word "earl" derives from Middle English "erl" meaning warrior, nobleman, equivalent to the jarl in Old Norse. It remains unclear whether there exists a connection by etymology to the Anglo-Saxon term "Ealdorman" which translates literally as "Elder", "Senior" and denoted an office which was effectively replaced by that of earl during the eleventh century. That term survives in modern English as "Alderman", a councillor or representative in local government or a local church governing body. The Norman-derived equivalent "count" was not introduced following the Norman Conquest of England though "countess" was and is used for the female title. As Geoffrey Hughes writes, "It is a likely speculation that the Norman French title 'Count' was abandoned in England in favour of the Germanic 'Earl' […] precisely because of the uncomfortable phonetic proximity to cunt". Some others associate the word to the proto-Germanic Erilaz meaning a 'rune-master'.

The Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh words for "count" or "earl" (iarla in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, iarll in Welsh) are all descended from English "earl" or one of its ancestors.

An Earl has the title Earl of X when the title originates from a placename, or Earl X when the title comes from a surname. In either case, the Earl is referred to as Lord X, and his wife as Lady X. Countesses who hold earldoms in their own right also use Lady X, but their husbands do not receive any titles.

The eldest son of an Earl generally takes the highest of his father's lesser titles as a courtesy title; younger sons are styled The Honourable [Forename] [Surname], and daughters The Lady [Forename] [Surname] (Lady Diana Spencer being a well-known example).

In Anglo-Saxon England, earls had authority over their own regions and right of judgement in provincial courts, as delegated by the king. They collected fines and taxes and in return received a "third penny", one-third of the money they collected. In wartime they led the king's armies. Some shires were grouped together into larger units known as earldoms, headed by an ealdorman or earl. Under Edward the Confessor earldoms like Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria — names that represented earlier independent kingdoms — were much larger than any shire.

Earls originally functioned essentially as royal governors. Though the title of Earl was nominally equal to the continental count, unlike them earls were not de facto rulers in their own right.

After the Norman Conquest, William the Conqueror tried to rule England using the traditional system but eventually modified it to his own liking. Shires became the largest secular subdivision in England and earldoms disappeared. The Normans did create new earls like those of Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire but they were associated with only a single shire at most. There was no longer any administrative layer larger than the shire, and shires became "counties". Earls no longer aided in tax collection or made decisions in country courts and their numbers were small.

King Stephen increased the number of earls to reward those loyal to him in his war with his cousin Empress Matilda. He gave some earls the right to hold royal castles or control the sheriff and soon other earls assumed these rights themselves. By the end of his reign, some earls held courts of their own and even minted their own coins, against the wishes of the king.

It fell to Stephen's successor Henry II to again curtail the power of earls. He took back the control of royal castles and even demolished castles that earls had built for themselves. He did not create new earls or earldoms. No earl was allowed to remain independent of royal control.

The English kings had found it dangerous to give additional power to an already powerful aristocracy, so gradually sheriffs assumed the governing role. The details of this transition remain obscure, since earls in more peripheral areas, such as the Scottish and Welsh marches and Cornwall, retained some viceregal powers long after other earls had lost them. The loosening of central authority during the Anarchy also complicates any smooth description of the changeover.

By the 13th century, earls had a social rank just below the king and princes, but were not necessarily more powerful or wealthier than other noblemen. The only way to become an earl was to inherit the title or marry into one - and the king reserved a right to prevent the transfer of the title. By the 14th century, creating an earl included a special public ceremony where the king personally tied a sword belt around the waist of the new earl, emphasizing the fact that the earl's rights came from him.

Earls still held influence and as "companions of the king", were regarded as supporters of the king's power. They showed that power for the first time in 1327 when they deposed Edward II. They would later do the same with other kings they disapproved of. Still, the number of earls remained the same until 1337 when Edward III declared that he intended to create six new earldoms.

A loose connection between earls and shires remained for a long time after authority had moved over to the sheriffs. An official defining characteristic of an earl still consisted of the receipt of the "third penny", one-third of the revenues of justice of a shire, that later became a fixed sum. 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.

Also, due to the association of earls and shires, the mediæval practice could remain somewhat loose regarding the precise name used: no confusion could arise by calling someone earl of a shire, earl of the county town of the shire, or earl of some other prominent place in the shire; these all implied the same. So there were the "earl of Shrewsbury" (Shropshire), "earl of Arundel", "earl of Chichester" (Sussex), "earl of Winchester" (Hampshire), etc.

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). Thus an earl did not always have an intimate association with "his" county. Another example comes from the earls of Oxford, whose property largely lay in Essex. They became earls of Oxford because earls of Essex and of the other nearby shires already existed.

Eventually the connection between an earl and a shire disappeared, so that in the present day a number of earldoms take their names from towns, mountains, or simply surnames. Nevertheless, some consider that the earldoms named after counties (or county towns) retain more prestige.

Some major earldoms in Scotland originated from the office of mormaer; others developed later by analogy.

Main article: Jarl (title)

In mediæval Norway, the title of jarl was the highest rank below the king himself. The jarl was the only one beside the king himself who was entitled to have a hird (large armed retinue). There was usually no more than one jarl in mainland Norway at any one time, sometimes none. The ruler of the Norwegian dependency of Orkney held the title of jarl, and after Iceland had acknowledged Norwegian overlordship in 1261, a jarl was sent there as well as the king's high representative. In mainland Norway the title jarl was usually used for one of two purposes:

• To appoint a de facto ruler in cases where the king was a minor or seriously ill (e.g. Håkon galen in 1204 during the minority of king Guttorm, Skule Bårdsson in 1217 during the illness of king Inge Bårdsson.)
• To appease a pretender to the throne without giving him the title of king (e.g. Eirik, the brother of king Sverre.)

In 1237, jarl Skule Bårdsson was given the rank of duke (hertug). This was the first time this title had been used in Norway, and meant that the title jarl was no longer the highest rank below the king. It also heralded the introduction of new noble titles from continental Europe, which were to replace the old Norse titles. The last jarl in mainland Norway was appointed in 1295

Some Norwegian jarls:

• jarl Toste
• Skule Tostesson, killed by peasants near Haverö church in 12th century.
• Erling skakke, father of king Magnus Erlingsson
• Hakon galen

Main article: Jarl in Sweden

The usage of the title in Sweden was similar to Norway's. Known jarls from the 12th and 13 century were Birger Brosa, Jon jarl, Folke Birgersson, Karl Döve, Ulf Fase and the most powerful of all jarls and the last to hold the title, Birger jarl.

Only one person ever held the title of Earl (or Jarl) in Iceland. This was Gissur Þorvaldsson, who was made Earl of Iceland by King Haakon IV of Norway for his efforts in bringing Iceland under Norwegian kingship during the Age of the Sturlungs.

List of Earls in order of precedence

• Earl of Warrington
• Earl of Bute
• Earl of Chesterfield
• Earl of Cork
• Earl of Derby
• Earl of Norfolk
• Earl of Pembroke
• Earl of Shrewsbury
• Earl Spencer
• Earl of Strathmore
• Earl of Warwick
• Earl of Holland
• Welsh Earls

• Marc Morris, The King's Companions (History Today December 2005)
• Geoffrey Hughes, Swearing : a social history of foul language, oaths and profanity in English, ISBN 0-14-026707-7