Statue of Byrhtnoth, the English earl who died leading the English forces against Danish raiders at Maldon in 991 CE. The statue was created by sculptor John Doubleday and stands at the battle site. Statue of a bearded man in helmet and mail armor, holding a round shield at his side and a sword aloft.
7 November 2022
Earl is a title of English nobility, corresponding in rank to the Continental count. It comes to us from the Old English eorl, although that term did not have quite the same meaning as it would in later periods. It’s cognate with a number of words in other Germanic languages, such as the Old Saxon erl (man), the Old Icelandic and Danish jarl, the Norn iarl, and the Old Swedish iärl. Its further etymology is uncertain, but it could come from the same root as the Old Icelandic jara (battle) or ern (vigorous, which would give us earnest).
Early medieval England did not have the complex hierarchy of rank that would be present in later periods, and originally eorl wasn’t a specific rank or title, but was rather a generic designation for a nobleman. As such, it contrasted with ceorl (churl), which referred to a free commoner, a peasant. Here is an example of this general sense from the poem The Battle of Maldon. The battle was fought in 991 CE, and the poem was probably written within a few years of the battle:
Wod þa wiges heard, wæpen up ahof,
bord to gebeorge, and wið þæs beornes stop.
Eode swa anræd eorl to þam ceorle,
ægþer hyra oðrum yfeles hogode.(The battle-hardened one advanced, his weapon upraised, his shield as protection, and stepped toward that man. The earl approached the churl just as resolutely, each of them intended harm to the other.)
While The Battle of Maldon uses the word in its usual meaning, there was also a poetic use of eorl meaning a warrior, which makes sense given that noblemen were essentially professional warriors. We can see this poetic use in Beowulf, in the scene where Beowulf has come into Heorot and is about to greet Hrothgar:
Hwearf þa hrædlice þær Hroðgar sæt
eald ond anhar mid his eorla gedriht;
eode ellen-rof, þæt he for eaxlum gestod
Deniga frean; cuþe he duguðe þeaw.(He then quickly turned to where Hrothgar sat, old and gray, with his retinue of earls; he went boldly until he stood before (lit. “before the shoulders”) of the king of the Danes; he knew the custom of that people.)
While in its early use eorl simply meant a nobleman of any rank, in later use it took on the additional sense of a specific title. This sense was borrowed from Old Norse, where jarl was a specific noble title, a result of the Danelaw and Danish occupation of much of England. An example of its use as a title can be found in a charter from c.1058 in which King Edward the Confessor affirms the traditional right and title to lands held by priests in Herefordshire. The charter opens with a formulaic greeting that refers to the nobles of that region:
Edward king gret Alred Eurl and Harald Eurl and all his underlynges in Herefordshire ffrendelich.
(King Edward greets in friendship Earl Alred and Earl Harald and all his subjects in Hereforshire.)
It would be the Normans who would create the complex hierarchy of nobility in which an earl ranks above a viscount and below a marquess and equivalent to a Continental count. The female equivalent of an earl is a countess.
Sources:
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. eorl, n.
Dobbie, Elliott Van Kirk. “The Battle of Maldon.” The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems. The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Record 6. New York: Columbia UP, 1942, lines 130–33.
Fulk, R.D. The Beowulf Manuscript. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 3. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2010, lines 356–59. London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv.
“Harm 49.” Anglo-Saxon Writs. F.E. Harmer, ed. Manchester: Manchester UP: 1952, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson B.329, fol. 104.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. erl, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2015, s.v. earl, n.
Photo credit: Oxyman, 2008. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.