Paramount (derived from the Anglo-French word paramont, which means up above, or par a mont, meaning up or on top of the mountain), is the highest authority, or that being of the greatest importance. The word was first used as a term of feudal law, of the lord, the lord paramount, who held his fief from no superior lord, and was thus opposed to mesne lord, one who held from a superior. To those who held their fiefs from one who was not a lord paramount was given the correlative term paravail, (from par d val, meaning in the valley). The word was confused by English lawyers with "avail," help, assistance, profit, and applied to the actual working tenant of the land, the lowest tenant or occupier.
A well-documented example of paramountcy is the Lordship of Bowland. In 1311, it was subsumed as part of the Honor of Clitheroe into the Earldom of Lancaster. After 1351, it was administered as part of the Duchy of Lancaster, with the Duke (from 1399, the Sovereign) acknowledged lord paramount over the Forest of Bowland and the ten manors of the Liberty of Bowland. As lord paramount, he was styled Lord King of Bowland.
Famous quotes containing the words lord and/or paramount:
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
—Bible: New Testament, 2 Corinthians 3:17.
“There are many faculties in man, each of which takes its turn of activity, and that faculty which is paramount in any period and exerts itself through the strongest nation, determines the civility of that age: and each age thinks its own the perfection of reason.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)