markgrave

markgrave (plural markgraves)

1. Alternative form of margrave.
   • 1575, George Gascoigne, “The Glasse of Governement. A Tragicall Comedie so Entituled, Bycause Therein Are Handled Aswell the Rewardes for Vertues, as Also the Punishment for Vices.”, in The Glasse of Government. The Princely Pleasures at Kenelworth Castle. The Steele Glas. And Other Poems and Prose Works., published 1907, page 39:

     Surely I did not know that they were the Markgraves kinsemen, and they have yet bene but verie small time with me, but since it so pleaseth him, I am content to graunt them libertie, and I will send them out unto you presently to go where it liketh him.

   • 1743, Thomas Lediard, The Life of John, Duke of Marlborough, Prince of the Roman Empire; Illustrated with Maps, Plans of Battles, Sieges, and Medals, and a Great Number of Original Letters and Papers Never Before Published, 2nd edition, volume I, London: […] J. Wilcox, […], page 340:

     The ſame Evening, his Grace ſupped with the King, the Prince Royal, and the Markgraves, and din’d with them, the next Day, at the great Chamberlain’s.

   • 1814, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, from the Earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances; Being an Abstract of the Book of Heroes, and Nibelungen Lay; with Translations of Metrical Tales, from the Old German, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic Languages; with Notes and Dissertations, Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, London; and John Ballantyne and Co., Edinburgh, page 168:

     There was Haghen of Tronek, and Dankwart, Haghen’s brother, / (For swiftness was he famed,) with heroes many other; / Ortwin of Metz, with Eckewart and Gherè, two markgraves they; / And Folker of Alsàce; no braver was in his day.

   • 1836, The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, volumes V (Blois–Buffalo), London: Charles Knight and Co., […], page 347, column 2:

     The last dying without issue, his share fell to his brother Frederic of Ansbach, who was the founder of the elder line of the markgraves of Brandenburg, in Franconia.

   • 1861, Chambers’s Encyclopædia: A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the People, volume II, London: W[illiam] and R[obert] Chambers […], page 624, column 1:

     On the extinction of the male line of the markgraves, part of the territory passed to the Dukes of Austria, in the 13th c., and the remainder was acquired by them in the 14th, since which time it has remained in the possession of Austria.

   • 1903, Henry Sidgwick, The Development of European Polity, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited; New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, pages 265–266:

     Then, when the German kings, beginning with Otto the Great in the middle of the tenth century, succeeded to the crown of the Lombard kingdom and the imperial title and renewed the compact with the Church, Tuscany formed an exception to their general policy, which was to weaken the markgraves and the more powerful counts, partly by strengthening the Church by benefices and exemption of their lands from the jurisdiction of the counts and marquises, partly by strengthening the lesser nobles against the greater, e.g. making the position of the lesser hereditary, and thus moving towards feudalism.