The Peerage is a system of nobility unique to the United Kingdom. The Peerage's origins are obscure, but the Peerage itself is now well-defined. While the ranks of baron and earl perhaps predate the Peerage itself, the ranks of duke and marquess were not introduced in England until the fourteenth century. The rank of viscount came even later, in the mid-fifteenth century. Life peers have formed a part of the Peerage since the earliest times, but their regular creation did not occur until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Feudal Origins
The Peerage may trace its origins as far back as the Anglo-Saxon times. Saxon Kings did not rule alone, but were aided by an aristocracy. Generally, the sons and brothers of the King were at the top of the aristocratic social class. They were followed by earldormen , each of whom had a seat in a council called the Witenagemot and was the chief officer of a shire. In some cases, the office of earldorman became hereditary. Meanwhile, the Witenagemot also included the archbishops and bishops of the Catholic Church, each of whom exercised spiritual authority in his diocese. The prelates were also among the few learned and educated men in the country, and therefore assumed a leading role in the governance of the country.
William I was a Peer of France.
The Anglo-Saxon monarchs were overthrown by the Norman invader, William of Normandy. With him, he brought the feudal principles of France, where small territories were governed by the King's vassals. William was himself one of the twelve "Peers of France," the others being the Archbishop-Duke of Reims, the Bishop-Duke of Laon, the Bishop-Duke of Langres, the Bishop-Count of Beauvais, the Bishop-Count of Chālons and the Bishop-Count of Noyon; and six lay peers: the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Aquitaine, the Count of Toulouse, the Count of Flanders and the Count of Champagne. The French peers, especially the Dukes of Normandy and Burgundy, were especially powerful rulers with large armies of their own.
Under William I, England was divided into areas called Hundreds, replacing the Saxon manors, for the purpose of local government. The King rewarded important military officers through the grant of one or more Hundreds. William, however, desired to augment the power of the Crown at the expense of his vassals. Thus, large, contiguous territories were rarely granted to vassals. Instead, many different hundreds, scattered across the country, were used to reward the King's vassals. It was therefore impossible for any particular vassal to amass a powerful and unified army, as his forces would be spread out throughout the land.
The owners of the hundreds sometimes granted lands to their own vassals, who were termed tenants. The vassals of the King, given jurisdiction over entire estates, were called tenants-in-chief , and later became known as barons. The barons normally attended the Curia Regis, or King's Court. Archbishops, bishops and abbots also attended the Court, which was held at Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and at such other times as the King desired.
Barons were sometimes classed into the "greater" and "lesser" barons. The Domesday Book reveals that several hundred lesser barons held one or two hundreds each, while some of the greater barons controlled over a hundred. A few of the greater barons were called earls, and summoned to the King's Council as such. It seems, however, that their right to be summoned arose not from their dignity as an earl, but rather from their feudal baronies.
Plantagenet and Tudor Monarchs
The manner of summoning barons to the Council was influential in the development of the Peerage. Ecclesiastical dignitaries and the greater barons were summoned by a writ of summons issued directly from the King, while lesser barons were summoned through the local sheriffs. Such a system existed as early as 1164, when Henry II withheld a personal summons to Thomas ą Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, after engaging with him in a conflict with over the rights of the Church, instead subjecting him to a summons through a sheriff. For the rest of the twelfth century, the dividing line between barons summoned by writs personally addressed to them and barons summoned throug the sheriffs became well-defined, but the Crown sometimes arbitrarily subjected the greater barons to summons through sheriffs. In the Magna Carta, King John declared, "we will cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons, severally by our letters." He also agreed that the lesser barons would be "summoned generally, through our sheriffs and bailiffs."
The greater barons continued to be regularly summoned to the King's Council. In 1254, the lesser barons ceased to attend the Council, instead being represented by knights, two of whom were chosen by each shire. The Council eventually developed into the modern Parliament. In 1295, the "Model Parliament" was called; the greater barons and prelates were summoned individually, while each shire elected two knights and each sufficiently populous city elected two burgesses. The prelates and barons eventually formed the House of Lords, while the knights and burgesses became the House of Commons.
The Peerage, still, was not an hereditary body. Kings did not consider themselves, having once summoned an individual, bound to summon the same individual, much less his heirs, to future Parliaments. Thus, writs were issued at the whim of the King. Over time, however, the arbitrary power of the Crown was fettered by the principles of hereditary right. At first, the writ of summons was regarded as a burden and interference, but later, when Parliament's power increased, it was seen as a sign of royal favour. Since the Crown was itself an hereditary dignity, it seemed natrual for seats in the upper House of Parliament to be so as well. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Peerage had evolved its hereditary charecteristics. Since, under Norman customs, estates devolved under the principles of primogeniture, seats in Parliament did so as well.
Barons sat in Parliament by a combination of tenure and writs of summons issued to them. If a woman held a barony, her husband was summoned to Parliament in her right. The concept of a barony as a personal dignity not tied to land only arose when, in about 1388, Richard II created John Beauchamp a baron by letters patent. The Lord de Beauchamp was a baron not by tenure, but rather by the will of the Crown. Letters patent and writs of summons were both used to create peerage dignities until the reign of Henry VIII, when the latter method fell into desuetude. Some peerage dignities, however, have since been created by writs of summons since that time. In most cases, such peerage dignities were created when a writ was issued to an individual under the misapprehension that he was entitled to a peerage dignity created by letters patent. The Barony of Strange is an example of a peerage dignity created due to an error.
Earls appear to have sat in Parliament by virtue of their baronies, and not their earldoms. The separation of the two dignities seems to have arisen after the advent of the usage of letters patent to create peerage dignities. In some cases, a baron who held a dignity created by a writ of summons was created an Earl, and the two dignities later separated, the barony devolving upon the heir-general, and the earldom to an heir-male.
Edward was the first Duke of Cornwall.
The other ranks of the Peerage developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. In 1337, Edward, the Black Prince was created Duke of Cornwall. Dukedoms were reserved for members of the Royal Family until 1387, when Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford was created Duke of Ireland for life. The Duke of Ireland had in the previously been created Marquess of Dublin for life, making him the first person to hold a dignity of such a rank. Subsequent marquessates were created very rarely; the Marquess of Winchester, whose dignity was created in 1551, is the only English marquess without a dukedom. The rank of viscount was imported from Europe in 1440, when John, Baron Beaumont, was created Viscount Beaumont.
During the reign of Henry VIII, peers attempted to consolidate and secure their position. They declared themselves "ennobled in blood," and suggested that no peerage could be extinguished except by an Act of Parliament, upon the extinction of all heirs to it, or upon forfeiture for treason or felony. The Spiritual Lords had attempted to secure the privileges of the Peerage while maintaining their ecclesiastical privileges, but lost in both attempts. Nonetheless, they were in the majority in the House of Lords until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which removed the abbots and priors from the House. Thereafter, the temporal peers formed for the first time a majority in the Lords.
Stuart Monarchs
In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. Scotland's Peerage then became subject to many of the same principles as the English Peerage, though many peculiarities of Scottish law continue to apply to it today. Scotland, like England, had lesser and greater barons, as well as earls. There was but one Duke in Scotland: the Duke of Rothesay, the heir-apparent to the Crown. The weak nature of the Scottish Crown had permitted the lesser feudal barons to continue attending the Scottish Estates, or Parliament, until the fifteenth century. Thereafter, only Earls and Lords of Parliament (the greater barons) came to be summoned to the Estates. In Scotland, the peereage remained tied to land until after the Union. Every earldom or lordship of Parliament was accompanied by a grant of land; sometimes, peerages and their associated lands were surrendered in return for other peerages and lands. After the Union of the Crowns, however, the concept of the Peerage as a personal dignity, not a dignity affixed to land, became established in Scotland.
James I had poor relations with the English Parliament, which had been less submissive than the Scottish Estates that he had been accustomed to. To raise funds without taxation, James began to sell titles. For instance, individuals paying £1095 could obtain the non-peerage hereditary dignity of baronet. Even peerage dignities were sold. Thus, James I added sixty-two peers to a body that had included just fifty-nine members at the commencement of his reign. His Stuart successors were no less profuse.
The position of the Peerage was called into question after the English Revolution that overthrew Charles I. In 1648, the House of Commons passed an Act abolishing the House of Lords, "finding by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England." The Peerage was not abolished, and peers became entitled to be elected to the sole remaining House of Parliament. Oliver Cromwell, the de facto dictator, later found it convenient to re-establish a second chamber to reduce the power of the Commons. About sixty writs of summons, resembling those issued to peers sitting in the House of Lords, were issued. The individuals so summoned were called Lords, but their dignities were not hereditary. But soon after the establishment of this body, Cromwell dissolved Parliament, taking power into his own hands as Lord Protector.
Anne created twelve peers on one day.
Soon after Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored, as was the House of Lords. King Charles II continued the Stuart tendency of profusely creating peerages, even eclipsing the figures of James I's reign. Several of those dignities went to Charles' many mistresses and illegitimate sons. Charles II's reign was also marked by the persecution of Roman Catholics after Titus Oates falsely suggested that there was a "Popish Plot" to murder the King. Catholic peers were disqualified from the House of Lords because they were forced, before taking their seats, to recite a declaration that denounced some of the Roman Church's doctrines as "superstitious and idolatrous." These provisions would not be repealed until 1829.
The next major event in the history of the Peerage occurred in 1707, when England and Scotland united into Great Britain. There were, at the time, one hundred and sixty-eight English peers and one hundred and fifty-four Scottish ones. English peers did not wish for their individual significance in the House of Lords to dwindle, so they agreed to permit Scotland to elect just sixteen representatives to sit in the House of Lords (see Parliament and the Peerage).
The individual power of peers did, however, reduce as more peerages were created. At one point, Anne created twelve peers in one day to secure a majority for the court party. The House of Lords then proposed a bill to restrict its numbers, but that bill failed in the House of Commons.
Hanoverian Monarchs
The Act of Settlement 1701 permitted the Crown to devolve, after Anne's death, upon George, Elector of Hanover, the Queen's closest Protestant relative. George I spoke English poorly and mostly concentrated on the affairs of his German territories. Thus, members of his cabinet, led by Sir Robert Walpole, took political control. As the power of the monarchs slowly shifted to the ministers, peerage dignities came to be conferred at the behest of ministers, not at the pleasure of the Crown. Peerages were often created solely to obtain majorities in the House of Lords.
King George III's reign is of particular note in the history of the Peerage. Increases to the Peerage during the time were totally unprecedented: almost four hundred peers were created during his reign. Lord North and William Pitt the Younger were especially liberal in dispensing peerage dignities. It became apparent that the representation of Scottish peers was inadequate: they had continued to elect but sixteen peers, while the number of British peers had increased tremendously. To account for this deficiency in representation, the Hanoverian monarchs sometimes granted hereditary peerages to Scottish peers, thereby entitling them to sit in the House of Lords.
In 1801, Ireland united with Great Britain to form the United Kingdom. Ireland became entitled to elect twenty-eight of their number to sit in the House of Lords as representative peers. The Crown retained the right to create one new Irish peerage dignity every time three previous ones became exinct, until the number of Irish peers without British peerages amounted to one hundred, when further creations would be permitted as often as necessary to maintain that number. Since Irish peers were not automatically entitled to representation in the Lords, many individuals were created Irish peers so as to honour them without further swelling the numbers of the House of Lords.
In 1832, the Reform Act was passed, abolishing many of England's "rotten" boroughs, an example of which was Old Sarum, with an electorate of seven. Such small boroughs were often "owned" by peers, whose nominees were almost always elected. The Reform Act and further Acts reduced the influence of peers in the lower house, and therefore their overall political power.
An important development of the nineteenth century was the Law Lord. In 1856, it was deemed necessary to add a legally qualified peer to the House of Lords: the Lords exercised, and still exercise, certain judicial functions, but did not necessarily include a sufficient number of peers well-versed in law. So that the number of hereditary peers would not be further increased, Victoria made Sir James Parke , a baron of the Exchequer, a life peer as Baron Wensleydale. The Lords refused to admit him, deeming that nothing but an Act of Parliament could not change the fundamental hereditary characteristic of the Lords. Bills were later introduced to permit the creation of life peerages, but these failed. Only in 1876, twenty years after the Wensleydale case, was the Appellate Jurisdiction Act passed, authorising the appointment of two Lords of Appeal in Ordinary (commonly called Law Lords) to sit in the House of Lords as barons. They were to hold the rank of baron for life, but sit in the Lords only until retiring from judicial office. In 1887, they were permitted to continue to sit in the Lords for life; the number of Lords of Appeal in Ordinary was also increased by further enactments.
Windsor Monarchs
In the twentieth century, peers have almost always been created to reward political merit, and creations became much more common. The Peerage ceased to be associated with wealth or land ownership. At the beginning of the century, however, such associations remained for some time. In 1909, Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George proposed the introduction of a land tax, which the landowning peers opposed. The House of Lords therefore rejected the Budget. After the General Election of 1910, the Government dropped the land tax proposal, but introduced the Parliament Bill, which sought to curtail the powers of the Lords. When the Lords attempted to block the bill, the Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, threatened to have the King create two hundred and fifty new Liberal peers to neutralise the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. The Lords then passed the Parliament Act, which provides that most bills can only be delayed, not rejected, by the House of Lords.
Later in the same decade, the Titles Deprivation Act 1917 was passed. Some British peers had fought against the British in World War I; the Act permitted the suspension of their titles. In 1919, three peers—Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Albany, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and Henry Taaffe, 12th Viscount Taaffe—had their peerage dignities suspended. The successors to those dignities may petition for their restoration, but none have chosen to do so.
Another issue of the 1920s was the admission of women to the House of Lords. The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 provided that "A person shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage from the exercise of any public function." In 1922, the Viscountess Rhondda, a suo jure peeress, attempted to take a seat in the House of Lords. Though the Law Lords declared that she was, under the Act, eligible, Lady Rhondda was not admitted by a decision of the Committee for Privileges. Many Conservatives were opposed to admitting women to the House of Lords. Liberals, meanwhile, felt that admitting hereditary peeresses would extend the hereditary principle which they so detested.
Women were only admitted to the House of Lords in 1958. The Life Peerages Act passed that year permitted the creation of life baronies for both men and women on a regular basis. Hereditary peeresses were admitted in 1963 under the Peerage Act. The Peerage Act also permitted peers to disclaim hereditary peerages within a year of succeeding to them. All eligible Scottish peers were permitted to sit in the House of Lords, and elections for representative peers ceased. Elections for Irish representative peers had already ended in 1922, when most of Ireland left the United Kingdom to become the Irish Free State.
Hereditary peerages continued to be created after 1958. In 1964, Harold Wilson, of the Labour Party, became Prime Minister; he ceased to recommend the creation of hereditary peerages. Neither of his successors, Edward Heath (of the Conservative Party) and James Callaghan (of the Labour Party) recommended hereditary peerage creations. Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative, did revive the practice of creating hereditary peers. While she was Prime Minister, The Prince Andrew became Duke of York, Harold Macmillan became Earl of Stockton, George Thomas became Viscount Tonypandy and William Whitelaw became Viscount Whitelaw. The peerages of the latter two became extinct upon their deaths; only the Dukedom of York and Earldom of Stockton continue to survive. Thatcher was herself created a life baroness, but her husband received an hereditary baronetcy. Since Thatcher's tenure, only The Prince Edward has been created an hereditary peer (he was created Earl of Wessex in 1999).
After the Labour Party came to power in 1997, it began the process of reforming the House of Lords. Under the House of Lords Act 1999, hereditary peerages do not entitle individuals to seats in the House of Lords. The Act did provide exemptions for the Earl Marshal, the Lord Great Chamberlain and ninety others elected by the peers. Further reform of the Lords is under consideration.
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Last updated: 05-15-2005 14:29:03
