In the UK, holders of the title of duke, marquess, earl, viscount, or baron (whether hereditary or for life), who make up, in that order of precedence, the titled nobility. Their privileges have been much reduced in recent years, especially after the 1999 reform of the House of Lords, but they remain exempt from jury service. The Peerage Act 1963 permits a person inheriting a peerage to disclaim it for life, as did Viscount Stansgate (Tony Benn) and the Earl of Home (Lord Home of the Hirsel) without the subsequent descent of the peerage being affected.
The Peerage is a system of titles of nobility that exists in the United Kingdom and is one part of the British honours system. The term can be used to refer to the entire body of titles in a collective sense, or to a specific title held by an individual peer.
All British honours, including peerage dignities, spring from the Sovereign, who is considered the fount of honour. The Sovereign him- or herself cannot belong to the Peerage as "the fountain and source of all dignities cannot hold a dignity from himself" (opinion of the House of Lords in the Buckhurst Peerage Case). Even members of the Royal Family who do not hold peerage dignities are considered commoners, since they do not have special legal status distinct from other members of society.
Divisions of the Peerage
Divisions of the PeerageThe various titles are in the form of Rank Name or Rank of Name. The precise usage depends on the rank of the peerage and on certain other general considerations. Marquesses and earls whose titles are based on place names normally use of, while those whose titles are based on surnames normally do not.
Often, a territorial designation is added to the main peerage title, especially in the case of barons and viscounts: for instance, Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven, County Lincoln or Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, of Hindhead, County Surrey.
It was once the case that a peer administered the place associated with his title. The only remaining peerage with associated lands controlled by the holder is the Duchy of Cornwall, which is associated with the Dukedom of Cornwall, a dukedom held by the eldest son and heir to the Sovereign.
Hereditary peers
A hereditary peer is a peer whose dignity may be inherited. Hereditary peerage dignities may be created by the Sovereign with writs of summons or by letters patent, the former method now being obsolete. Writs of summons summon an individual to Parliament, in the old feudal tradition, and merely imply the existence or creation of an hereditary peerage dignity, which is automatically inherited, presumably according to the traditional mediæval rules (male-preference primogeniture, similar to the succession of British crown).
Once created, a peerage dignity continues to exist as long as there are surviving descendants of the first holder (unless a contrary method of descent is specified in the letters patent). Once the heirs of the original peer die out, the peerage dignity is said to have become extinct. In former times, peerage dignities were often forfeit by Acts of Parliament, usually when peers were found guilty of treason. It is now also possible for an individual to disclaim his own peerage dignity within one year of inheriting it under the Peerage Act 1963. The Sovereign is incapable of holding a peerage dignity; when the holder of a peerage succeeds to the Crown, the dignity merges in the Crown and ceases to exist.
Hereditary peers were all once entitled to sit in the House of Lords, subject only to qualifications such as age and citizenship. (Scottish and Irish peers, as noted above, were not automatically entitled to seats.) Under the House of Lords Act 1999, however, hereditary peers lost their automatic right to sit in the Upper House. The Act did provide that ninety-two hereditary peers—those exercising the offices of Lord Great Chamberlain and Earl Marshal, as well as seventy five hereditary peers elected by other peers and ten chosen by the government—could remain in the House of Lords in the interim.
Life peers
Two acts—the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 and the Life Peerages Act 1958—authorise the regular creation of life peerages. Life peers created under both acts are of baronial rank, though there is nothing to prevent the creation of a life peer by the Sovereign of some other rank.
Life peers created under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act are known as "lords of Appeal in Ordinary."
Under the Life Peerages Act, however, there is no limit on the number of peerages the Sovereign may create. Normally, life peerages are granted to individuals nominated by the various political parties or by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.
Styles and titles
Peers and peeresses are entitled to certain styles and titles. Dukes use His Grace, Marquesses use The Most Honourable and other peers (whether hereditary or for life) use The Right Honourable. Peeresses (whether they hold peerages in their own right or are wives of peers) use equivalent styles. (For instance, the Earl of Derby is known as Lord Derby.) Confusion is possible here, for though the wife of an Earl and a suo jure Countess (that is, one holding the dignity in her own right) are both officially titled Countess and are known in speech as Lady, the wife of a Baron is officially titled Lady, while a woman holding that rank in her own right (usually a life peeress) is officially titled Baroness but is also commonly referred to in speech as Lady.
Children of peers also use special titles called courtesy titles. The eldest son of a duke, a marquess, or an earl may generally use his father's second-highest peerage dignity as his own. An eldest son who uses his father's second-highest title is called a courtesy peer, and does not normally sit in the House of Lords or enjoy any privileges associated with the Peerage.
Thus, individuals who use the style Lord or Lady are not necessarily peers, but it is usually possible to distinguish them by a knowledge of which subsidiary hereditary titles (such as "Marquess of Hartington") are in use and by a proper observation of whether Lord or Lady are used with or without the first name. But a suo jure peer is referred to by his peerage even if it is the same as his surname.
A quasi-exception to this comes with life peers with common surnames who choose to combine their first and last names in their peerage title.
Some peers, particularly life peers who were well-known before their ennoblement, do not use their peerage titles at all in authorial bylines or other ordinary usage, but go by their proper names.
Privilege of Peerage
The Privilege of Peerage is the body of privileges that belongs to peers, their wives and their unremarried widows. While the Privilege of Peerage was once extensive, only three privileges survived into the twentieth century. Peers had the right to be tried by fellow peers in the Lord High Steward's Court and in the House of Lords;
Peers enjoy several rights that do not formally form a part of the Privilege of the Peerage. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, the hereditary characteristics of the Peerage were well developed.
The ranks of baron and earl date to feudal, and perhaps Anglo-Saxon, times. While life peerages were often created in the early days of the Peerage, their regular creation was not provided for under an Act of Parliament until the passage of the Appellate Jurisdiction Act in 1876.
Counterparts
Other feudal monarchies equally had a similar system, grouping high nobility of different rank titles under one term, with common priviliges and/or in an assembly, sometimes legislative and/or judicial.
In France, the system of pairies (peerage) actually existed in two different versions: the exclusive 'old' in the French kingdom, in many respects an inspiration for the English/British practice, and the very prolific chambre des pairs of the Bourbon Restoration (1814-1848)
Elsewhere similar prestigious positions existed under other names.
In the Holy Roman Empire, instead of an exclusive aristocratic assembly, the imperial Diet, the Reichstag, was the highest organ, membership of which, expressed by the title Reichsfürst, was granted to all major princes, but also to various minor ones, princes of the church (parallel to the Lords spiritual) and in some cases restricted to a collective 'curiate' vote in a 'bench' such as the Grafenbank. "The British Peerage: The Legal Standing of the Peerage and Baronetage in the overseas realms of the Crown with particular reference to New Zealand." Heraldica.org on the French peerage Hilfswörterbuch für Historiker (in German) Paul, James Balfour (ed.). The Scots Peerage Founded on . Sir Robert Douglas’s Peerage of Scotland. "Peerage." Peerage Act 1963.
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