History of The Peerage - Feudal Origins

Feudal Origins

The hereditary peerage, as it now exists, combines several different English institutions with analogous ones from Scotland and Ireland.

English Earls are an Anglo-Saxon institution. Around 1014, England was divided into shires or counties, largely to defend against the Danes; each shire was led by a local great man, called an earl; the same man could be earl of several shires. When the Normans conquered England, they continued to appoint earls, but not for all counties; the administrative head of the county became the sheriff. Earldoms began as offices, with a perquisite of a share of the legal fees in the county; they gradually became honours, with a stipend of £20 a year; like most feudal offices, they were inherited, but the kings frequently asked earls to resign or exchange earldoms. Usually there were few Earls in England, and they were men of great wealth in the shire from which they held title, or an adjacent one, but it depended on circumstances: during the civil war between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, nine Earls were created in three years.

William the Conqueror or Henry II did not make Dukes; they were themselves only Dukes of Normandy or Acquitane. But when Edward III of England declared himself King of France, he made his sons Dukes, to distinguish them from other noblemen, much as Royal Dukes are now distinguished from other Dukes. Later Kings created Marquesses and Viscounts to make finer gradations of honour: a rank something more than an Earl and something less than an Earl, respectively.

When Henry III or Edward I wanted money or advice from his subjects, he would order great churchmen, earls, and other great men to come to his Great Council; he would generally order the lesser men from towns and counties to gather and pick some men to represent them. For the evolution of this into a system of government, see Parliament; the English Order of Barons has evolved those men who were individually ordered to attend Parliament, but held no other title; the chosen representatives, on the other hand, became the House of Commons. This order, called a writ, was not originally hereditary, or even a privilege; the recipient had to come to the Great Council at his own expense, vote on taxes on himself and his neighbors, acknowledge that he was the king's tenant-in-chief (which might cost him special taxes), and risked involvement in royal politics - or the king requesting a personal loan, or benevolence. Which men were ordered to Council varied from Council to Council; a man might be so ordered once, and never again - or all his life, but his son and heir might never go.

Under Henry VI of England, in the fifteenth century, just before the Wars of the Roses, attendance at Parliament became more valuable. The first claim of hereditary right to a writ comes from this reign; so does the first patent, or charter declaring a man to be a Baron; and the five orders began to be called Peers; holders of older peerages also began receive greater honor than Peers of the same rank just created.

If a man held a peerage, his son would succeed to it; if he had no children, his brother would succeed. If he had a single daughter, his son-in-law would inherit the family lands, and usually the same Peerage; more complex cases were decided depending on circumstances. Customs changed with time; Earls were the first to be hereditary, and three different rules can be traced for the case of an Earl who left no sons and several married daughters. In the thirteenth century, the husband of the eldest daughter inherited the Earldom automatically; in the fifteenth century, the Earldom reverted to the Crown, who might regrant it (often to the eldest son-in-law); in the seventeenth century, it wouldn't be inherited by anybody unless all but one of the daughters died and left no descendants, in which case the remaining daughter (or her heir) would inherit.

After Henry II became the Lord of Ireland, he and his successors began to imitate the English system as it was in their time. Irish Earls were first created in the thirteenth century, and Irish Parliaments began in the fifteenth century, complete with seven Barons of Parliament. The Irish peers were in a peculiar political position; because they were subjects of the King of England, but peers in a different kingdom, they could sit in the English House of Commons, and many did. In the eighteenth century, Irish peerages became rewards for English politicians, limited only by the concern that they might go to Dublin and interfere with the Irish Government.