Peerage of Ireland - History

History

A handful of titles in the peerage of Ireland date from the Middle Ages. Before 1801, Irish peers were those who had the right to sit in the Irish House of Lords, but after the Union in 1801, they elected just twenty-eight representative peers to the House of Lords at Westminster.

Both before and after the Union, Irish peerages were often used as a way of creating peerages which did not grant a seat in the English House of Lords and so allowed the grantee (such as Clive of India) to sit in the House of Commons in London. As a consequence, many Irish peers had little or no connection to Ireland, and indeed the names of some Irish peerages (for example, the Earldoms of Mexborough and Ranfurly) refer to places elsewhere in the British Isles. Irish peerages continued to be created for almost a century after the Union, although the treaty of Union placed restrictions on their numbers: three needed to become extinct before a new peerage could be granted, until there were only 100 Irish peers - a condition still not achieved. There was a spate of creations of Irish peerages from 1797 onwards, mostly peerages of higher ranks for existing Irish peers, as part of the negotiation of the Act of Union; this ended in the first week of January 1801, but the restrictions of the Act were not applied to the last few peers. Irish peerages were created in the early nineteenth century at least as often as the Act permitted, but the pace then slowed. The last two to be granted were the promotion of the Marquess of Abercorn, a Scottish peerage, to be Duke of Abercorn in the Irish Peerage when he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1868, and the granting of Barony of Curzon of Kedleston to an English MP when he became Viceroy of India in 1898.

Peers of Ireland have precedence below Peers of England, Scotland, and Great Britain of the same, and above Peers of the United Kingdom of the same rank; but Irish peers created after 1801 yield to United Kingdom peers of earlier creation. Accordingly, the Duke of Abercorn (the junior Duke in the Peerage of Ireland) ranks between the Duke of Sutherland and the Duke of Westminster (both Dukes in the Peerage of the United Kingdom).

When one of the Irish representative peers died, the Irish Peerage met to elect his replacement; but the officers required to do this were abolished as part of the settlement of the Irish War of Independence. The existing representative peers kept their seats in the House of Lords, but they have not been replaced. Since the death of Francis Needham, 4th Earl of Kilmorey in 1961, none remains.

In the following table of the Peerage of Ireland as it currently stands, each peer's highest titles in each of the other Peerages (if any) are also listed. Irish peers possessed of titles in any of the other Peerages (except Scotland, which only got the right to an automatic seat in 1963, with the Peerage Act 1963) had automatic seats in the House of Lords until 1999.