History of The Peerage - Hanoverian Monarchs

Hanoverian Monarchs

Parliament passed the Act of Settlement 1701, which devolved the Crown, after Anne's death, upon George, Elector of Hanover, the Queen's closest Protestant relative, bypassing about 50 others in the line of succession. As the power of the monarch slowly shifted to Parliament, peerage dignities came to be conferred at the behest of ministers, not at the pleasure of the Crown.

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, a device used to obtain majorities in the House of Lords. 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, British hereditary peerages were granted 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. Unlike the Union of Scotland and England, the Crown retained the right to create one new Irish peerage dignity every time three previous ones became extinct, 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, individuals could be created Irish peers so as to honour them without further swelling the numbers of the House of Lords. There were only 21 creations of new Irish peerages after the Union, all other new peerages since 1801 have been created in the Peerage of the United Kingdom.

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 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.