The history of the British peerage, a system of nobility found in the United Kingdom, stretches over the last thousand years. The current form of the British peerage has been a process of development. While the ranks of baron and earl predate the British peerage itself, the ranks of duke and marquess were introduced to England in the 14th century. The rank of viscount came later, in the mid-15th century. Peers were summoned to Parliament, forming the House of Lords.
The unions of England and Scotland to form Great Britain in 1707, and of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom in 1801, led successively to the establishment of the Peerages of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, and the discontinuation of creations in the Peerages of England and Scotland. Scottish and Irish peers did not have an automatic right to sit in the House of Lords, and instead elected representative peers from amongst their number.
Peerages were largely hereditary until the regular creation of life peers began in the second half of the 20th century. The last creation of a non-royal hereditary peer occurred in 1984; even then it was considered unusual. Only Life peers still retain the right to sit and vote in the House of Lords, though their power is restricted and further reform of the House of Lords is under consideration.
English peerage Anglo-Saxon period (5th century – 1066) 5th–8th century In the 5th century, Germanic peoples collectively known as Anglo-Saxons migrated to sub-Roman Britain and came to dominate the east and southeast of the island. Based on archaeological evidence (such as burials and buildings), these early communities appear to have lacked any social elite. Around half the population were free, independent farmers (Old English: ) who cultivated a hide of land (enough to provide for a family). Slaves, mostly native Britons, made up the other half.
By the late 6th century, the archeological evidence (grander burials and buildings) suggests the development of a social elite. The early law codes of Kent use the Old English word (, ) to describe a nobleman. By the 8th century, the word gesith (; Latin: ) had replaced as the common term for a nobleman.
900–1066 By the 10th century, Anglo-Saxon society was divided into three main social classes: slaves, (), and (, ). Thegn (Old English: ) meant servant or warrior, and it replaced the term gesith in the 10th century. Law codes assigned a weregeld or man price of 200 shillings for a and 1,200s for a thegn. Children inherited thegnly status from their father, and a thegnly woman who married a retained her noble status.
Not all were peasants. Some were themselves landlords, and these prosperous free men could aspire to thegnly rank. Archbishop Wulfstan of York (1002–1023) wrote that a had to own five hides to qualify for thegnhood. The legal text Norðleoda laga () concurred but added that the property qualification had to be met for three generations.
In 1066, there were an estimated 5,000 thegns in England. These were divided into three ranks: ealdormen, king's thegns, and median thegns. The ealdorman was an official appointed by the king to administer a shire or group of shires (an ealdormanry). In the 11th century, while England was ruled by a Danish dynasty, the office changed from ealdorman to earl (related to Old English and Scandinavian ). After the king, the earl was the most powerful secular magnate. During Edward the Confessor's reign (1042–1066), there were four principal earldoms: Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, and East Anglia.
Below ealdormen were king's thegns, so called because they only served the king. The lowest thegnly rank were the median thegns who owed service to other thegns. Thegns were the backbone of local government and the military. Sheriffs were drawn from this class, and thegns were required to attend the shire court and give judgment. For these reasons, historian David Carpenter described thegns as "the country gentry of Anglo-Saxon England". quoted in .
High-ranking members of the church hierarchy (archbishops, bishops and abbots) paralleled the secular aristocracy. The church's power derived from its spiritual authority as well as its virtual monopoly on education. Secular government depended on educated clergy to function, and prelates were important politicians and royal advisers in the witan (the king's council).
Post-Conquest baronage (1066–1299)
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, William the Conqueror () confiscated the property of the old Anglo-Saxon nobility and granted it to the king's Norman followers according to the rules of feudalism—vassals were granted fiefs in return for military service and counsel. These tenants-in-chief would then grant land to their own vassals. The greater tenants-in-chief were large landowners known as feudal barons who held tenure by barony ( in Latin) and were distinguished by certain rights and responsibilities from other tenants-in-chief who held tenure by knight-service.
There were around 170 barons. The baronage was largely untitled, but a small number of barons (never more than 25 at one time) enjoyed the title of earl, the only hereditary title in England before 1337. The historian David Crouch defined baron as "the greatest men in the aristocracy (whether they were earls, barons or not), men habitually at court, lords of great estates, those indeed whom the king consulted in the affairs of the realm".
The fiefs of earls and barons were called "honours". The honours were not compact territorial units. The Conqueror purposely spread manors over several shires to dilute the power of the barons. For example, the largest landholder after the king was Robert, count of Mortain. He held 793 manors spread out over twenty shires. The Honour of Peverel was spread over ten shires. Except in northern England and the Welsh Marches, it was rare for the estates of any lordship to be contiguous. The ten wealthiest barons in 1086 were:
Robert of Mortain, the earl of Cornwall Odo of Bayeux, the earl of Kent William FitzOsbern, the earl of Hereford Roger of Montgomery, the earl of Shrewsbury William of Warenne, the earl of Surrey Hugh of Avranches, the earl of Chester Eustace of Boulogne Richard of Clare Geoffrey of Coutances Geoffrey of Mandeville
Barons enjoyed greater access to the king than did other subjects and were exempt from jury service. Though they could be tried in ordinary courts, their amercements could only be assessed by the barons of the exchequer or before the king himself. The baronage had a duty as tenants-in-chief to provide the king with advice when summoned to great councils. During the reign of Henry III (1216–1272), the great council evolved into Parliament, a representative body that increasingly asserted for itself the right to consent to taxation. Initially, participation in Parliament was still determined by one's status as a tenant-in-chief. Earls and greater barons received a writ of summons issued directly from the king, while lesser barons were summoned through the local sheriffs.
By the 13th century, the criteria for establishing baronial tenure was long forgotten. According to Ivor John Sanders, "both tenants-in-chief and the royal officials were ignorant of any principle of law upon which the liability to tenure could be based", so a person's baronial status was based on whether the records stated he held . quoted in In the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), the first hereditary barons were created by writ. Over time, baronies by writ became the main method of creating baronies, and baronies by tenure became obsolete.
Medieval peerage (1300–1500) The concept of peerage was borrowed from France. The peerage of France was limited to the highest ranking French nobility, six prelates and six magnates. +Peers of FrancePrelatesMagnates Archbishop of Reims Bishop of Laon Bishop of Langres Bishop of Beauvais Bishop of Noyon Bishop of Chalons Duke of Normandy Duke of Burgundy Duke of Aquitaine Count of Flanders Count of Toulouse Count of Champagne Magna Carta, first issued in 1215, declared that "No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers". In the charter, the word peer meant "equal", but this ambiguous wording led to disputes over who was equal to an earl or baron and therefore who could sit in judgment of earls and barons. When Richard Marshal, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, used the language of peerage to appeal to other magnates in 1233, the king's minister Peter des Rosches responded angrily that there were no peers in England "as there were in the realm of France". This response was likely due to fears that a recognized peerage could challenge royal authority. By the reign of Edward II (1307–1327), however, it had become standard to refer to magnates as peers of the realm.
The Peerage, still, was not a 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 a hereditary dignity, it seemed natural 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 characteristics. 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 arose only 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 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.
While kings of England possessed the subsidiary titles of Duke of Normandy (until 1259) and Duke of Aquitaine, no English duchy was created before the 1300s possibly because kings did not want their subjects possessing the same title as themselves. The first English duke was Edward III's eldest son, Edward the Black Prince, who was created Duke of Cornwall in 1337. In 1351, Henry of Grosmont was made Duke of Lancaster, the first non-royal dukedom.