All peerages are created by the sovereign (nowadays on advice of the prime minister). There are five grades of peers: in descending order of rank, duke, marquess (the spelling now preferred to the French “marquis”), earl, viscount, baron. Historically, there are five different peerages: those of England and of Scotland, creations before the union of those two kingdoms by the Act of Union of 1707, after which Englishmen and Scots raised to the peerage were peers of Great Britain; peers of Ireland, created before Ireland was united with Great Britain by the Act of Union of 1801. After that date, most new creations were peers of the United Kingdom, though a few creations of peers of Ireland still took place.
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Most peerages descend by male primogeniture, but a few, mostly Scottish, together with ancient English baronies, may, in absence of a male heir, be inherited by a woman. These ladies are “peeresses in their own right.” By the Peerage Act, 1963, for the first time peeresses in their own right were permitted to sit and vote in the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament.
Peers of England, Scotland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, not being minors, were entitled to membership in the House of Lords.
A peer’s wife (though referred to as a “peeress”) and children, unless they have acquired peerages in their own right, are legally commoners.
Courtesy titles. Nearly all dukes, marquesses, and earls hold other peerages of a lower grade, and their oldest surviving sons are “by courtesy” addressed by the title of the second-ranking peerage (which may not necessarily be the grade immediately below that of the head of the family). If there is more than one such subordinate peerage, the oldest son of the oldest son is addressed by the next senior title: thus the oldest son of the Duke of Devonshire is “by courtesy” Marquess of Hartington, and his oldest son is Earl of Burlington. The younger sons of dukes and marquesses are “Lord” with their given and family names. Nevertheless they remain commoners, and the actual peerage indicated by the courtesy title continues to be held by the head of the family. Many holders of courtesy titles have had successful careers in the House of Commons: for instance, the Marquess of Hartington, heir to the seventh Duke of Devonshire, who declined three offers of the prime ministry, normally held by a member of the House of Commons
Daughters of dukes, marquesses, and earls are “Lady” with their given and family names. If they marry a commoner, they substitute their husband’s family name for their own, but retain the “Lady Mary” or whatever it is. On marrying a peer, they take the normal designation of a peer’s wife.
Marquesses and marchionesses are “Most Honourable”; other peers and peeresses are “Right Honourable.” “Lord” and “Lady” may be used informally for peers of the rank of marquess and below (dukes and duchesses are never “Lord” or “Lady” So-and-so). Of course, among intimate friends, even these honorifics are dropped, and the Earl of Brideshead becomes merely “Brideshead” or “Bridey” (we are never told his first name), and Lady Julia Flyte “Julia.”
Peers, “courtesy” peers, and peeresses in their own right merely sign with their titles—e.g., “Marchmain,” “Brideshead.” Peeresses by marriage sign with their title preceded by their given name or initial—“Teresa Marchmain.” (She could never have been “Lady Teresa Marchmain.” Before her marriage, as the daughter of a high-ranking peerage family, she may have been “Lady Teresa Blank,” but on her marriage to the marquess she became “Lady Marchmain.”) “Courtesy” lords and ladies omit those titles from their signatures—“Sebastian Flyte,” “Celia Ryder”—as do ennobled actors and writers in playbills and on title pages of books
At the coronation of a sovereign, at the moment the crown is placed on his or her head, the peers and peeresses don their coronets. That of a duke is a gold circlet surmounted by stylized strawberry leaves; of marquesses by strawberry leaves alternating with balls; of earls, strawberry leaves alternating with balls raised on “points”; of viscounts, sixteen balls; of barons, eight balls. Waugh makes a slight slip when the villagers in Brideshead have to change the earl’s coronets on the bunting erected to celebrate Lord Brideshead’s marriage to a marquess’s, to celebrate Lord Marchmain’s homecoming, “obliterating the Earl’s points and stenciling balls and strawberry leaves” (Brideshead 2:5). The coronation robes of peers are scarlet, trimmed with, for dukes, four rows of ermine; for marquesses, three and a half; for earls, three; for viscounts and barons, two.
As well as the peers, the prefix “Lord” is attached to numerous official appointments. It is not a personal designation (except for Scottish judges): a Mr. Smith who is appointed, say, Lord Privy Seal remains Mr. Smith and does not become “Lord Smith.”
Titled Characters in Waugh
Marquesses. The best known, of course, is the Marquess of Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited, whose family provides a great deal of the novel’s plot. His oldest son and heir bears the courtesy title of Earl of Brideshead (we are never told his Christian name); after his father’s death he succeeds as Marquess. The other children, Lord Sebastian, Lady Julia, and Lady Cordelia, figure prominently in the novel. After her marriage to Mr. Rex Mottram, Lady Julia Flyte becomes Lady Julia Mottram, but after their divorce resumes her name of Lady Julia Flyte. Waugh apparently first planned to make the head of the family an earl, in which case the younger son would have been not “Lord” but “the Honourable” Sebastian Flyte, although Ladies Julia and Cordelia would retain those honorifics. Waugh may have been influenced by the Marquess of Steyne (stain?) in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, whose family circumstances closely resemble those of Lord Marchmain’s: the Marquess a cynical, worldly, amoral man, estranged from his devoutly Catholic Marchioness, with two sons, the elder, the Earl of Gaunt, detesting and detested by his father, the younger, Lord George Gaunt, eventually becoming insane.
On his deathbed, Lord Marchmain reflects on the history of the peerages in his family. Speaking of the ancient family tombs, he remarks, “We were knights then, barons since [the battle of] Agincourt [1415]; the larger honours came with the [Protestant King] Georges. They came the last and they’ll go the first; the barony descends in the female line; when Brideshead is buried—he married late [1st edition; the 2nd substitutes, more accurately, “when all of you are dead”]—Julia’s son will be called by the name his fathers bore before the fat days” (Brideshead 2:5). An interesting point of peerage law: the Marquessate and Earldom, descending in the male line, will become extinct. If Julia and Cordelia survive the childless Brideshead, the ancient Barony will fall into abeyance between the two daughters; if Julia should survive Cordelia, she would become the Baroness Flyte (or whatever the title is) in her own right, and her son (by whom, one wonders) would inherit the Barony after her death.
Earls. Perhaps unexpectedly, a historical Earl has a tiny cameo role in Brideshead. Lord Marchmain, on his deathbed, having the daily newspaper read to him in 1939 and reminiscing, remarks “Irwin … I knew him—a mediocre fellow” (2:5). The reference is to Edward Wood (1881-1959), Earl of Halifax, foreign secretary in the Cabinet of Neville Chamberlain and a supporter of “appeasement,” Winston Churchill’s chief rival for the prime ministry in 1940, and later ambassador to the United States. Lord Marchmain contemptuously refers to him by his earlier title, Lord Irwin, conferred when he was appointed viceroy of India and through his actions created much controversy.
Viscounts. “Boy,” Viscount Mulcaster, and his sister Lady Celia, who marries Charles Ryder (their family name is not disclosed), are probably children of an earl (or conceivably duke or marquess). Mulcaster’s Viscountcy must be a courtesy title; if it were a substantive one and he were head of the family, his sister would not be “Lady Celia” but merely “the Honourable Celia.”
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