Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: What is the highest title in the English peerage?
In the British peerage, a royal duke is a member of the British royal family, entitled to the titular dignity of prince and the style of "His Royal Highness" who holds a dukedom. Dukedoms are the highest titles in the British roll of peerage and the holders of these particular dukedoms are Princes of the Blood Royal. The holders of the dukedoms are royal not the titles themselves. They are titles created and bestowed on legitimate sons and male-line grandsons of the British monarch, usually upon reaching their majority or marriage. The titles can be inherited but cease to be called "royal" once they pass beyond the grandsons of a monarch. As with any peerage, once the title becomes extinct, it may subsequently be recreated by the reigning monarch at any time.
He descended from a third son of Sir Andrew Kerr of Ferniehurst, and entered public life as laird of Ancrum in Roxburghshire. He was born about 1578, and succeeded to the family estate in 1590 on the death of his father, who was assassinated by his kinsman, Robert Key, younger of Cessford. He was cousin to Robert Carr, the favourite of James VI. Kerr appears to have also been honoured at an early age with court favour. Soon after the king's accession to the English throne, Kerr occupied a considerable station in the household of Prince Henry. The household of that time was more splendid and consisted of more people than the present royal household. He subsequently was employed by Prince Charles, who became his patron through life. Charles mediated a match between Sir Robert and the Lady Anne Stanley, daughter of the Earl of Derby.
In August 2015, following the creation of a further 45 peers in the Dissolution Honours, the total number of eligible members of the Lords increased to 826. In a report entitled "Does size matter?" the BBC said: "Increasingly, yes. Critics argue the House of Lords is the second largest legislature after the Chinese National People's Congress and dwarfs Upper Houses in other bi-cameral democracies such as the United States (100 senators), France (348 senators), Australia (76 senators) and India (250 members). The Lords is also larger than the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea (687 members). [...] Peers grumble that there is not enough room to accommodate all of their colleagues in the Chamber, where there are only about 400 seats, and say they are constantly jostling for space – particularly during high-profile sittings", but added, "On the other hand, defenders of the Lords say that it does a vital job scrutinising legislation, a lot of which has come its way from the Commons in recent years".
The primary meaning of "landed gentry" encompasses those members of the land-owning classes who are not members of the peerage. It was an informal designation: one belonged to the landed gentry if other members of that class accepted one as such. A newly rich man who wished his family to join the gentry (and they nearly all did so wish), was expected not only to buy a country house and estate, but also to sever all financial ties with the business which had made him wealthy in order to cleanse his family of the "taint of trade". However, during the 19th century, as the new rich of the Industrial Revolution became more and more numerous and politically powerful, this expectation was gradually relaxed. From the late 16th-century, the gentry emerged as the class most closely involved in politics, the military and law. It provided the bulk of Members of Parliament, with many gentry families maintaining political control in a certain locality over several generations (see List of political families in the United Kingdom). Owning land was a prerequisite for suffrage (the civil right to vote) in county constituencies until the Reform Act 1832; until then, Parliament was largely in the hands of the landowning class.
Gentry (from Old French "genterie", from "gentil", "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. In the United Kingdom, the term "gentry" refers to the landed gentry, the majority of the land-owning social class who were typically armigerous (having a coat of arms), but did not have titles of nobility. "Gentry", in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates (see manorialism), upper levels of the clergy, and "gentle" families of long descent who never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The historical term "gentry" by itself, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. Linguistically, the word "gentry" arose to identify the social stratum created by the very small number, by the standards of Continental Europe, of the Peerage of England, and of the parts of Britain, where nobility and titles are inherited by a single person, rather than the family, as usual in Europe.
In the United Kingdom, Parliament consists of the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the Monarch. The House of Commons is composed of 650 (soon to be 600) members who are directly elected by British citizens to represent single-member constituencies. The leader of a Party that wins more than half the seats, or less than half but is able to gain the support of smaller parties to achieve a majority in the house is invited by the Monarch to form a government. The House of Lords is a body of long-serving, unelected members: Lords Temporal – 92 of whom inherit their titles (and of whom 90 are elected internally by members of the House to lifetime seats), 588 of whom have been appointed to lifetime seats, and Lords Spiritual – 26 bishops, who are part of the house while they remain in office.
The history of the Jews in Britain goes back to the reign of William I. The first written record of Jewish settlement in England dates from 1070, although Jews may have lived there since Roman times. The Jewish presence continued until King Edward I's Edict of Expulsion in 1290. After the expulsion, there was no Jewish community, apart from individuals who practised Judaism secretly, until the rule of Oliver Cromwell. While Cromwell never officially readmitted Jews to Britain, a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London, was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain. The Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753, an attempt to legalise the Jewish presence in Britain, remained in force for only a few months. Historians commonly date Jewish Emancipation to either 1829 or 1858 when Jews were finally allowed to sit in Parliament. The first Jewish knight was Sir Solomon de Medina, knighted in 1700, with no further Jews being knighted until 1837, when Queen Victoria knighted Moses Haim Montefiore; four years later, Isaac Lyon Goldsmid was made a baronet, the first Jew to receive a hereditary title. In 1885 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild, became the first Jew to receive an hereditary peerage.
The designation "landed gentry" originally referred exclusively to members of the upper class who were landlords and also commoners in the British sense – that is, they did not hold peerages – but usage became more fluid over time. Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in countries that maintained a colonial system; the term is employed in many British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India. By the late 19th century, the term was also applied to peers such as the Duke of Westminster who lived on landed estates. The book series "Burke's Landed Gentry" recorded the members of this class. Successful burghers often used their accumulated wealth to buy country estates, with the aim of establishing themselves as landed gentry.
The Commons, the last of the "estates" of the Kingdom, are represented in the House of Commons, which is formally styled "The Honourable The Commons in Parliament Assembled" ("commons" coming not from the term "commoner", but from "", the old French term for a district). In 2016, the House consists of 650 members. Each Member of Parliament (MP) is chosen by a single constituency by the First-Past-the-Post electoral system. Universal adult suffrage exists for those 18 and over; citizens of the United Kingdom, and those of the Republic of Ireland and Commonwealth nations resident in the United Kingdom, are qualified to vote, unless they are in prison at the time of the election. The term of members of the House of Commons depends on the term of Parliament, a maximum of five years; a general election, during which all the seats are contested, occurs after each dissolution (see below).
The landed gentry, or simply the gentry, is a largely historical British social class consisting in theory of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It was distinct from, and socially "below", the aristocracy or peerage, although in fact some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers, and many gentry were related to peers. They often worked as administrators of their own lands, while others became public, political, religious, and armed forces figures. The decline of this privileged class largely stemmed from the 1870s agricultural depression; however, there are still a large number of hereditary gentry in the UK to this day, many of whom transferred their landlord style management skills after the agricultural depression into the business of land agency, the act of buying and selling land.
Natalie Jessica Evans, Baroness Evans of Bowes Park, (born 29 November 1975) is a British Conservative Party politician serving as Leader of the House of Lords. She was made a life peer in 2014.
At the start of the eighteenth century the House of Commons of the Parliament of England had 513 members: 489 representing 245 constituencies in England and 24 representing 24 constituencies in Wales. In England there were 40 counties, returning two members each; 196 boroughs returning two members each, two boroughs (London and Weymouth and Melcombe Regis) returning four members each; five boroughs (Abingdon, Banbury, Bewdley, Higham Ferrers and Monmouth) returning one member each; and the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge returning two members each. In Wales there were twelve counties returning one member each, and twelve boroughs returning one member each.
The term "landed gentry", although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used of the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, eventually these terms became complementary, in the sense that their definitions began to fill in parts of what the other lacked. The historical term gentry by itself, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. The phrase "landed gentry" referred in particular to the untitled members of the landowning upper class. The most stable and respected form of wealth has historically been land, and great prestige and political qualifications were (and to a lesser extent still are) attached to land ownership.
Some historical papers of the family and its Hinchingbrooke estate are held by Cambridgeshire Archives and Local Studies at the County Record Office in Huntingdon.The heir apparent is the present holder's son Luke Timothy Charles Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke (b. 1969), the son of the 11th Earl of Sandwich and Lady Sandwich ((Susan) Caroline Hayman, b. July 1st 1968)..
The heir apparent's heir apparent is his son, the Hon. William James Hayman Montagu (b. 2004).
Edward Montagu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, KG, FRS (27 July 1625 – 28 May 1672) was an English landowner and Infantry officer who later became a naval officer and a politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1645 and 1660. He served Oliver Cromwell loyally in the 1650s, but went on to play a considerable part in the Restoration of Charles II, and was rewarded with several Court offices. He served as the English Ambassador to Portugal 1661-1662, and Ambassador to Spain 1666-1668. He became an Admiral, serving in the two Anglo-Dutch Wars in the reign of Charles II, and was killed at the Battle of Solebay. Our best picture of him is contained in the diary of Samuel Pepys, who was his cousin and protégé.
Walter Devereux was the eldest son of Sir Richard Devereux, who was created a Knight of the Bath on 20 February 1547 and died that same year, in the lifetime of his father, The 1st Viscount Hereford. Walter Devereux's mother was Lady Dorothy Hastings, daughter of The 1st Earl of Huntingdon and Anne Stafford, said to have been a mistress of Henry VIII. Through his paternal ancestry he was related to the Bourchier family, to which previous Earls of Essex had belonged: John Devereux, son of Walter Devereux who died at the Battle of Bosworth, married Cecily Bourchier, sister of Henry Bourchier, 2nd Earl of Essex.
The landed gentry is a traditional British social class consisting of gentlemen in the original sense; that is, those who owned land in the form of country estates to such an extent that they were not required to actively work, except in an administrative capacity on their own lands. The estates were often (but not always) made up of tenanted farms, in which case the gentleman could live entirely off rent income.
During the later decades of the fourteenth century English started to come back into official use. The Pleading in English Act 1362 sought to replace French with English for all pleas in courts. The Mercers' Petition to Parliament of 1386 is the oldest piece of parliamentary English; the earliest English wills at the London Court of Probate date from 1387; the earliest English returns of the ordinances, usages, holdings of the gilds are from 1389 and come from London, Norwich and King's Lynn. John Trevisa, writing in 1385, noted that: "...in all the grammar schools of England children are dropping French and construing and learning in English...Also gentlemen have now largely stopped teaching their children French".
Following the death of Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, on 18 January 1425, Richard, 3rd Duke of York inherited his estates along the Welsh Marches. This brought Walter Devereux into the retinue of the Duke, and he remained his loyal supporter throughout the War of the Roses. Devereux had been knighted by 22 September 1429 when he first represented Herefordshire in Parliament. He probably was in attendance on the Duke when he travelled with Henry VI to France for his coronation on 16 December 1429. On his return Devereux represented Herefordshire again in Parliament on 16 January 1430. He was listed on the subsidy rolls for Herefordshire of 12 January 1431 as holding his 1/3 of half a fee in Byford.
Robert FitzRoy was born at Ampton Hall, Ampton, Suffolk, England, into the upper echelons of the British aristocracy and a tradition of public service. Through his father, General Lord Charles FitzRoy, Robert was a fourth great-grandson of Charles II of England; his paternal grandfather was Augustus Henry FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton. His mother, Lady Frances Stewart, was the daughter of the first Marquess of Londonderry and the half-sister of Viscount Castlereagh, who became Foreign Secretary. From the age of four, Robert FitzRoy lived with his family at Wakefield Lodge, their Palladian mansion in Northamptonshire.
He served as the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1945 and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, from 1945 to 1959. He was at one time a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
Individuals who use the style "Lord" or "Lady" are not necessarily peers. Children of peers use special titles called courtesy titles. The heir apparent of a duke, a marquess, or an earl generally uses his father's highest lesser peerage dignity as his own. Hence, the Duke of Devonshire's son is called Marquess of Hartington. Such an heir apparent is called a "courtesy peer", but is a commoner until such time as he inherits (unless summoned by a writ in acceleration).
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.
The marquessate of Reading is the highest title in the British peerage ever attained by a Jew, and is the most recently created "extant" marquessate in the Peerage of the United Kingdom (that of Willingdon was created in 1936 but became extinct in 1979). In this role, the marquessate of Reading is currently the junior-most marquessate in the Order of precedence in England and Wales.
The Peerage of Ireland consists of those titles of nobility created by the English monarchs in their capacity as Lord or King of Ireland, or later by monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The creation of such titles came to an end in the 19th century. The ranks of the Irish peerage are Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount and Baron. As of 2016, there were 135 titles in the Peerage of Ireland extant: two dukedoms, ten marquessates, 43 earldoms, 28 viscountcies, and 52 baronies. The Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland continues to exercise jurisdiction over the Peerage of Ireland, including those peers whose titles derive from places located in what is now the Republic of Ireland. Article 40.2 of the Irish Constitution forbids the state conferring titles of nobility and a citizen may not accept titles of nobility or honour except with the prior approval of the Government. As stated above, this issue does not arise in respect of the Peerage of Ireland, as no creations of titles in it have been made since the Constitution came into force.