Re: [OT] NAC peerage

On 13 May 2001, at 23:07, Thomas Barclay wrote:

> I notice that England (and undoubtedly Scotland and anyplace else
> that is part of the Crown's control) has a whole passle of what
> I'd call "peers" (people with noble titles). 

These are all temporal peers. The House of Lords also contains spiritual

peers - the two archbishops and 24 of the bishops from the church of
england. 
But let's ignore the bishops and concentrate of the lords temporal.

Might as well put the various British noble titles in pecking order:
Duke/Duchess
Marquess/Marchioness
Earl/Countess
Viscount/Viscountess
Baron/Baroness 

(NB Scotland has some differences from England and Wales and for the
sake of 
simplicity, and my ignorance, I'm excluding it from the following.)

There are also baronets, which are hereditary but which are not peers
(and 
hence never had a seat in the House of Lords).

> Now, did all these people hold a hereditary peerage?

In the UK there are two sorts of peers. Hereditary peers and life peers.
Life 
peerages were invented in 1958 are normally given to individuals for
service 
to the country (or the governing political party) and hence most life
peers 
tend to be middle aged or older. I would guess that most if not all of
the 
people on your list were in fact hereditary peers.

Hereditary peers are adressed as The Title of yyyy.
Life peers are addressed as The Lord xxxx of yyyy or The Baroness xxxx
of 
yyyy (to distinguish a female life peer from the wife of a peer).
Where xxxx is the surname and yyyy the placename. All life peers are 
Barons/Baronesses

> Would they all have some form or fief associated with the peerage?
> Or merely a title, sans lands? 

All peerages, including life peerages, include a placename in their full

title. But the placename doesn't convey any sense of possession.

> I'm asking this while I'm thinking about the form of the NAC in
> 2183 and how the House of Lords will look. 

Well in 1999 almost all the hereditary peers had their voting rights
removed. 
The House of Lords now consists of 92 hereditary peers, 533 life peers,
28 
law lords and 26 bishops, plus two royal office holders (the Earl
Marshal and 
the Lord Great Chamberlain).  

Further reform of the house of lords is being considered and will
probably 
happen within ten years.

> I'm fairly certain the House of Representatives and the House of
> Commons can be considered to have fallen into some sort of General
> Assembly for the Confederation. 

Agreed.

> But what about the Lords? Would peerages be created on the new
> worlds? Would colonies all fall under some sort of peerage? (this
> would reinvigorate the peerage and probably work well for the NAC
> royals/peers and for the Romanovs) Would we see the Duke of
> Memphis? The Earl of Niagra? The Marquess of Brooklyn? 

Probably. There were some peerages created in the pre-AWI colonies. And 
several british peers have/had titles with the names of foreign places -

battles they had won, colonies they had founded or governed.

So there are probably a whole load of life peerages named after places
from 
Miami to Tau Ceti. Whether there are any more hereditary peerages and/or

peerages with grants of land is less probable.

> And as an aside, how many of these nobles (enfeoffed and
> unenfeoffed) in England and Scotland these days? Someone must keep
> a list. 
>
> Is there an online version of such a roll of peers that lists what
> titles exist, which ones are currently held, and by whom? And if
> so, does it distinguish between titles with land and without? I
> haven't even the vaguest idea where to begin a search for such a
> thing. 

I got my House of Lords data from 
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld/ldhome.htm

Debrett's publishes a peerage that's considered definitive. But it's not

available online - http://www.debretts.co.uk/

The FAQ on British Royal & Noble Families from alt.talk.royalty may be
useful
http://www.heraldica.org/faqs/britfaq.html and has more links to other
sites 
than I can be bothered to look through.

> And can the Crown arbitrarily create or revive titles and grant
> lands and whatnot? 

The Crown (that wonderfully nebulous entity) can create any title that
it 
pleases, so long as it isn't held by someone else already. So old titles
can 
be resurrected or new ones invented. (N.B. Some titles (e.g. Duke of 
Edinburgh) are gifts of the monarch and are NOT inherited.)

The Crown can only grant land that it owns. So the Queen could grant
land 
from the royal estates, and the government could grant land that it
owns. But 
I have no idea how long it is since that last happened. I don't think
that 
any post-war peerages have come with grants of land, not even hereditary

peerages.

> Or has this been severely constrained since the coming of the
> constitutional part of constitutional monarchy? 

The unwritten British constitution? Or the NAC constitution?

	Steve

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