Hereditary peer

The hereditary peerage, as it now exists, combines several different English institutions with analogues from Scotland and Ireland. English earls are an Anglo-Saxon institution. Around 1014, England was divided into shires or counties, largely to defend against the Danes. Each shire was led by a local great man, called an earl, and the same man could be earl of several shires. When the Normans invaded England, they continued to appoint earls, but not for all counties; the administrative head of the county became the sheriff. Earldoms began as offices, with a perquisite of a share of the legal fees in the county. They gradually became honours, with a stipend of £20 a year. Like most feudal offices, earldoms were inherited, but the kings frequently asked earls to resign or exchange earldoms. Usually there were few earls in England, and they were men of great wealth in the shire from which they held title, or an adjacent one, but it depended on circumstances: during the civil war between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, nine earls were created in three years.

The law applicable to a British hereditary peerage depends on which Kingdom it belongs to. Peerages of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom follow English law; the difference between them is that peerages of England were created before the Act of Union 1707, peerages of Great Britain were created between 1707 and the Union with Ireland in 1800, and peerages of the United Kingdom were created after 1800. Irish peerages follow the law of the Kingdom of Ireland, which is very much similar to English law, except in referring to the Irish Parliament and Irish officials, generally no longer appointed. No Irish peers have been created since 1898, and they have no part in the present governance of the United Kingdom. Scottish peerage law is generally similar to English law, but differs in innumerable points of detail, often being more similar to medieval practice. Women are ineligible to succeed to the majority of English, Irish, and British hereditary peerages, but may inherit certain English baronies by writ and Scottish peerages in the absence of a male heir.

The ranks of the peerage in most of the United Kingdom are, in descending order of rank, duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron. The female equivalents are duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess and baroness, respectively. Women typically do not hold hereditary titles in their own right, although there are a few titles still extant where they do, for example, Baroness D'Arcy de Knayth. One significant change to the status quo in England was in 1532 when Henry VIII created the Marquess of Pembroke title for his soon-to-be wife, Anne Boleyn; she held this title in her own right and was therefore ennobled with the same rank as a male.[further explanation needed] In the Scottish peerage, the lowest rank is lordship of Parliament, the male holder thereof being known as a lord of Parliament. A Scottish barony is a feudal rank, and not of the Peerage. The barony by tenure or feudal barony in England and Wales was similar to a Scottish feudal barony, in being hereditary, but is long obsolete, the last full summons of the English feudal barons to military service having occurred in 1327. The Tenures Abolition Act 1660 quashed any remaining doubt as to their continued status.

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The mode of inheritance of an hereditary peerage is determined by the method of its creation. Titles may be created by writ of summons, or by letters patent. A writ of summons is merely a summons of an individual to Parliament and does not explicitly confer a peerage. Descent is always to the heirs of the body, male and female. A letters patent explicitly creates a peerage and names the dignity in question. Letters patent may state the course of descent. Usually, this is to only male heirs, but by a special remainder other descents can be specified. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 regulates acquired gender and provides that acquiring a new gender under the Act does not affect the descent of any peerage. Children are deemed to be legitimate if their parents are married at the time of their birth or marry later; only legitimate children may succeed to a title. An English, Irish, or British (but not Scottish) peerage can only be inherited by a child born legitimate, not legitimated by a later marriage. An example of this can be seen in the film director Christopher Guest, who bypassed his older half-brother Anthony to became the 5th Baron Haden-Guest, as the 4th Baron Haden-Guest was not married to Anthony's mother at the time of his birth.

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At the beginning of each new parliament, each peer who has established his or her right to attend Parliament is issued a writ of summons. Without the writ, no peer may sit or vote in Parliament. The form of writs of summons has changed little over the centuries. It is established precedent that the sovereign may not deny writs of summons to qualified peers.

More often, letters patent are used to create peerages. Letters patent must explicitly name the recipient of the title and specify the course of descent. The exact meaning of the term is determined by common law. For remainders in the Peerage of the United Kingdom, the most common wording is "to have and to hold unto him and the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten and to be begotten". Where the letters patent specifies the peer's heirs male of the body as successors, the rules of agnatic succession apply, meaning that succession is through the male line only. Some very old titles, like the Earldom of Arlington, may pass to heirs of the body (not just heirs-male). These follow the same rules of descent as do baronies by writ and seem able to fall into abeyance as well. Many Scottish titles allow for passage to heirs general of the body, in which case the rules of male primogeniture apply. They do not fall into abeyance, as under Scots law, sisters are not treated as equal co-heirs.

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The number of peers has varied considerably with time. At the end of the Wars of the Roses, which killed many peers, and degraded or attainted many others, there were only 29 Lords Temporal; but the population of England was also much smaller then. The Tudors doubled the number of Peers, creating many but executing others. At the death of Queen Elizabeth I, there were 59. The number of peers grew under the Stuarts and all later monarchs. By the time of Queen Anne's death in 1714, there were 168 peers. In 1712, Queen Anne was called upon to create 12 peers in one day in order to pass a government measure, more than Queen Elizabeth I had created during a 45-year reign. Several peers were alarmed at the rapid increase in the size of the Peerage, fearing that their individual importance and power would decrease as the number of peers increased. Therefore, in 1719, a bill was introduced in the House of Lords to place a limitation on the Crown's power. It sought to permit no more than six new creations, and thereafter one new creation for each other title that became extinct. It allowed the Crown to bestow titles on members of the Royal Family without any such limitation. The Bill was rejected in its final stage in the Lords. It was passed in the Lords when it was reintroduced in the next year. The House of Commons rejected the Peerage Bill by 269 to 177.

Since the start of the Labour government of Harold Wilson in 1964, the practice of granting hereditary peerages has largely ceased except for members of the royal family. Eight hereditary peers have been created since 1965: five in the royal family (the Duke of York, the Earl of Wessex and Earl of Forfar, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Duke of Sussex) and three additional creations under Margaret Thatcher's government (the Viscount Whitelaw [had four daughters], the Viscount Tonypandy [had no issue] and the Earl of Stockton [with issue]). The two viscounts died without male heirs, extinguishing their titles. Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton received the earldom customarily bestowed on former prime ministers after he retired from the House of Commons. As for the practice of granting hereditary titles, usually earldoms, to male commoners who married into the royal family, the latest offer of such peerage was in 1973 to Captain Mark Phillips, husband of Princess Anne, who declined. The most recent to accept was the Earl of Snowdon, husband of Princess Margaret, in 1961.