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THEIR NOBLE LORDSHIPS

by the same author

IN HOLY TERROR
Reporting the Ulster Troubles

AMERICAN HEARTBEAT
Notes from a Midwestern Journey

Their Noble
Lordships

The hereditary peerage today

Simon Winchester

IJLSU. CENTRAL LIBRARY

A.NT) FABER

First published in i$8i
by Faber and Faber Limited
3 Queen Square London WCiN sAU
Filmset by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd, Plymouth
Printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Burn Ltd, Trowbridge
All rights reserved

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I Crtal Britain — Perrage
t. Title

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FOR JUDY

CONTENTS

Lht of Illustrations
Ackrow Icdgcmcnts
Preface

llxordium — Sorts and Conditions ^

‘The Gaudy Centrepiece of the Noble Art ^

‘The Piddle-raddle of Nobiliary Enrolment
Tlic Dukes— Miphtiest of Them All
'Die .Vfarquesses— The Noble Misfits

The Ilclted Earls

Ttic Vnreunls-VulEJily Mcrcmiik anj. m liulli

rather suspect . ,

The Karons-nic UroaJ Base of ij*;

The Irish I'eerapc-Alonc in the V ildemess
'Phe Poundatiim of Lordly Existence

face

Of Men and Nfanners
The Patal Weakness
Pibhopraphy
Invlcx

«3

«33

*57

1^9

203

233

245

203

3CC

5CO

ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

between pages i6o and i6i

1 Ampthill inheritance case:

(a) the winner, Geoffrey, with his wife;

(b) the loser, John.

2 (a) Servants of the sixteenth Duke of Norfolk walking in

procession at his funeral, ^trying his coronet, Earl
Marshal’s baton and other insignia;

(b) The seventeenth Duke of Norfolk speaking at a fund-raising
appeal for repairs to Wcsuninster Cathedral.

3 (a) Heralds prepare for Investiture Da^

(b) An assistant modelling robes at Ede and Ravenscroft,
Chancery Lane.

4 (a) The Duke of Buccleuch m his ‘Argo-cat’;

(b) The Duke of Beaufort outside Badminton.

5 (a) Lord Longford;

(b) Lord Lucan.

6 Their Lordships wed: ^ ^ ,

(a) Lady Jane Grosvenor and Ihe Dija of Roxbutu^.

(b) Natalia Phillips and Gerald, Earl Grosvenor
of Westminster).

7 (a) The Duchess of Argyll;

(b) Lord and Lady BrookeborouBhvnth Watf.

8 First and last of the Barons:

(a) Lady de Ros at Sttangford. °°'™i

(b) Lord Margadale a, .he Horse aod Hound B„,.

ILLUSTRATIONS

MAPS

1 Distribution of scats of Dukes 9®

2 Distribution of seats of Marquesses ^34

3 Distribution of seats of Earls

4 Distribution of seats of Viscounts *9*^

5 Distribution of seats of Barons

6 Distribution of seats of the Irish Peerage ^34

acknowledgement s

The publishers would like to thunk Weidenfeld end Nicolson Ltd
for permission to use the extract from No Regrets by the Earl of
Carnarvon.

Acknowledgements for photographs are made to the following;
Central Press tor plates la, ib. aa, 2 b, gai Noeleen Chedd for plates
3b, sai Capital Press, Edinburgh, for plate 4 a;
plates 4b, 6bi Universal Pictorial Press for p ate 5 b, Press
Association Photos for plate 6ai the Guard, m for plate 7 a, Desmond
O’Neill Features for plate 8b.

The maps were all drawn by Neil Hyslop.

IMPORTANT NOTICE

References throughout this work to members of the peerage by
mular description are to those holding such titles at March tgSl,
the date upon which the typescript went to press.

SIMON WINCHESTER

PREFACE

Alone in all the world, Britain still looks to acoden b>tth as a

eonvenienttneansofseleetingthosewhowillhelpwriteto^^^^^^^

laws. Not for Britons the unseemly and doubtless vulgar practices

of universal adult suffrage or proporrionaUepres^^^^^^^^^^^^

not when it comes to the Upixit Hons been refined over

the 'Mother of Parliaments ; deslndants, to take one

the past seven centuries whereby the dii« King Charles II,

example, of the mistresses who gra^d ^

have an inalienable right to ® fajj/n are the peers of the
whom this mantle of rare of ancient heritage and

realm— a thousand or more men British society is one of

mystifying responsibility whose posi ^ ^ jhey live

unrivalled superiority. Who unique allotment of tights and

their lives? How do they regard ^ threatened minority,

duties? Do they see thcmsleves p

islands of sanity in an ever-dec ining ^ jjjj,jhday dinner party in
These questions first came up Everyone present that

Washington late in the sunder forward were of a

mght was British, and whi c ^^^^^pjcun-ent remained constant:
refreshingly wide variety, “ ..-dsketchiesidetailsabout
that few of us knew more than the ba

our noble peers. many of them lived in castles and

W'e knew, I suppose, that ^ that a very few were

owned vast tracts of Ian , ^^jj,pyblicized ways, and that some
impoverished m tragic an as gardeners or policemen or

eked out miserable existences lived unfathomable lives

doorkeepers. But English shires and the Scottish

buried m the deepest by" W ^ occasion to see their monarch
glens, lumbering . annual ritual of the State Opening of
crowned or to watc from their ruralfortressesihai 1

Parliament So it was to i country side late in the winter

lirst sallied out into the or

EXORDIUM-
SORTS AND CONDITIONS

‘You should study the peerage, Gerald It is the best thing

in fiction the English have ever done.

Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

■No, no! Indood. h.sh nnk ml) ntvtr to. you.

The Peerage is not destitute of virtue.

W. S. Gilbert, lolantht

EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

sobriquet: although 200 miles by crow from the sands of Torquay
and the granite tors of Dartmoor^ this particular public house is
know-n as the Devonshire Arms. Not Derbyshire, in respect of the
county in which it lies, but Devonshire, in respect of the ancestors
and present majesty of a balding and engagingly shy sixty-one-year-
old man who lives occasionally in a large house behind a nearby hill
and who happens to own, not just the pub, but the three villages too,
every smglc one of the surrounding fields and forests, rivers,
streams and mineral mines and— some unkind souls might say-
most of the local people too.

The man who has the village inn named for him, and who owns
near enough everything that can be seen from the door— indeed
uom the roof— of the building, is one Andrew Robert Buxton
' sendish. His Grace, as he is known both near and far, the most
N^c the eleventh Duke of Devonshire.

s inn’s front door are to be

m I P®" of England. Officially, the Heralds
areent’ *Sable, three bucks’ heads cabossed

‘bucks ° which, 10 keep it in the family, arc

roses ahem*,’ wreathed round the neck with a chaplet of

to carve and draJ Perhaps not the easiest of creatures

hci curled above th " *he heraldic crest that

a «rrem, knotted in” of the formal arms:

seen in walls in S'Bo of the snake can be

account, .«n 8 ;«m.nabb?k'*r-''"“"e paper, on merchants’
bound books in nooks an 1 cases and on leaihcr-

To get in or outTf th »»«ver this region of the north.

snowdrifts permit, alonRihc^aVcp'*"*’^*’"' can proceed, if the

the Snake I loiel. I’ancifu! carlo h”' there, one can stay in

and thousand* of acres owned^b*** b” '^'Eht ring the thousands

p>thon-likcdesice;iicuuldfairI\ bl * Duke with some

cmplosTOeni and security in these *''ake, a symbol of

dissuades them from forays of anv u’’ •" check,

outside. ^ of time into the world

r»r It I, .rue ,lu. ihc vilhscnoflfcei,, ,

arc a fixed and conicnced rcoplc, not eiv.^ . "* senlemcnts
but happy lo remain where they are. cencra?/”' r* adventure,
Knnek un ,ny one of ihede.l fo,„,

he .inuelly .he u.n,e .h,. .olj by Alben und DL„V',Z"i"

28 EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

Mother all purchase their robes here: so, too, do nearly all the l ,148
men and women whose birth or recent services entitle them to be
styled Your Grace, Your Lordship or Your Ladyship. (Strictly
speaking, since every baronet’s wife and every knight’s wife is also
entitled to be called 'Your Ladyship’, the number is far greater than
that.)

The front of the shop, a flurry of energetic young men with tape
measures and a quiet eagerness, is predominantly given over to
suiting cloth in grey worsted and black silk for the barristers and
solicitors who haunt these regions of the City fringe. Hanging from
hooks in smaller rooms towards the window marked 'Settlement of
Accounts and Private Offices’, one sees, and frankly welcomes, an
occasional flash of colour — crimson, maybe, or a rich purple, or
scarlet and gold, brilliant white furs and rich black velvets. These
are the first of hundreds of sets of robes brought to, and usually kept
by, the custodians at Ede and Ravenscroft, from wardrobes and
closets in castles, mansions and humble houses from Cornwall to
Caithness.

In cramped little lofts above the fitting rooms, and in more
modern quarters in an undistinguished warehouse near
Cambridge, in dampened airat40"F, are line upon line of hangers
supporting the official uniforms of the British nobility— the great
coronation robes, weighing forty pounds and worn only a few times
each century, and the parliamentary robes of scarlet wool, miniver
and gold lace, with the appropriate marks of degree in appliqued
sealskin spots around the back (so that a Viscount can be
distinguished from an Earl, a Marquess from a Baron, and a Duke
from every other mortal), that are worn by some, perhaps once a
year. At the back of each robe is a small flap of scarlet known as the
liripip: underneath this, embroidered on a fragment of white linen
in much the same way as a schoolboy’s socks are identified with a
Cash’s tape, is the owner’s name. The robes of nobility, like
schoolboy’s socks, can get lost in the scrums m which their owners
tend to be obliged to participate.

The names themselves breathe still more history into a scene
already firmly rooted in a haIf*forgotcen era. ‘Mowbray, Segrave
and Stourton’,one label will read; 'BoUngbroke and St John’ will be
wjjjien OD snoJbtj-j ‘Atbe/narie’; ‘SsaasWc’,' /ctAiv

Bletso’; ‘Fitzwalter’, ‘Sayc and Scle’.

Names that tell of ancient battles and the friends of long-dead
kings; names that smell ofmoaied fortresses and bloated mistresses.

exordium-sorts and conditions 29

rrsri's"- v— »x .-

FitzGerald, Byron.

™yirdVuntba..enofBur™^Sc™^^^^
and some of the grandest subjects this y coraved and

will have worn the selfsame robes ttot Ca^ibridge

guarded from all manner of flame, in the warehouse at Cambr. g
or the dim old rooms in Chancery Lane.

ItieunlWythalrnanyotthccitizensof,^^^^^^

deep in the soft, green countryside “f of the

Ireland, will have heard of Messrs Ed f.w-viilaeeofBeeley.

Twenty-FiveInvisibles.or.forthat^^^^^^^^

Caledon, now a little war-scarred from

violence, is not as pure an example of the feudal broods

every house is owned by the Earl of Cale on, a gjj whose

fromanearbyparkjandevidenceoftheernenceof^^^^^^^^^^

hves are unite distinct from arrSecd. a few

Caledon estates is everywhere to be seen. The ,

council houses-one of which, by chance, provi .-yjoublcs'.

the very first confrontation of the present episo much more

Caledon is considerably less insular » . “d

‘normal’, in spite of its unhappy siting t of Caledon was

Denis Jam "s Alexander, whose title as
thrust on him in 1968 when an unc e > below

interested in the sordid squabble that border— which

rhe hili. Ahhough a bonrh sneahed -"J j^ostle ar a
runs at the bottom of his estate— turned the imrary 1
fairly early stage of the dispute, and although ^P ^ ^g^etary.
of one of the principals in that initial f ™ ' ,y been touched

the life of studied ease which he inherited has ^ ^ ,be

by the miseries of nationalist zeal. True, he use Alexander

British Army (his most distinguished relatitm wa War) to

of Turns, one of the ennobled gallants of the Second World War)

30 EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

command a unit of the local Ulster Defence Regiment, but his
interests and activities centre fairly solemnly on that which
surrounds his castle so extensively and so graciously — his land.

Breakfast on a normal day is not served at Caledon Castle until
half-past nine— that factory hooters blasted at seven, that London’s
rush hour had reached its peak at half-past eight, and that most
clerks and cobblers are well at work by nine matters little at
Caledon. The Earl is down by a quarter to ten or so, to sit at one end
of an immense and highly polished oaken table and open his small
stack of morning letters with a golden paperknife laid to the right of
his breakfast setting. Porridge — which the sixty-one-year-old Earl,
unlike so many peers, eats sitting down — is brought from a heated
tray behind. Eggs and bacon, tomatoes, coffee, honey from the
comb and warm toast are carried in by a bustling and cheerful girl
from Wiltshire who has been with the Caledons for more years than
anyone cares to remember. Newspapers— T/ j? Times and the Daily
Express-^azt read patiently and painstakingly, with the births and
deaths column of the Thunderer scanned first with that vague
apprehension of families of breeding. The ceremony is rarely
completed before half-past ten. W'hat, one is tempted to inquire,
does the Earl do now?

‘Do? Well I suppose I’ll pop do»7i and have a look at the deer
herd, or go and have a chat with the foresters or wander over to the
office m the village and see Miss Beatty. 1 have to order a case of
sherry for my mother, and in a day or so 1 have to go over to London
to see the trustees. But nothing urgent. Nothing ever is.’

The acquisition of large chunks of land. The style that ac-
companies a pedigree of some distinction. A continual attempt
to outwit, invariably by means of compromise, or cunning, or both,
the harsh exigencies of opposing political views. These three
factors, together with the near-ruthless application of the principle
of primogeniture, whereby the eldest son of a noble British family
inherits virtually everything, and the younger sons and all the
daughters inherit virtually nothing, have managed to keep the
British hereditary peerage mote or less intact and in more or less
robust health for considerably longer than 700 years. True, there
arc peers without land. There aremany without style. Some behave
in a manner which will never allow a spirit of compromise to exist
between their political opponents and themselves. Some have been
incautious enough to permit their estates to be divided among their

EXORDIUM — SORTS AND CONDITIONS 3I

offspring, or have been unludty enou^ to see their estates divided
because of their inabilities to provide an heir of the right sex at the
necessary time. But in general terms the combination of land,
primogeniture, style and compromise has maintained ‘the best
thing in fiction the English have ever done’ in fine fettle — finer than
it deserves, many would say — for nearly thirty generations.

‘To write about the hereditary peers is a vulgar idea,’ grumbled
Harold Macmillan one evening at a dinner in All Souls. ‘The
trouble with them is that so many arc unspeakably middle class. Mr
Pitt, for example, created scores of the fellois's, many just too awful.
To write about the peerage is about as difficult as writing a book
about everyone in England whose name begins with the
letter G.’

The former Prime Minister — and uncle of the present Duke of
Dcvomhire— who had been offered, but had declined, an earldom,
was not alone m condemning the notion of writing an account of the
peers of the realm todaj'. Several times, the view was put forward
that it was unrealistic to isolate the peerage as a group, except in
constitutional tenns.

Mr Macmillan and the other critics make a fair point: by isolating
the peers one could be suspected of hinting that they were all
somehow alike, and thus classifiable in the same way one could
classify coalminers or Mormons. But their remarks concern an
obsert'ation any student of the peerage must make almost as soon as
he embarks upon his research — that individually those men and
women who make up the peerage today are in a multitude of ways
quite astonishingly varied. Many are very rich indeed: of the
millionaires who die in Britain each year, some three-quarters are
ennobled by birth. Most nobles are, by now, firmly established in
what one would call the ‘upper classes' — and all bar perhaps one-
icnth of i per cent are members of what either the government or
social demographers would tenn the highest socio-economic
groups. Not a few arc consciously estranged from, or nci-er have
been members of what used to be called ‘high society’. Kot all are
■gentlemen', in the sense that whijeany Prime Minister or Monarch
can create a peer, only God can endow sufficient gentility to deserve
that particular title Not all arc like the Earl of Caledon, vvith time
on iheir hands Not all arc like the Duke of Devonshire, with vast
acreages, dozens of farms and uncountable wealth. There are
P^tliLemcn peers, at (cast one market gardener with the good fortune

32 EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

to find himself heir to an earldom, there is an ennobled dentist, and
there was a popular television raconteur who, while he preferred to
be known as Patrick Campbell, was in fact the third Baron Glenavy,
of Milltown, County Dublin. The group is, in sum, so variegated as
to make an observation of it fascinating, but yet not different
enough to render the selection of the group invalid. And there are
other factors that unite the group in a far more realistic way than,
say, the simple possession of the same initial letter of their
surnames— factors that tend to make Mr Macmillan’s argument
seem specious and other such objections simply thoughtless. What
unites the peerage is what gives its members its unique position in
the society of this island nation.

To begin at the more frivolous level, it must be noted that each
member of the peerage enjoys a style of address that automatically
goes with this title. His title may be, according to his rank, either
Duke, or Marquess, Earl or Viscount, or Baron. If a woman, either
in her own right or as the wife, widow, mother or former spouse of a
peer, she is Duchess, Marchioness, Countess, Viscountess or
Baroness. Dukes and Duchesses are called ‘Your Grace’ (though a
divorced wife of a Duke— and there are several— is not permitted to
stylehersclf so). The remainder— though they keep their style when
addressed in writing, or in formal gatherings— are ‘Lord’ or ‘Lady’,
‘Your Lordship’ or ‘Your Ladyship’. Never are those thus
ennobled to hear the distressing appellations Mr, Mrs or Miss— a
feature of their lives that, as one small illustration will serve to
depict, usually proves to be an advantage.

In 1974 a young Englishman possessed of something like a flair
for deception — he had been hauled before the courts for
impersonating a policeman and owning an imitation revolver —
decided he would change his name from the decidedly prosaic Mr
Michael Burke to the more imposing Jefrey Jess Lc Vance De
Roath, and see what happened. He soon found that the name itself,
adorned by the entirely spurious award to himself of the Military
Cross, made life a good deal sweeter, but changing his name once
more, and elevating himself to the temporal peerage with the style
andtitleofLordDe Roath, finally did the trick. Gillian Lipscombe,
a girl with perhaps more gullibility than is desirable these days,
decided on His Lordship as a suitable husband, and the young lady
became what she thought was Her Ladyship.

But the title was not merely helpful in getting his girl, Mr Burke
discovered. He found that his father-in-law became an easy touch

EXORDIUM-SORTS AND CONDITIONS 33

for some £4,ooo-=ny naluia. son « Bu«orted m be oUhe
ooite mythical Lord Sinclair of a^jnd 0“*'“ 3„„

Roath must, poor Mr Lipscombe supp • . and

of fellow. The local bank in Lewes deed d mneh *= sam
allowed Mr Burke the nb*. ^ y offer to
overdraft— the kind of privilege n “““ |^j,je5of„adestowhich

hospital potters, chauffeurs or builde , ^eiually belonged.

Mr Burke, before his imaginative > Airlines flattered that

And, possibly best of all. British silver bird to transport

His Lordship should choose their seemed his cheque without

the happy couple to Argentina, glad y a accompany such

any of the sordid formahties t a

transactions, and happily let the pair ^ impersonal bank

airport before the aircraft took off. It wa culled by persons

computer, with magnetic cards that J the fraud,

without means, whether titled or not, cither, arrested a

Policemen, not knowingly enno c j jg^^nobled woman on

thoroughly ignoble man and a soon o under the name of

their return to England in January *975* ^ ^ost

JefrcyDeRoslh, heed trial for fraud, decepjmn^im^^^

sympathy svem out to Mrs moment of plighting

supposed herself to be a titled " o discovered she was

her troth. ‘One can picture h^ a penny to his name.’
just plain Mrs, and married to ® ^ -ould understand him exactly.

said the prosecuting lawyer, an

Mr Burke was sent to prison tor a b ^j^g i^^d of

Being a peer of the realm un o sufficient to enrage the

privilege that means '’f^*”'’u of Beaulieu, one of Britain’s

unprivileged onlooker. Lor changing fortunes of the

showmen peers, called his oitor-and that is about

European aristocracies Mor ,,_;<,_deep in a system of class and

the size of It. In a country 5t> system that overlies, like the

privilege there is a r»g* old photograph albums, the social

transparent spider-web of money or respect. The basic

realities afforded by the a q ^ socially superior position to

inequalities that place an os’crshadowed by a kind of super-
a worker in an abattoir jjP^jon-s breeding,

equality that comes wiin to be discovered, by some

It the abattoir ,,-_g of Arms, to be heir to an ancient

diligent slave at »hc begin to glow more brightly than

MSLOumv.theniheoverUs

34 EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

the underlay. Viscount Abattoir, like Lord De Roath, would
assume a position of privilege in a trivia! but no less infuriating
sense that would place him subtly above the accountant in terms of
his standing in society— the latter term meaning something quite
specific in Britain, as wc shall see later. He would become more
equal, in the true Orwellian sense, no matter that he is penniless,
empty of all social graces, and quite possibly a thorough dullard.

Baroness Wootton of Abingcr, who in normal circumstances
would be known as Mrs Barbara Wootton, but is the proud owner of
a life barony, finds the trivial perquisites of a noble life the most
enraging. 'I occasionally find it irritating,' she remarks, ‘if I go, say,
to a local butcher myself: then he has got fillet steak. But if
somebody else goes for me, he hasn’t. 1 can’t stand that sort of thing,
and I won’t continue going to a shop where it happens.’

Lord Montagu, who, as a showman, doesn't object in the
slightest to being addressed by his title and getting as much mileage
from its use as it is possible to get, maintains that *. . . the only
people who have real respect for the title are those in the service
industries. That is because they suffer under the delusion that a title
means money. Therefore the only value of a title is in booking a
table in a restaurant. . . Or, as Mr Burke discovered, obtaining an
overdraft, a ticket to Argentina, the VIP lounge— perhaps even a
wife,

There are rather more people in Britain who are permitted this
luxury— that of a title— than might at first be supposed. The basic
numbers, which change only when a peerage becomes extinct
(although Mrs Thatcher says that more hereditary peers may be
created, none has been since John Morrison was made Lord
Margadale of Islay in 1965), arc easy enough to ascertain (and these
figures omit the ’life peers’ created for life only since 1958). The
official House of Lords figures for 1981 are as follows: 28 Dukes
(including the 3 Royal Dukes: Cornwall, Kent and Gloucester), 37
Marquesses, i73Earls, no Viscounts,438 Barons and Scots Lords,
19 peeresses in their own right and 71 Irish peers: 876 men and
women who enjoy the distinction of entitlement by right of birth —
save for 59, who were created peers for more recent services to the
Kingdom and are the original holders of the titles; it will be their
eldest sons, if they have heirs, who will enjoy titles by right of birth
alone.

But these are not all, by a long chalk. Scores more people, by
virtue of some connection with the noble 876, are entitled to be

36 EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

obscure peerage title drawn from a little-regarded Hampshire
village. Other peers hold similarly distinguished names they might
be reluctant to drop— the Russells, say, or the Cecils, or the
Howards. Far better to be simply a Cecil, some might say, than a
mere Marquess of Salisbury.

There is another category, too, of subsidiary ennoblement. Only
the eldest sons of highly titled peers arc permitted full-blown
courtesy titles, maybe; but the remainder are not forgotten.
Brothers and sisters of the heir enjoy additions to their ordinary
names. Aunts, uncles, cousins — all manner of relations, indeed —
seem to like to possess, either by courtesy or by marriage, and often
by both, some prefix that marks them out as, in some indefinable
way, more equal than those who wear their Christian and
patronymic designations quite naked.

Take, for example, the sixth Marquess of Cholmondeley, the
Joint Hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England. His twertty-
one-yeat’old son is styled the Eatl of Rocksavage. His daughters arc
Lady Rose Cholmondeley, Lady Margot Cholmondeley and Lady
Caroline Cholmondeley. His brother is Lord John Cholmondeley,
his sister Lady Aline Cholmondeley. His mother is the Dowager
Marchioness of Cholmondeley. An Earl, four Ladies, a Dowager
Marchioness and a plain Lord thus tie in his immediate circle of
blood relations, all of whom are able to take some actual physical
comfort from their relationship with the noble and gallant
Marquess other than the pure pleasure of his company. Similarly,
the children of the Earl of Eglinton and Vl'jnton encompass one
Lord and three Honourablcs, and his Sisters are both Ladies. Even
his half-uncle is the Hon. Roger Hugh Montgomerie, though this is
because he was a son of the sixteenth Earl of Eglinton and Winton,
not because he is the peer’s half-uncle.

And there is yet more besides. While the eldest sons of the most
senior ranks of the peerage enjoy courtesy titles, all the sons of the
Dukes and Marquesses are endtied to be called ‘Lord’, and the
younger sons of an Earl and all the sons of Viscounts and Barons may
append the prefix ‘the Hon.’ before their names. Women, too, get a
distinctive accolade; daughters of Dukes, Marquesses and Earls can
all be called ‘Lady’, whether or not their behaviour merits the
somewhat prim-sounding style; and all the daughters of Viscounts
and Barons can, like their brothers, call themselves 'the Hon.’
(Peers’ daughters take the precedence, if not the equivalent title, of
their eldest brother.) Thus the sons of the Duke of Buccleuch are

EXORDIUM — SORTS AND CONDITIONS 37

the Earl of Dalkeith, the eldest; Lord William Montagu-Douglas-
Scott, the second son, who uses the family surname; and Lord
Damien Montagu-Douglas-Scott, the youngest son, who does the
same. Lady Charlotte-Anne Montagu-Douglas-Scott is the only
daughter. The children of Viscount Brookcborough, on the other
hand, are all ‘the Hon.’, whether the eldest, the Hon. Alan, or a
daughter, the Hon. Susje. The Earl of Mar and Kellie mixes the two
styles, as Earls should: his eldest son is Lord Erskine; his younger
sons are the Hon. Alexander and Michael Erskine, using the family
name. His daughter is, however, not ‘the Hon.’, but Lady Fiona
Erskine. As it happens, Fiona and Michael are twins, born in 1956:
the byways of peerage form are responsible for one of the two being
accorded the rather common style of ‘the Hon.’, while the other
wins a title shared with the very highest degrees of ennoblement.
(Feminists will be delighted to discover that it is the girl who
benefits from the arrangement— one of the very few examples of
sexual egalitarianism to be found in the rolls of the hereditary
peerage.)

All told there arc some 7,000 men and women entitled to be called
by some name other than their own, or with some additional glory,
and that by virtue of the good fortune of birth alone. Reference
books display column after column of ‘peers’ sons and daughters,
brothers and sisters, widows of sons of peers, and Maids of Honour;
also grandchildren of Dukes, Marquesses and Earls, bearing
courtesy titles’. They are listed alphabetically by surname: thus the
ordinary name Butler, with all the connotations of a life in service,
displays the full flower of noble adornment. There is the Hon. Betty
Q. Butler, daughter of Baron Dunboyne, There is Lady Denyne
Butler, daughter of the Earl of Lanesborough. Butlers are
connected to the Viscounty of Mountgarret, the Barony of Erskine
of Rerrick, the Earldom of Garrick, the Baronies of Jessel, Bayford
and Forteviot. There are nineteen Hon. or Lady Butlers listed,
before one plunges into the delights, further down the alphabet, of
the Hon. Desiree Butierwickor Lady Anne Sarah Alethea Marjorie
Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce who, in spite of one of the
grander names evidently well worthy of a ladyship, turns out to be
the sister of the Earl of Mexborough.

Excluding, as well one might, all the knights and baronets whose
marriages bring similarly large numbers of ladyships into the lists,
\\ e are left with the not inconsiderable 7,000 who sport some sort of
title. Sometimes the fact is no more than a source of mild

EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS 39

Utter the words ‘Guilty’ or ‘Not Guilty’, followed by ‘Upon my
honour’. No vulgar business with a foreman delivering the verdict
reached after secret conclave. In the House of Lords those best
suited to assess the guilt or innocence of their peer — their equal —
deliver their verdicts severally, possibly inaugurating family
schisms thereby that might last ten generations.

Likewise the highest ranks of the peerage have always
traditionally claimed right of access to the core of government:
Dukes have always regarded themselves as able, on short notice, to
approach the Sovereign of the day; many less exalted men of noble
blood still think their views carry some weight with members of the
Monarch’s cabinet. Cabinet Ministers, especially those in Labour
governments, rarely agree. But access to the Sovereign is still
regarded as an inherent right of those who, on Coronation Day,
pledge their allegiance to the new Monarch as representatives of the
plebeian masses waiting in the rain outside. It is a right rarely tested
these days, but still, by alt accounts, in existence.

Some peers claim a peculiar right to remain hatted in the presence
of a reigning Monarch. According to the standard reference works,
the Barons of Kingsale— an Irish peerage, now enjoying few of the
other privileges known to peers of the mainland countries— have
long claimed that they could remain covered while waiting before a
Monarch. Almericus, the eighteenth Baron Kingsale, 'walked to
and fro with his hat on his head’ in the presence chamber of William
III, claiming he was asserting an ancient privilege. He did it three
times; the original ‘hat trick’. Lord Forester, who, since he lives in
Zimbabwe, would be unlikely to need such a right, has a document
that appears to be a licence granted at the time of Henry VIII giving
all the heirs of John Forester of Watling Street the right to keep a
covered head in kingly presence. Bui it seems there is a somewhat
unromantic explanation: both Lord Kmgsale and Mr Forester of
Wathng Street suffered, it is said, from ringworm, and were
possessed of heads that would have insulted the Monarch — or
anyone else — had they been revealed; hence the ‘right’ to keep the
hats on. One later Lord Kmgsale attempted to assert his right
before the austere presence of Qocen V’ictoria. ‘It’s my right. Your
Majesty,’ he explained. ‘Don’t be so silly,’ the Queen replied. ‘It
may be your right to keep your hat on before a monarch, but I am a
lady, too Your action is roost impolite. Take it off at once.’ The
privilege has net been tested since.

Peers arc c.xcmpi from serving on juries — sharing the privilege

38 EXORDlUAl— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

amusement— that there are just tw-enty-five Dukes, and nearly
twice that number of Duchesses alive today, attests not just to the
longevity of wealthy females, but also to the scandalous inability of
ducal marriages to attain anything like permanence. Margaret,
Duchess of Argyll, is a classic case in point; although divorced from
a now dead Duke in 1963 under circumstances that were, to put it
mildly, liable to raise a good many even quite stubborn eyebrows,
she continues — and is permitted by all the relevant authorities in
the field to continue— to call herself a Duchess, to demand to be
called Your Grace, and to command from a society which still revels
in such matters all respect and position which Duchesses have
traditionally commanded. The judge who ruled on the late Duke’s
divorce action expressed surprise at the woman’s behaviour. Yet
still she is a Duchess, and as such regarded with no small degree of
awe. (The Duchess should, perhaps, not demand the appellation
‘Your Grace’ too stridently. Technically, since she is divorced, she
has forfeited the title. Her demand tests purely on the common
courtesy of those who still receive her in society.)

Neither this Duchess, nor most of the titled Butlers, nor, indeed,
any of those whose titles are held purely out of the generosity of the
system, is permitted any of the real privileges of tjobitsse. The
frivolous aspects— the fillet steak, the restaurant table, a more
patient llarrods accounts department, an obsequious airline clerk
or an instant marriage, yes. Tlte teal perks of peerage, however, no.

These days the real privileges arc small beer indeed: once they
were considerable. Until 1948, for instance, members of the peerage
had a right to be tried on allegations of treason and felony by their
peers only, in the House of Lords'— it will be recalled that such a
trial figured in Kind Htans and Coronets, and that the convicted
Duke claimed his right to be hanged by a silken cord, rather than the
rough hempen rope that was provided for the violent termination of
the lives of untitled felons (A lengthy description of the little-used
procedure also appears in Clouds 0/ iritnejj, by Dorothy L. Sayers:
another mythical Duke, this time of Denver, is the subject of Their
Lordships’ intcresi.i In the tnals each and every peer sitting in
judgement had to cast an mdmduat and public verdict. He had to

' The rtjhj sa tv rned hr t jury of your 'jvw’— ■’hich meani. Ii:tnt!y, your
'CCTutne mualV— ron t»ck lo .VUjiu Can*. Ii one ofihe pott-Mt iniquitiCT
tSvkrd Bntiih poljticuM o/ jJS /wtet, (/ui ffte A.'/jer rtolsted ebe

»nd iefu«a von NUat'em the iiul by other FieU-

to ■ htoJt hii rrnt tnd sundAg CBtKlnl b'tn Until then, tenior loMien
h»J rij‘'U iimiUr to thote of inenbcncdihe nobJify.

EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS 41

the vvell'kno«’n serpent overhead. No supporters at all. Onjy the
reigning peer may prop his coat, though he should need support far
less than his heir. Certain Scottish chiefs, and holders of territorial
baronies that were granted before 1592 are also permitted to sport
heraldic supporters, even if they are not peers. And also in Scotland,
peers’ heirs may use the devices if they want.

A bewildering variety of other oddities attend the noblemen: the
Duke of Atholl may maintain a private army,’ some Earls have a
traditional right to the ‘third penny’ of taxes collected in their shire.
And there are innumerable objects of fealty: a rose here, a
peppercorn there, three bullocks, a swan, the local venison or the
first grouse of the season — the comage and the homgeld — that the
commonalty have for centuries paid to the local Lord. These,
though, are privileges accorded to the individual by way of some
creaking local ordinance: the rights to supporters, exemptions from
jury service (which applies to Members of Parliament and others,
like barristers, as well), access to the Sovereign and that chief
delight ‘freedom from attachment’, apply to all.

Two others remain: one, an infringement, it could be thought, of
the basic right of the peers; the other, it is not infrequently argued,
an infringement of the basic rights of this democracy. A reigning
peer is not permitted to vote in parliamentary elections. And a
reigning peer is entitled to sit in, and take full part in, the premier
legislative assembly of the country, the House of Lords. It should
be noted that certain restrictions apply, as we shall sec. The
reigning peer’s title must be granted in England, Scotland, Great
Britain or the United Kingdom — holders of Irish peerages are not
so entitled. And the peer must be over twenty-one, he must not be
bankrupt and he must not be a lunatic.

As with jury service and their exemption from the right to sit in
the Commons, the withholding of suffrage from the noblemen and
women places them alongside aliens, lunatics, idiots, prisoners
serving sentences for felony of more than twelve months’ duration
and men and women disqualified upon conviction of corrupt
ejection practices. Few complain too loudly at the missing right:
perhaps because in substitution they are permitted a voice in the last
remaining legislative assembly m the civilized world for ivhich the
membership’s sole qualification (at least until the invention of the
life peer) is the lucky accident of birth Spam lost the hereditary

' The Atholl Highlanders — the Duke’s ‘army’ — are regarded locally as ‘colourful
fun' for volunteers among the local people of Alboll, and nothing more.

EXORDIUM— SORTS AND CONDITIONS

with convicted felons, lunatics and undischarged bankrupts.
Sharing the same company, they arc barred from sitting in the
House of Commons, although peers with courtesy titles are not— a
fact which causes immense complications to those not schooled in
this most inexact of sciences, who hear of a Viscount or an Earl
reported speaking from the Lower House. The Earl of Dalkeith —
Johnnie, to his more intimate friends in the Conservative
Party — sat for many years for the North Edinburgh constituency
until, in 1973, he was forced, quite suddenly, to retire. His father
had died, and he had to relinquish his courtesy title and adopt the
far grander name of ninth Duke of Bucclcuch and eleventh Duke of
Queensberry, and by so doing had forfeited his right to sit in the
Commons. Since 1963, peers with anoverwhclmmg urge to pursue
a political career among the common folk have been legally able to
renounce their title for life: but Johnnie Dalkeith was not going to
be denied one of the grandest Dukedoms in the islands for political
ambitions (which, in any case, he had always regarded as training
for the immense ducal responsibilities that would inevitably come
his way).

Members of the peerage have one other curious right which
makes them the envy of less fortunate classes of society. Since,
according to common law, ‘the person of a peer is forever sacred and
inviolable’ 11 is still taken as read by policetnen and magistrates that
it is unlawful to arrest a noble or a member of the House of
Commons in a civil case for a period of forty days before and forty
days after a meeting of the Parliament. A Duke may owe you money,
a Viscount may be father of your child, an Earl may have libelled
you, or a Baron defaulted on his word— but for forty days before
and after a meeting of Parliament he is free to come and go at will.
Only for a few days in the middle of the summer can a noble be
arrested — but since most are out, well armed with Purdeys, on
remote grouse moors in Scotland, capture is doubly difficult.

The Heralds, who keep an authoritative eye over the families of
the peerage, permit perks as well. Only a peer (or, in England,
Knights of the Garter and the Grand Cross), they say, may use
supporters to stand alongside his arms— the Duke of Devonshire’s
‘two bucks proper, each wreathed with a chaplet of roses’ have been
Cavendish supporters since the family was first given a grant of
arms 400 years ago. But only the Duke and Duchess may use the
bucks proper; the arms of the Marquess of Harrington, their eldest
son, will merely use the three bucks’ heads cabossed, together with

42 EXOKDIUAt— SOKTS ASl> COSVlllOSS

element in it j government after the CtviJ VC ar. Tlie Huui< of I'ecn,
to Vihich the Japaneic noble* elected some 215 ‘•’f tlicir number to
serve ai the ardijtccts of rfial J^pire’slauf, s-anishcJ in 1946. Only
the United Kingdom preserves, and indeed, stoutly dcfcnJi, the
absolute right of the Kuyal l^tinces, and hereditary peers, a selcaion
of life peers and the Lords Spiritual of one selected religion to has c a
direct intluence on the nation's laws. 'Hie chamber in which these
distinguished worthies sit, an cighty-foutdong and lifty-fe'ot-wiwC
Gothic extravaganza, is, of course, the I louse of Lords. Its future is
once more under close scrutiny; many fed that it i» now
approaching the end of its useful life.

*A Young Ufitish I'ccr*, a copy of the t8l2 edition of Cclli'n’t
fVeruge ptonuunces, ‘wlio cultivates his mind and reftnes hii
mannen; who studies the public affairs of his country'; and talics a
virtuous part in them, is in a situation as desirable as a chastened
and enlightened ambition can form a wish for.

'}|js rank will procurchim respect, and a due attention to all hi*
suggestions. <\nd without being liable to the capticcs and expenses
of popular elections, he truy pursue the dictates of an honest mind,
unw arped and uncontrolled. And glow w ith the inward utisfaction
of living for others, and the daily discharge of patriotic duties.'

Such was the vision of the House of Lords in 1812, some twenty
years before the first murmurs of reforming zeal (w hich suggested
in those days, and rather timidly at that, that Bishops should be
excluded from the House), 'rhere would be few who would now
agree wuh many of the semimenis except, maybe, that to be a
Uniish peer is *a situation as desirable ... as ambition can form a
wish for'. That the House of Lords is made up of men and women
who, by virtue of their binh, have already fulfilled that 'dearest
ambition’, is, in no smalt pan, one of the reasons why the institution
IS under hre today.

Wednesday, 2 February 1977» was a wet and blustery winter’s day
in London. Motor-car dealers were whipping the dustsheets away
from the new Ford Fiesta and promising the creation would bring
blessing to an ailing industry; there was much relief expressed at the
discovery of a missing plane in remote bush coimtry in Sudan (a
news story nicely enhanced by the presence among the passengers
of an English Countess); and there was criticism of the Labour
Government’s admitted ’impotence’ to do much to ease the plight
of Britain’s unemployed. Out in the real world it was a fairly
standard day, the realities perhaps not quite as grim as usual.

Inside the chamber of the House of Lords, the gaudy centrepiece
of the nation’s peerage, the reality of the outside world, was, for a
few extraordinary minutes, banished and subjugated to the
necessities of history. Some 200 of the peers of the realm were
gathered in the sanctum that afternoon to watch, and revel
bedizened pomp whereby a common man is admitted to the exalted
state of ennoblement. ‘At half-past two o’clock,’ the Notices and
Orders of the Day proclaimed, ‘The Lord Glenamara will be
Introduced.’

It is possible to enter the House of Lords from the west, through
the Peers’ Entrance; or from the east, by way of the Central Lobby.
In both cases the sensation is rather like passing through a number
of airlocks into some antique submanne, or spacecraft: as each
successive set of heavy doors is opened, then closed behind one, so
the hubbub of popular existence fades away, and the world seems to
consist of little other than stained glass and scarlet leather, candles
and solid brass gewgaws, men in strange clothing and charged wi
an air of somnolent grace.

From the west, the sensation of entering a Looking Glass
universe comes as rapidly as from an anaesthetist s needle. A grave

46 ‘THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’
poficeman with a powerful sense of his place in the order of things
stands at the outer door, opening it for elderly men and powdered
women who stroll in from the carpark. Inside there is an ex-soldier,
kitted out in full livery with shiny metal buttons, and with the polite
air of a gentleman’s gentleman, who ushers the visitors through
what appears very much like a school cloakroom. Rows of thick
brass coatpegs stand in serried ranks above worn oaken benches;
yellowed bone name plates above each Gothic hook list all the Royal
Princes and Dukes eligible to sit in the House— Wales, Gloucester
and Kent — and then, in alphabetical order and with no regard for
seniority, peers from Abcrconway to Zetland, with rank signified by
a single letter. Thus Zetland is an M, Somerset a D, Brookeborough
a V, Breadalbane and Holland an E, and the scores upon scores of
mere Barons }ust L, for Lord. The coathooks go « ell with the names
beneath the liripips. the impression of an orderly and expensive
school vestry is a powerful one.

By this time the us(Rc noise has faded; no more policemen are to
be seen— such stewards as there are wear tails and white bow ties.
Large brass objeccs dangle from the necks of a few of the more
distinguished members of the fraternity, giving them the
appearance of sommeliers at a fancy restaurant. The suggestions one
could make about the appearance and atmosphere of the place—
from submarine to public school, cathedral to gentlemen’s club,
from rockciship to expensive restaurant — are not entirely frivolous.
The fanciful can conjure up all manner of fantasies: about the only
suggestion that seems perfectly ridiculous is that this antique
chamber is in any way connected with the manufacture of laws for
the teeming masses outside its doors. That this sleepy and
magnificent jewel has anything in common with the democracy that
ticks on elsewhere seems faintly absurd.

The impression is reinforced by the sight of the chamber itself,
and by such ceremonies as the Introduction of Lord Glenamara, for
which the House might well have been solely created. From the
galleries— to which a retired military officer in black coat and knee
breeches, and sporting the title of Gentleman Usher of the Black
Rod, Will have permitted entrance — the visitor looks down into
another century, into a well of the finest example of the Victorian
romantic style. It is, at first impression, oddly small — only twice as
long as the average draiving-rooinof the kind of country house with
which many peers would be familiar. No doubt if every single
member entitled to come to the chamber did so it would rival the

‘THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’ 47
Black Hole of Calcutta for discomfort: luckily the benches are rarely
more than half filled.

The light is tinged blood red, such is the filtering effect of the
deeply stained glass and the reflective effect of the scarlet morocco
leather on the ten rows of benches that run most of the length of the
eighty-foot chamber and across the end. Panelling and ornately
carved walls, with coats of arms inlaid in gilt and painted enamel,
gleam dully from above. Tall statues of the eighteen Barons who
forced King John to accept Magna Carta— but which are often
mistaken for saints, such is the churchly atmosphere of the place-
glower craggily down on the assembled membership. Between the
two facing rows of benches and choir stalls is a large and untidy o
desk, littered with books on procedure and history and other
necessities of the Clerk’s trade: a giant egg-timer, by which the
length of noble speeches is measured (in five-minute units), bottles
of pinkish glue, inkpots, butterfly clips and wooden penholders, ana
stacks of official writing paper. Behind the Clerk’s Table, at w ic
two men in wigs sit and write, or listen to the proceedings, is a
smaller and far humbler table, providing accommodation for tte
official reporters: this often has to be removed alioge cr or
ceremonial, which-since ceremony is such a common feature ot
the House of Lords- muse prove an inconvenience to those chargea
with recording the spoken words of the assembly.

In front of the Clerk’s Table is a great oblong sack, about five feet

long and three feet high. It is covered with plain, deep re c ot ,an
has a low backrest constructed halfway along the lopsi e. t oo s
like a bale of wool and that, of course, is precisely what it is. t e
Woolsack, filled with twists of wool from sheep in evciy quarter o
the Commonwealth, and providing the traditional seat of me Lora
Chancellor, uncomfortable though it may look. Lor
well schooled in stoicism, are rarely known to fall asleep and tumble
off the Sack, though it looks designed for such an acadent.

Beyond the Woolsack, the focal point of the working House, is
most magnificent carved screen, an immense
straining twenty feet up against the western wall oft ^ ^ '

Five carved golden knights stand above it, directly over t e oy
coat of arms: one hugely solid golden throne stands dead centre, o
top of a richly carpeted ascent of three broad steps that rise .

light blue carpet of the chamber floor. Two great candlesticks stana
sentry to the throne, each with twenty-five candles, a ooi on ,
arranged in three tiers.

48 ‘the gaudy centrepiece of the noble art’

On this particular February Wednesday the throne was empty and
covered, and would remain that way until the next occasion the
Queen arrived to open a new session of Parliament; and so on this, as
every working day, such ceremonial as did occur centred around the
Lord Chancellor. Only the nervous figure of Lord Glenamara,
waiting in the Robing Room, was to add to the dignity of the
occasion.

At half-past two, white-tied attendants in the Lords’ Lobby
boomed their warnmg: ‘Make way for the Lord Chancellor’s
procession’, and slowly, looking perhaps a little embarrassed by it
all, a train of men filed past the brass rail of the House and into the
chamber. The Great Mace was carried by the Serjeant at Arms; a
functionary known as the Purse-Bearer held the Lord Chancellor’s
handbag (it used to contain the Great Seal of State, an immensely
heavy device that once, dropped by an elderly Lord Chancellor
during just such a procession, broke a bone in the poor man’s foot);
the Chancellor himself, dressed in robes of black and gold, and a
Train-Bearer walked behind; Black Rod brought up the rear.
Various of these filed away as the procession moved on— Black Rod,
an elderly sailor, Admiral Sir Frank Twiss, clambered into a little
enclosure known as Black Rod’s box — until the Lord Chancellor
himself, a Labour Party life peer, Lord Elwyn Jones, eased himself
up on to the Woolsack, called for prayers and permitted the day’s
proceedings to begin.

On this particular day the urgent business for which the scattered
groups of nobles had arrived was to be delayed. The impression that
an event of great moment was about to take place was given by Lord
Elwyn Jones who, to the amusement of a small group in one public
gallery, placed a black, three-cornered cap on the very top of His
full-bottomed grey wig, the effect being similar to the judge placing
the black cap on his head before passing the death sentence on some
hapless murderer. Today the Lord Chancellor was not in the
business of ordering destruction of life: instead he was about to
begin the process of creating a brand-new peer of the Kingdom.

Until shortly before, the tall, white-haired man in the Robing
Room had been Edward Watson Short, a sixty-five-year-old
Geordic who had ably represented the Central Division of
Newcastle upon Tyne for the Labour Party since 1951. His
progress in the party hierarchy had been unspectacular, but steady,
and had culminated, after a short spell as Education Secretary, in
his appointment as Leader of the House of Commons. However, in

■the gaudy centrepiece of the noble art’ 49
1976 he decided to retire from the House

part-time Chairman of Cable and Wireless, a hadnowishto

(He has since retired.) The ,,l„tst

deny itself of Mr Short’s not _ ageing party

the managers were, in fact, keen politics, well away

loyalist should continue to play an acti p r onsenuently, the
from the brouhaha of the democratic || supposed to be

PrimeMinister-viatheQueen,whoisttaditona uys PP

the 'Fount of all Honours’-announced that Mr Short ^

made a peer of the realm tor the duration of his lite.
process does this style of democracy ^Ration with the

Accordingly, Mr Short chose his lit e. gpsed to the Lord

College of Arms, and was now rea y Wednesday he was fully
Chancellor. By half-past two on that ^d with two bats of

equipped With scarlet parliamentao'r » black

miniver and gold lace on the right- an ’ tricorn like the

ribbons, and was carrying a black cocked hat noj

Chancellor’s, however— m his han • . j^g erstwhile Mr

seemingly plucked straight from the mod eval,

Short began his march ^”“u,g-ches, looking barely thick

First, Black Rod, his legs, m ^he House, keeping

enough to support his weight, wa Chancellor’s left, so-
lo the Temporal side (the side on House Where the

called to distinguish it from yg^nmenioftheday— sit,

Archbishops and the Bishops-and me g ^^bleau

and which is known as the of Estate. Black Rod was

behind the throne known as the . historian, Dr Conrad

followed this day by a distmguishe College of Arms, is

Swan, who, for the weeks h^s on du y ^^3 a

known as York Herald-»T ‘V»'kJo”„ ^ ,he Coun.y of

north countryman, taking hi northern parts of the

Wosmioriimd, so the iclcvau. Herald from ^
realm was chosen to advise him on ^,„de of

his presentation to lions and fleurs-de-lis m

his station-a short tabard j as though he should be

red and gold woven »" for the entry of some tabled

blowing a fanfare on a long gold carrying Lord

Monarch to an ancient pain ■ ixiooisack. Seeing the

Glenamata-s official ,as and paperclips dramatically

Herald amidst the b'“'

underscored the oddity of tt ah-

50 ‘THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’

Behind York, and also dressed in foil robes, walked Lady
Llewelyn-Davies, a life peeress from the same degree and same
political party as Mr Short. Then came Short himself, carrying
documents that summoned him to the House; and finally Lord
Shepherd, a senior peer and a colleague of the former MP. As they
entered, they all bowed before the Cloth of Estate; as they reached
the Clerk’s Table they all bowed again; and once again at the rim of
the Woolsack, where a jovial Lord Chancellor was sitting. Black
Rod nipped round the back of the Woolsack and stood in the
Spiritual aisle, just in front of the little Bishop’s Box. York Herald
whipped round smartly so that he faced Mr Short and his two
colleague peers, and, with true clerkly efficiency, a Reading Clerk—
normally John Salniy, who has the right sort of voice for these
occasions— slipped from the rails to the Throne, and waited by the
Lord Chancellor.

York Herald handed his copies of the official summons to Mr
Short. Mr Short handed them to the Lord Chancellor, kneeling on
one knee as he did so. The Lord Chancellor, playing what looked
like a game of pass the parcel, handed the sheaf of papers to Mr
Sainty, and Sainty retired with them to his table. The peers then
trotted off to the table to listen to Mr Saimy while he read out the
details on the Letters Patent and the Writ of Summons— language
which included such protestations from the Queen (who had
written the documents— or so it was meant to seem) as knowing how
difficult it was for Mr Short to come to the House of Lords and so
on, would he kindly do so, and ‘treat and give counsel’ to Her from
time to lime as a member of the gathering. Mr Short then took an
Oath of Allegiance, and became, in the wink of an eye, Baron
Glenamara of Glenriddmg, to be addressed by the Queen, if ever
she happened to meet him, as ‘Our nght trusty and well-beloved
Counsellor’. (Nowhere near as intimate, though, as had he been
created a Duke; a Monarch, bumping into one of that exalted breed,
is supposed to cry out ‘Right trusty and right entirely beloved
cousin’, implying some blood relationship which, given the degree
of interbreeding between the higher ranks of the peerage and the
Royal Families of England, might not be surprising.)’

' Not surprising at all, in fact, since onguuUj all Earls were sons or cousins of the
Sovereign. The tank of Duke was eventually mttoducedio place younger sons of the
Sov ereign before theit increasingly remote cousus ihe Earls. But m actual fact there
was riouiierbreeding between the iugber tanks of the peerage and the Royal Family
between 1515 (when the Duke ofSuffolk married the sisterof Henry VIII) and 1871

52 ‘the gaudy centrepiece of the noble art’
ihc release of Cabinet papers relating to British postwar activities in
Palestine; the possibilities of prosecuting speeding Northern Irish
drivers as they pass through southern Scotland; the problems of
retirement; and the education of children in Madagascar. Such
problems as inflation, the redistribution of income, the decline of
sterling and the shortage of housing were not touched that day by
the House. As Lord Arran not£d on one memorable occasion: ‘I
myself introduced t« o Bills in the House of Lords, one on badgers,
the other on buggers. On the whole 1 think their Lordships were
rather more interested in lire badgers.’

Cramped though the House may be, and though dripping with
ceremonial that must verge on the tiresome, there can be few Lords
who do not cherish the place as — even though the comparison is a
wclNworn one— one of the most well-mannered and congenial
clubs in the world. Since 1958, when the government began the
introduction of the life peers, the exclusivity of the club has
diminished: White's and Brooks’s and the Turf are still the favourite
watering holes of men who want to mingle only with their equals,
both in standing and in sex. But, as one writer heard, while
researching a thesis on the House, the membership is not ready to
complain about the falling standards. *A good library,’ said one.
'Very agreeable. All the books and newspapers you could want.’ ‘I
feel I’m liked,' said another. Yet others: ‘Everyone is here to help
you, as the Doorkeepers said when I first came in.’ ‘Intelligent and
congenial people to talk to . . . and the best restaurant in London.’

Tliose w ho ha\ c eaten in the restaurants might not agree with the
last quoted— ihough peers, being largely from the public schools,
ha\ c palates less well educated than most. Certainly formal critics of
the catering arc not ones to heap on the praise. ‘The consomme en
gelec’, reported one writer in a popular magazine, ‘betrayed a
canned provenance.’ 'fhe Peers’ Dining Room, where the service is
‘mainly Irish’ is, according to one Lord, ‘even worse’ than the
Gucsis’ Dining Room, where Lords and commoners can meet and
moan together. That restaurant ‘feels like a room in one of the vast
English country houses which the 'National Trust can’t afford to
take on. People talk quietly and ladies wear hats.’ And the
restaurants lose money, though they do not care to admit it.

The library, one of the finest in London, reinforces the club
atmosphere of the place; fine octagonal writing-tables; paper and
envelopes standing erect in wooden holders in the centre; ashtrays
and pen-holders all crested and silver; the comfortable leather

‘THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’ 53
armchairs in which Bishops

ennobled gentlemen of distinctly breath* thick carpets with
T-inies that rise and fall gently * assLants in

warm Pugin designs! '‘'“\be ^ I, is a place

half-moon glasses; ancient stencillmg ^ the

that exudes gentility from every beeswax to and be

kind of library one would pay a fortune to subscribe ,
happy no matter what the cost. u . -u ,hU maffnificence —

Sthe puite extraordinary thing is (more

ihe ability to buy ‘House of m "bl waL sun on

expensive than most equivalent bt ). ailments (‘You see,

the terrace and hsten to detaiisofelderly^^^^^^

this is a kind of hospital, one p nE»rations’)— not only costs

have to be something of an expert on paJ them.

the membership nothing, the ^ ijfg peerages, the

Descendants of the ducal ga^ls with vast fortunes in

member Bishops and two Archbis P , ^ ggn all claim,

land and Viscounts who commute from Ba g

not only their travelling costs to Those

Westminster, but up to £34-'^ Sinutes on every single one
few peers who looked in for a couple session (when the

ofth^etsSdaysonwhichtheHou—

rate was only £i3-50) ^^^.^htequivtlemofasalary of about
need to pay any income tax at all the q In 1981 a

f:3,oooayci,r,forwhctcouldbelessmanafulldayswor
similarly dedicated noble could the House

Ofcourseitisbynomeansmielhatpeersiustp

whenever they happen to be do go tend to stay for

claiming their allowance: most m the comforts of the

at least an hour, and probably morc-thoughjh^^^^

rooms surrounding the ^^^^ayforsomeofeachday.

performed generally tempt most o V ^ do— spends a good

On average, the peer who claiins .jjg duties expected of

half-afternoonof each day visibly perform g performing

alegislator: he may well, of course. si«ndmimyh^urp

the less apparent, but by no means less important wo

''Tn'^dirr" " W-. -

involYcJ staying the night

54 ‘the gaudy centrepiece of the noble art’
encouraged to claim his travelling costs: thus the Earl of Kintore,
who lives in a crumbling mansion some dozen miles from
Aberdeen, is enabled to travel about once a month to make an
appearance in the House. He takes the overnight sleeper, first class,
from Aberdeen to London; sta>’s at his residential club; visits the
Lords for the afternoons of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday;
lunches at the Beefsteak Qub in Leicester Square; catches up with
the gossip of the metropolis; docs some shopping for his wife; takes
the Thursday-night sleeper for home and arrives back at Keith
Hall.

The good Earl, though, is far from being ‘. . . a nation’s curse. A

pauper on the public purse ’ as a satirical poem on the nobility

put it, back in 1842. He takes his responsibility of participation in
the process quite seriously— he is also an extremely assiduous
member of a number of important boards and committees in his
name Scotland. When he was the mere Viscount Stonehaven, of
Uric, he w rote a paper on his responsibilities, which was published
in the Aberdeen Uiintrsity Revievf. It was before the days of
the attendance allowance, which accounts for his reference to
the ascrage attendance of around 100 (in 1976 it was 275, re*
Uccting the only fairly recent introduction of payments in 1957)*
'There is an expert available in the House of Lords on almost any
conceivable subject,’ he wrote. ‘There are peers who have lived in
the Arctic and built igloos, tropical peers who ha\c run irrigation
projects, prospectors, qualified divers, airmen, seamen, racehorse
owners. It is absolutely fatal 10 make a speech or a statement in die
House without first checking your facts. If you have not and make a
rash statement, up jumps an expert and confounds you.

‘On account of the avaibble personnel it has become the custom
for only experts or at least people with considerable knowledge to
speak on specialized subjects. This leads to a very high level of
debate. It IS nearer true of the House of Lords than of any other
institution that the members have no axe to grind. You cannot be
turned out. You cannot be rewarded. You have no electors to please.
There IS no strict toeing of any parry fine. Divisions sefdom take
place and when they do peers sxne according to their conscience.’
Such IS the classic argument by the hereditary peer for retaining the
House: not eserjone, as we shall sec later, agrees.

If the atmosphere of the House encourages gentility and courtesy,
the quaint traditions of procedure in the chamber reinforce all the

■THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’ 55
,en.,e.»ly v,„ue. The hoRis. for «.e, - f
the House meets only „’,y the declaration of

extraordinary cireumstances--.^v.™allyo_^y

hostilities can persuade a Lor ga . 5 reserved for

Westminster on a Friday. "

the arduous process of returning have farms or

for all those other fortunate metr p businesses—

homes in the shires. The cunous on Fridays,

and even the House of Commons g exodus, by declining

the Lords have chosen to Jder the direst of

to permit their place of business to p » including the Lord

emergencies. It only takes Stranger walks

Chancellor, to make up a quorum, and ^ his Woolsack,

into a gallety to find only the benches and a tedious man

an ageing Lord fast >sl«P ““ ° ie fiom the opposite

in a tweed suit intoning about som a P

side. It is usually after occasions such as ^

cannot he interested in “f'*'”"® “ f |„ision ’annunciators tell

Chancellor leaves the chamber and the tele n

the remainder of 1^= ‘--'"r phrte P.ov^ “

‘Adjourned Durmg Pleasure . ^ imaginations,

bored men in the Commons . ..f v^ith twhips, lashing

‘Visions of girls in black leather u looks in at a group of

wrinkled men in coronets, vanish when ^ ^jjjg ^nd gin,’ one

normal-looking chaps wolfing down suet puddmg ana g

wrote. . _f their functioning

While they ate at work, every detml

positively diips with EO«f Lord Lovell-Davis in a

Commons] go on its loutish way. ™ .yah-boohing each

comic account of his time as a Lor problems that

other while we, quietly andwi* ^ occasional bellow

ate afflicting the serfs.’ Quiet, broken »“'f “ fy,„gly by the

of laughterior from ume ro rime.

electronics recently installed, a snore .^y Lord’,

and Standing Orders make very sure i y House to any

the rule book observes, ’may call *<= ,rato

breaches ot order or to any undue laxity m observing

“mshkebowmgtotheauthofEstatewheuc-

HouseCCourtBow’only,niiml,andnotacer

waist); never passing between the Woolsack and the Lot

56 ‘the gaudy centrepiece of the noble art’

then speaking, and never walking between the Woolsack and the
Table. Never moving out of place ‘without just cause, to the
hindrance of others, that sit near . . Never bringing books and
newspapers into the chamber, and never leaving a debate in which
you have taken part before ‘the greater part’ is over. That is the
decent thing about the rules of the House: almost every one can be
bent to one’s own personal interpretation. If you consider ‘the
greater part’ of the debate is over, and you have earned your £34.00,
then you can leave without feeling you have uttered a slight;
similarly you can of course bring in the Daily Telegraph and polish
off the crossword if you can somehow relate the activity to the
debate— by, say, insisting that it keeps your mind in fine fettle
should you be called upon to speak.

It has always been considered rather bad form to read your
speech from a text, chough, bending the rules again slightly, ‘some
speakers may wish to have “extended notes” from which to speak,
but it IS not in the interests of good debate that speakers should stick
loo closely to a prepared text.’ Likewise, it is thought a bit odd if you
ramble on for more than ten or fifteen minutes, even though in the
Lords, unlike the Commons, there is no fear of guillotines or
closure votes to shut you up. The Procedure Committee had some
clocks installed at points in the chamber, but these, it seems, have
been deliberately designed to blend into the woodwork and, m
consequence, have been easy toovcrlook. So not a few speeches take
half an hour or more, with the result that all those still awake troop
out to the Tea Room until the television annunciator informs them
that It is over.

The ultimate sanction against a Lord who is too windy or who
offends too many of the Iradiuons of the House is for an irritated
peer to rise and, with as much tesiiness in his soicc as possible,
deliver the formula ‘that the noble Lord be no longer heard’. That
usually wraps it up— though it very rarely has to be used. The last
lime IS believed to have been in May i960. Another rare device is for
the aggrieved listener to ask that the Clerk at the Table reads the
Manding Order on Asperity of Spcech-but since that, like asking
that the Lord be heard no longer, is a motion for which there has to
be debate, few cither risk its delivery or insist upon the debate. Heat
1$ not often the consequence of a group (though they are of all ages:
one of the advantages of the hereditary system) distinctly lacking m
hre: about all they ever produce, an unkind critic might not unfairly
iay, IS hot air.

58 ‘THE GAUDY CENTREPIECE OF THE NOBLE ART’
widely scattered over the country. Recent major outbreaks have
occurred mainly on the chalk dovvnlands of Southern England, but
itdoes not spread as quickly as Dutch elmdiseasc. I agree that there
are no grounds for complacency^ but we have had this disease for
ICO years, I regret.’*

‘Lord Daviei of Leek'. “My Lords, may I, finally, from this side of
the House, put forward the plea for the Government to look
deeply ”

'A noble Lord'. “Questionl”

‘Lord Davies of Leek'. “I have already said ‘May I’. What is the
matter with the House? As an interspersion I should like to say that
It is rather nice that we finish in difficult times, like this, this
morning. May I ask my noble friend whether he will press upon the
Government the need to look in depth mto the problem of our
national forestry, which is one of our great assets . . ’

And so the debate stumbled along. A few moments later there was
the following speech by the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State
at the Department of the Environment, Lady Birk:

‘My Lords, 1 beg to move that the Commons Reasons for
disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments, Commons
Amendments in lieu of certain of the Lords Amendments and
Commons Amendments to certain of the Lords Amendments be
now considered.

‘Moved, That the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of
the Lords Amendments, Commons Amendments in lieu of certain
of the Lords Amendments and Commons Amendments to certain
of the Lords Amendments be now considered.

‘CO.MMONS REASONS FOR DISAGREEING TO CERTAIN OF THE LORDS
.V.MENDMENTS, CO.MMONS AMENDMENTS IN LIEU OF CERTAIN OF THE
LORDS AMENDMENTS AND COMMONS AMENU.MENTS TO CERTAIN OF
TIIF LORDS AMENDMENTS.

‘References are to Bill (303) as first printed for the Lords.
‘Lords Amendments: (i) Page 1, line 9, leave out sub-paragraph
(il;(2) line 17, leave cut “grazing, meadow or pasture land or” . . .’

It turned out to be the political hot potato of the moment, the
legislation concerning farm buildings. Only the existence of the
House of Lords, critics say, could lead to such preposterous
complexities as those which poor Lady Birk had to shepherd
through the House that day.

Whenever the House divides over an issue — something of a
rarity, and itself as magicata fantasy as everything else, involving as

■the gaudy cemtbepiece of the noble art’ 59

. -.k while wands strolline 'I-""*" “PP‘"S

It docs men with expect them suddenly to

people on the shoulder . ^ Aye or No. It Is, in

disappear-the enf or ’Not Coraent’-a

this House alone, ^ is of vague origins. (The peers used

wording that, like so most junior Barons upw ards, as

to be polled by the TcHck. „e „o,. Whether the word has

to whether they gave ^ Whatever the origins of

become bastardized no ^ century— before, in

the cry. it is an apposite “"J; Jj structure in which the House is
fact, the building of *e "'“E p,ossing their lack of contentment
lodged-politieianshaveb^

with the powers ' P already citcumsctibcd almost to the point
the institution, its po withering atuclt once mote:

of legislative impoten , reics want it cither demolished or

leaders of both ma,or P” form measure of the past,

mote radically j fast— the motto, as it happens, of

AndjetTheirLordsh^»^^;_“ 5 ^„,^,pay. style and

one of their i„cd Hicit position in societyi by the

primogeniture bane compromise they have also

relentless pursuit of . , ^hc face of the globe, in the

maintained thcif posiuo , survive the new onslaught?

machinery of the • . reforms mesh most comfortably

Do they deserve to „„isc? Is it possible that Uiis single

with ilieir own ideas for ^ ^^j^gwj,ej3wsofthekingdom'-wilJ

greatest privilegc-the considering these questions

soon be taken away closely at the monstrous enginework

we should look a little alive in this society in the latter

that keeps die very idea ^ ft, end recommended that the

quarter of this «ntury^ was just togo and

bestcureforanyoiicato that just a few moments be

look at It, he f a of the machinery that keeps nobiluy

spent listening to tne s admiration directed to that quancr
alive, to curb any unor

. maJus the laws of the Kmedu-.

' In to the Home of >'»“•«« be

seen It simply acts as;ur> danger m removing ihi,bf,jf,^'“8froin

Sr «•. v» -- -e

‘THE fiddle-faddle OT
nobiliary enrolment

Ye buttetflies, whom king* create;

Ye caierpillats of the suie. ^

Know that your time is near. ^

This moral learn from nature a plan,

That m creation God made man.

But never made a peer c,^, iAaz

Anon., published m the Smr. 1842

A clumsy Irish padre and an °5 ,o"“gger on^of

youth conspired with Fate European nobility. It

the oddest sagas ever m the long history r noble— and

is a saga ttat ° ^"r at^Ltion. pomp

ignoble— behaviour: a tale of J . It illustrates,

without circumstance, mental f,on, time to time

too, the Strange desire that grips ord ^ m seek

to become titled, and the lengths to w began in the

enrolment in the lists of the Uirds Temporah ^
unlikely setting of a practice trench way behind the Briiis

northern France, on 3 March 1916. ^..-voadre of the Irish

According to the regimental lore, the c^ihp yP ,1.,

Guards was with a group of ““‘'”“.„'d weapon, the
complexities of properly throwmg the "'"'y “ of His

hand grenade. Perhaps the padre, pulltng the ting

chosen servants to engage in such p • ,, j the beast,

from the weapon as he was told, aca en a Guardsmen

leaving ,t to roll among the thicket of legs of the other u

standing in the trenches. „„ctice was the twenty-

The officer commanding the grmadep Desmond F.a-

cight-year-old, hurled himself on top of

Gerald Without pausing for thought he nut

the grenade with a second to was killed almost

the men in the trench were saved. Lord

mstantly, one of the great unstmg ° wealthy fifth

Lord Desmond was one of three sons of the very
Duke of Letnster. a member of a fam,^ ^te “ret hLo.
Maynooth Castle outside Dublin. ..pus, „a;ed Carton, a

whete the Irish Parliament now sdll tanks as one

superb Palladian mansion in County ejeh Ules Thanks to a

of the finest examples of its period m the Briti

‘THE FIDDEE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 65
nf the tiue satumalian. He matried, as did so many of his

love. The union was made in the Wandsworth “

tgiT- May gave birth to a son, Gerald, in 1914: the coup

apLt ayriater and by rgsowere divorced. It was a sad marrtage,

but not untypical of the era. n^Hod of

The First World War provided a stage for a It P ^

distinction for Lord Edward, though perhaps the death of Lor
Desmond gave his hedonistic habits * SI
that when his brother died he would inherir. As a ,

entreaties of the trustees, he spent his way around ^

die most gigantic set of debts. By ‘S'’ “''“'"“urtmeSuecTsIon
against him as a bankrupt, and turned him .0 the fmHuUKt^n

that has since depleted the Ixinster fortunes Edward

dukedom into really rather an ordinary Jp”' ’t™ “rS a

decided he would sell off his life interwt in « j^y the

wealthy businessman named Sif ““' .S'S.^r

founder of a chain of clothing shops. The Ft ty satisfy the

£6o,ooo-a sum which would cover all his d'hts and satisty tne
receivers-Lord Edward would give Sir J^mally

and any income due to him from the estates. income

unstable Duke was still alive up in Edinburgh, ^ j i

from the estates was minimal. Lord Ed*”-! ! Xm Sir

deal! whatever happened tn the future he would deal ™th then,
Hatty’s scheme helped him out of an years

But Lord Edward had gambled on his brother hv g

in Craig House. In fact he died, as we have j Lord

February 1922, the year after Sir Harry s ea . j^^jj^iess
Edward became the seventh Duke and as sue was
than £80,000 a year from the „et Duke nothing. It

contract Sit Harry was to get that nioney> t

was the most ghastly situation. Hurrv’s lawyers had

As befits the shrewdest of businessmen,
made the contract watertight. So long as the n
property belonged to the Mallaby-Decleys. = me

the inhetnance, and no snm of money *=« "rback down. The

trustees did not have, would persuade Sir Hartpo

lawyers had even inserted a clause <:ir Harry the

snbiectmg himself to unusual dangers, and thus e^ period.

pleasure of the income for what promised to 8

66 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’

Lord Edward FitzGerald had ruined his inheritance: all he
managed to win from the Mallaby-Deelcys was a grant of £i,ooo a
year — the proverbial Fifty Shillings^ with noble overtones. Franti-
cally he tried to make money on the side, but every inelegant twist
and turn was scrutinized under the harsh glare of popular publicity:
he foundered under a bankruptcy order, was hauled before the
courts for obtaining credit on false pretences and then departed for
a short while to America. He married three more times, became
bankrupt twice more, took his seat in the House of Lords for the
first time in July 1975, when he was eighty-three (sitting as a mere
Viscount: the dukedom is an Irish title, and did not entitle him to a
seal), and took his own life in a fiat in March of the next year. All
who knew him spoke well of him — a gentle, kindly old man, a trifle
dotty, easily gulled into the wildest of schemes, truly pathetic but
very, very decent.

Gerald, the child bom out of the unhappy union with May (who
died ofan overdose ofa sleeping draught in 1935), succeeded at the
age of sixty-two. He had worked bard to make himself a living— he
is perhaps the only Duke to be engaged, full-time, in commerce'—
and had built up a small flying school outside Oxford to one of the
best and biggest in Europe. By the time the dukedom came his
way— though shorn of most of the property once due to him
(Ginon, which had been sold by the Mallaby-Deelcys, was sold
once again in 1977 for more than one and a quarter million
pounds)— he was just about financially equipped to manage the
title. The secretaries ut the otfice were just getting used to calling
the little bespectacled flier * Your Grace’ instead of ‘Your Lordship’
when the Lord Chancellor’s office came through: the Writ of
Summons, the document that calls the new peer to attend the House
of Lords, was being held up. Thert woi amiker claimant to the title.

In truth, Gerald FitzGerald had expected the news. Two years
before his father died his stepmother had a letter from California,
from a certain Airs Roberts in San Francisco. Her brother, by name
Leonard FitzGerald, was, she claimed, the rightful heir to the
dukedom, and the Marquess would have to look out when the time
came for the succession to be claimed.

The claim w as not, or so a respeaed firm of London lawyers felt,

’ ThcDcw Duke ofNorfolX,lonncrljraAt*|or*Gener»l u bo wt) about to become
the Head of Miburr lo(elUtence,weat oa M becocse a fint-nte rnerebam b a n k e t la
the yean before be tucceeded 10 the dukedom. The Duke of Si Albaoi, too, baa
•ometbina of ■ cotametcial backstoutui, ibough none too lueceaaful.

‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 67
entirely frivolous. It was based partly on the circumstances
surrounding the death of the sixth Duke. According to Leonard, a
school teacher, the Duke never did die in Scotland. Instead he
ran off to tour the world when he came of age in 1908. He set-
tled in Canada, served with the Canadian Army in the First
World War, led a varied career as a rancher, bronco buster and
stockbreeder in the Western Provinces and finally settled in
California. He died in San Rafael in 1967, aged eighty. Leonard,
his eldest son, was his rightful heir: he and his father had been
cheated of both their title and their inheritance by a cabal of
wicked uncles who, when Maurice left the coimtry on his world
tour, invented the story of his condition, procured a surrogate
‘Maurice’ who was treated as mentally unstable, was persuaded to
draft a ‘will’ and was finally allowed to ‘die’ thirteen years later.
Circumstantial oddities— the lack of the announcement in the
deaths column, missing burial records, inconsistent reports about
the actual date of his ‘death’— all conspired to make the FitzGerald
children in North America believe firmly in their father’s tale that
he was the rightful Duke, that they were his heirs and Leonard his
successor in title.

The flying-school peer dismissed the tale as 'rubbish'. He found
that a certain ‘M. F. FitzGerald’ might have once been employed as
a labourer at Carton, and wondered out loud whether this man had
gone off to Canada and then, realizing the distinction of his
namesake, concocted the story and presented himself as a Duke in
exile. Correspondence indicates that the Canadian ‘M. F.
FitzGerald’ — Maurice Francis — had assumed himself to be titled
in 1964: his children remember him telling them he was a Duke for
years before that. They all believe the veracity of his story
implicitly, and no one engaged in sorting out the complexities of the
case ever accused Leonard or his sister of improper ambitions.

For case it did become. One of London’s most respected firms of
solicitors, Theodore Goddard & Co., took up the Californian’s
claim, saying that it was by no means totally absurd. The firm got in
touch, as the law requires, with the Crown Office at the House of
Lords — the bureaucracy that is the reality behind the phrase ‘The
Queen’, when talking of ennoblement. The Qerk of the Crown, Sir
Dents Dobson, delayed issuing the Writ of Summons to Gerald.
Men with peculiar and little-known official functions, working
from within the bowels of the Lord Chancellor’s office, delved into
the affair. Were there in fact inconsistencies surrounding the ‘death’

68 ‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’

of ‘Maurice’ in 1922? How did the CaJifornia FitzGeralds come to
know so much, as their letters indicated, of the personal details of
the Leinster life and fortune? Was there ever a fourth, perhaps
bastard, son born to the fifth Duke?

More was at stake than the mere title, grand though that might be
for a teacher of nine-year-olds in the San Francisco suburbs. If it
turned out that Lord Edward had never been the rightful heir to the
dukedom, then his deal with Sir Harry was consummated under
mistaken circumstances and, put to the legal test, might well fall
flat. The Fifty Shilling Tailor magnate and his successors might
have to repay as much as ten million poimds (the sum they got in
exchange for the £60,000 ‘helping’ hand to the hedonist heir);
Carton might become the centre of an explosive legal tussle. A mess
of truly noble proportions seemed in the offing.

Then the Crown Office made its decision. On 7 September 197^
Gerald was sent his Writ of Summons. Copies of Lords Hansard
began appearing in his office, sent to him by right by the
imperturbable clerks of the Palace of Westminster. Leonard
FitzGerald and his lawyers stilled their claim, and the ambitious
sister stopped writing. Gerald finally took his seat on 21 October

1976-

A note of finality to the proceedings was briefly jotted into the
Lords Minutes on 5 March 1977. These read:

‘2. Dukedom of Leinster— Report made by the Lord Chancellor
that Gerald, Duke of Leinster, has established his claim to the
Dukedom of Leinster, and ordered to lie on the Table.’

From his office at Oxford Airport, the eighth Duke said happily
that this sounded very uncomfortable, but was very satisfactory all
the same.

One of the reasons for including this long tale, aside from its
inherent interest, is to allow mention of the offices and institutions
that regulate and direct the creation and duration of the British
peerage. Possibly few branches of government work as well as do
the Crown Office and the Committee for Privileges. Bodies like the
College of Arms and Lyon Court in Edinburgh are models of
scholarly efficiency. Britain looks after the mechanics of ennoble-
ment with considerably more care than some of the more common
features of twentieth-century life.

It has been notoriously simple for the Prime Minister of the day
to award peerages, even though, in theory, they are for the Monarch

‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 69

to give after consulting with his or her advisers. Pitt, as Mr
Macmillan so scornfully pointed out, handed out titles as frequently
and with as little discrimination as a modem American president
hands out ballpoint pens: of those titles existing today, seven
marquessates, five earldoms, one viscounty and eighteen baronies*
were created by the obsessed Premier. He promoted Viscount
Weymouth to the Marquessatc of Bath. To the seventh Earl of
Salisbury, already a Fellow of the Royal Society, he also awarded a
Marquessatc of the same Wiltshire city. The fourth Earl of Bute, a
far-sighted town-plarmer (of Cardiff), was also promoted a degree.
Still others, like Lords Berwick, Somers and Lilford, were plucked
from the obscurity of the Commons to be gilded with the fifth
degree of the peerage; and the man who fashioned many of the south
Birmingham suburbs was made Lord Calihorpe by a Pitt eager for
his political support.

In more recent years the practice accelerated, sptirred on, perhaps,
by the apparently firm decision to abandon the creation of
hereditary titles in 1965. Harold Macmillan, despite being critical
of the social standing of the peers created by Pitt, handed out
honours of one kind or another to almost every elderly Conservative
who still showed signs of life. Between entering office in January
1957 and leavmg it in October 1963 he showered upon the nation no
fewer than sixteen hereditary nobles; addmg to these all the knights
and baronets (the latter a herediury knighthood, originally sold to
help James I finance his Irish wars), Macmillan was dishing out
honours, m the name of the Queen, at the rate of one ajnonth. There
was no suggestion, as forty years before during the heyday of Mr
Maundy Gregory and bis adept title salesmanship (£6,000 for a
knighthood; £150,000 for a peerage), that honours were actually
then to be bought. There was, after all, an Act specifically designed
to prevent abuses of the system. But it remains an undeniable fact
that honours were seen more as rewards for faithful pany service in
the interests of Conservatism than for any less partisan service to
the nation as a whole. Now, though, the practice is said to be over.
No more hereditary peerages at all. The Establishment grumbled
‘The consequences could be grave,* wrote one authority, ‘not only
' Among the marquessates Pitt ww ^sdowne, to a teurmg Prune

Minister, Townshend. to a former Hertford, also a

former Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Abercom, the greatest in Northern

'' h. ....drf w.. »
the French Navy m 1796

70 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’
for an isolated defenceless Monarchy, but also for the tilled
Aristocracy, which can only become a closed corporation doomed to
decadence and eventual extinaton.’ The words were written in
1975: astonishing to those who felt the days of literal Aristocracy
had passed by many years before.

A spirited correspondence in The Times developed early in I977
after a Conservative MP wondered in print whether it was not
constitutionally improper for Prime Ministers to fail, as they had
for the previous twelve years, to advise the Queen to create more
hereditary peers. Was not this 'constitutional change by stealth’?
Would it not leave the Monarchy ‘ripe for the republican pick-
ing’? Was not the peerage one of ‘the greatest assets England has’?
Writers with magnihcently orotund names — Hugh Montgomcry-
Massingberd, Charles Fletcher-Cooke, Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk,
H. B. Brooks-Baker— writhed literate agonies at the deliberate
defaulting of Harold Wilson, Edward Heath and James Callaghan:
Sir Iain came up with a compromise plan, that, as in the reign of
Elizabeth I, peerages should be created for real merit, and very
sparingly indeed. She created only eight peerages during the entire
fifty-four years of her reign: in the fifty-four years up to the creation
of Lord Margadale’s title no fewer than 359 were made— a ratio of
nearly forty-five to one— even though these are said to be more
egalitarian times. Possibly the peerage is under attack as a direct
consequence of just that kind of excess.

All manner of advantages come wrapped in the bundle of scarlet and
ermine of a hereditary title, as we have seen. The most ancient
complexity— and yet one not quite forgotten in a few homes, in
Royal circles and in the magical mystery tour of domestic
protocol — is the maner of Precedence: no doubt it was the delights
of British Precedence, as much as the possible ten million pounds,
that spurred on Leonard FitzGerald m the pursuit of his peerage,
and a dukedom at that.

‘God made them high and lowly/And ordered their estate’, it
used to say in Hymns Ancient and Modem. Few more rigidly
ordered societies can be found anywhere m the world than in
Britain — even now, the caste system is only slowly and painfully
being dismantled.’ Dozens of pages in the various annual

‘ Defenders of the Order of Precedence sa; its purpose is quite the opposite. ‘It
puts the real mighty down a peg c» tsro so at (o make them realise they are only part of
'’'e historical perspective ’

‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’ 71
guidebooks to British society tell precisely where everyone of note
stands in rank-useful for arranging processions, for seating people
at formal dinners, for knowing whom to introduce to a visiting Head
of State and in what order, for learning bow wide the choice is for a
forthcoming marriage, and for gauging how important are those
who let it be known they think they are important. The list is
headed, of course, by the Queen— ‘the only person whose
precedence is absolute’. Her Majesty has the arrangement of
the precedence of all others as one of her Prerogatives: she may
alter precedence from time to time, though not drastically; she
may well bow to the realities of any situation and permit
temporary alterations, since ‘it not infrequenriy happens that,
in the relationship between hosts and guests, the requirements
of courtesy and hospitality override any stria order of
precedence.’

It would be tedious in the extreme to rente in any detail the
nature of the Official Tables: it is almost sufficient to say they exist.
But in general terms, the Tables have always placed, and always
presumably will continue to place, Dukes of England at the very lop
(behind a score of official office-holders, such as the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Lord High Consuble and the
Master of the Horse) and Labourers at the very base of the
precedential pyramid. Since the regulators of Precedence no longer
recognize a specific Order of Procedure for people below a certain
rank, it can justifiably be said that to suggest that Labourers still
occupy any officially lowly position is tendentious. But the fact
remains that the attitudes that regarded Labourers as worthless
drones unsuited for grander designs persisted, officially, until very
recently. The legacy of those attitudes remains with a significant
proportion of British society even today, though it is officially
discountenanced.

From a 1909 edition of Dexf s Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage
one can see how the lowly orders were once recognized: Labourers
were lower than Artificers; above them were Ttadesmen-who-are-
cilizens. Higher still were Yeomen, Professional Gentlemen,
Subaltern Officers of the Army, Banisters, King’s Coimsel,
Clergymen, Bachelors of Medicine, Bachelors of Law, Bachelors of
Divinity, Doaors of Medicine, Doaors of Laws, Doctors of
Divinity and then, at long last, at position n^ber 1 62 in the table-*
Younger Sons of the Knighu Bachelor. Not quite descendants of
the ennobled maybe, but the ofepnng of the lowUest group to bav«

72 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’
made contact with the Monarch in his (in 1909, of course) function
as the Fount from which alt Honours spring. In that same table one
stilt has to struggle upwards through a bewildering variety of
dross— Elder Sons of the Knights Commander of the Star of India,
Masters in Lunacy, Companions of the Bath, Knights Grand Cross
of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knights Banneret (now
defunct), Baronets (a fierce squabble took place between the Society
of Baronetage and the Palace because of the Sovereign’s apparent
desire to recognize Children of Legal Life Peers as of higher
precedence than Baronets— the Baronets lost) and others with
similarly sonorous titles, before the first of the real peers is reached.
The lowest rung on the ladder of ennoblement is held by that
unworthy creature, the Baron of the United Kingdom.

The precedence of peers then runs up from Barons to the exalted
heights of Dukes of England, some 355 of the former, eleven of the
latter (if you count the Duke of Cornwall, the oldest English
dukedom of them all, but ‘of the Blood Royal’). In between are the
Dukes of Scotland, Great Britain, Ireland and the United Kingdom
since the Union; Marquesses in the same order; Earls ditto,
Viscounts ditto and the Barons, arranged in the same manner. In
between are the offspring, arranged in a marvellously impertinent
scheme, so that fifteen-year-old sons of impoverished Irish
Marquesses may take precedence in the land over Bishops, and
younger sons of Dukes of the Blood Royal may stand technically
senior to Secretaries of State and Lords Commissioners of the
Great Seal. There 1$ a cartoon in Nancy Milford’s incomparable
Noblesse Oblige showing a chinless young man walking haughtily in
front of an enraged Sir Winston Churchill. ‘Younger son of an Earl
taking precedence over Knight of the Garter’, it says and one can
understand Churchill’s irritation at the child’s contumely. (Though
he would have had only himself to blame, from all accounts: he was
offered the Dukedom of Dover — the first non-Royal dukedom to be
made since 1874— but turned it down.)

There are all kinds of lists for all kinds of classifications of
Britons— and foreigners, who arc tartly reminded that ‘no
foreigners whatever are entitled to precedence in this
country ... but all foreigners enjoy by courtesy some share of
distinction in mixed society. A foreign Count is often really of lower
position than an English country gentleman, and his wife is no
Countess in the English sense of that word.’ Thank goodness the
same guide that included those acerbic remarks did not go on to

‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’ 73

chronicle precedence in foreign countries— as one true snob
remarked, everyone above the Americans, except American
women! Such things have a habit of starting wars.

There arc long Tables of Precedence for females: Wives of the
Sovereign’s Uncles, for example, coming above English Duchesses,
and Wives of the Eldest Sons of Dukes coming above Daughters of
Dukes. That, one imagines, would be doubly galling for a liberated
British noblewoman, of which there are perhaps too few. To be
regarded as totally infertor anyway, even though your father is a
Duke, must by unpleasant; to find your brother, who could be,
perhaps, younger than you, marrying a wench who then assumes
higher precedence than you — enough to make you go and marry a
commoner!

And concern about Precedence goes on apace. In Northern
Ireland, for example, there used ro be a complete Table (as there
was in the East Indies, placmg the Commissioner in Sind above the
Recorder of Rangoon); but with the onset of the ‘Troubles’, and the
consequent shifting around of the oilices of government, ‘The
Official Table requires considerable amendment. ... the Queen
has not approved a new one. . . . ’ Presumably an official at
Buckingham Palace is wearing out pencils trying to think whether
the Secretary of State comes above the Archbishop of Armagh, and
whether, on the occasion of an official visit by dignitaries from the
Irish Republic, the Knight of Glin comes above the Macgillicuddy
of The Reeks, or vice versa. Certainly Younger Sons of Haris come
above the High Sheriffs of Belfast and Londonderry, for which the
same Younger Sons must be well pleased. The Legislative
Draftsman of Northern Ireland has his own spot, too, about four
from the bottom.

Patrick Montague-Smith, who brought out a second, revised
edition of Debrelt's Compieie Form in 1977 as one of his
contributions to the Jubilee — he wanted punctiliousness to
contmue to reign along with the younger Elizabeth — tries, not
always successfully, to apply pragmatism to the ancient formulae.
‘Common sense must none the less be used in deciding the
precedence to be accorded to peers, peeresses and their children. It
IS often necessary to take age and other factors into account. For
example, it is usually unwise to scat the younger son of a Alarqucss
above a Baron simply because this is how he ranks in the Table of
Precedence, when the former isayouth of eighteen and the latter an
old gentleman of eighty. Again it iiuy be best to sit a high-ranking

74 ‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’
officer in the Armed Forces, or the Chairman or Managing Dircaor
of a Urge firm, with a low place in the Table of Precedence above a
peer w ho, although he has a much higher place in the Table, is only
a junior officer or employee.’ In fact, that is what usually happens,
though not all would have it that way.

Sir Iain MoncreiiTe of that Ilk, as a Herald, is a great stickler for
exactitude of rank. He regards it as *p^iy a jumble of nonsense',
but since it is all ‘great fun' as well, and docs no harm, he is all in
favour of normally applying the rigid precedential rules at table and
watching the results. His view is that pompous precedence geared
meticulously to real importance, as in some countries of the Eastern
bloc, tends to become intolerable as one is always preceded by a
rival who has ‘pipped one to the post*. To him, the British system is
a fascinating blend of history that mitigates real importance
salutarily but just sufficiently to remind ministers, for example, that
the word means public ‘serv-ants*. It harms nobody that a boy of
twenty, the represenutive of some Victorian Cabinet Minister who
became a Viscount, should go into dinner before Lord Home, a
former Prime Minister. It also amuses him that the wife of a life
peer’s son precedes a baronet’s lady: thus the Hon. Mrs Zuckerman
ranks above Lady Moncreifle. He recounted how his old friend the
late Duke of Alba, when Spanish Ambassador in London, caused
some seating problems when dining with Sir Iain as Captain of the
King’s Guard in 1945. Since the Duke was a representative of the
Spanish Head of State, it seemed safer not to invite him at the same
time as King Peter of Yugoslavia in exile or the Regent of Iraq, but
such exquisite dilemmas were further complicated by the
entitlement of the household cavalry's Officer Commanding the
King’s Life Guard to sit on the right of the foot guards' Captain of
the King’s Guard anyway. Some enjoy the humble crossword: to
Sir Iain Moncrciffe, a seating plan has all the allure of backgammon
with the subtlety of chess and the historical charm of mah-jong. He
defends the use of out precedence as a basis for seating people at
dinner. At American dinners, he is told, the guests of honour are
placed in the centre and the crashing bores to the flanks, displaying
conversational peaks and troughs: a Moncreiffe-made table would
spread fascination, family and friends equally across the board, with
resulting intercourse of memorable satisfaction.

Debrett't Correct Form, scarlet-covered with an embossed
coronet and 422 pages long, is but one of a number of similar-
looking, but much thicker works that adorn the library shelves of

‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 75
most members of the peerage, telling them with all the gravamen of
historical authority^ the hne details about their titles and their
standing. The stud books of the British nobility are a sub-industry
in themselves, incomparable and incredible, yet bowing slowly to
the same pressures that are prompting the new decline of their
subjects. Thousands of pages long, the books are more massive than
the weightiest of telephone directories, more costly than
encyclopaedias; quite probably some editions of the grander of their
number muse rank as the largest single-volume works in existence.

Pre-eminent among their number is a massive, nine-volume
work, Tke Compleie Peerage^ the nearest thing to an official
compilation of the histories of titled families. It was written by an
eminent genealogist, George Edward Cokayne — ^no better name,
perhaps, could have been chosen for the author of a book about the
people of some fabled (and of luxury and delight — who was
employed as a Herald— first Rouge Dragon Pursuivant (of which
post later), then Lancaster Herald and finally Clarenceux King of
Arms. The Complete Peerage was his intended memorial, and it is
still referred to, by those few who could afford to buy it before it
disappeared, as ‘GEC. Its thick, rough-edged pages and clear,
nobly sized type, make it still a joy to read: its footnotes and
appendices abound in the most delightfully recondite details.

Sadly, though, 'GEC, like its author, is dead. A supplement was
issued in the 19505 to record details of the peerage creations
between 1901 and 1938, and the nine volumes haughtily, but
correctly, claim total accuracy for every single creation from the
thirteenth century to the outbreak of the Second World War. But
now no one can afford the time and trouble, it seems, to write any
more; no further volumes are likely to be published, even though
peerages are still created and a new volume could be filled with
consummate ease. The massive tomes sit in a few well-endowed
libraries, gathering dust. All the paperwork Is kept by the Clerk of
the Records at the House of Lords.

The Second World War also very nearly claimed the life of that
other stud book of the blue-bloods, Burke’s Peerage. Until then the
monstrous, scarlet, gold-blocked volumes had thundered down
from the printing presses almost every year, to stand alongside
Wha's If'ho and Crack/anTi Clmad Directory a the standard book-
ends to prop up the gardening magazines on the roll-top desk.
TTiesc days liurke't, a century and a half old, comes out at irregular
mtcrvals- it had been pnnied each three or four years, but now will

76 ‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’
appear at intcr>'als of about a generation. The next will appear,
ominously, soon after 1984, if any peers remain.

Burke'i is a truly splendid book, if only as a gallimaufry of
oddities and a treasure house of material for the aspirant bore.
Those who deride it as a ‘snobs* bible* might have been right half a
century ago— in those days mothers of marriageable daughten
probably did flick through the pages of the Pterage and its sister
volume, Burke'i Landed Gentry, to determine the suitability of
various would-be husbands— but these days true snobs dismiss
such a necessity, claiming they can tell a young man’s suitability just
by looking at him and listening to him talk. No, Burke'i is the kind
of book one can delight in curling up with on a rainy winter’s day, to
marvel in the mysteries of the truly Upper Class. (Though it is often
remarked that the Landed Gentry is far classier than the Peerage;
within the three volumes of the LG are the true representatives of
living history— thanes and sokemen, drenches and radman.)
Anthony Powell, listed as a line specimen of the gentry, quotes an
1852 press review of one LG:

‘The landed gentry of England are a more powerful body than us
peerage. The othce of peerage is hereditary, it is true, but when the
strict line of succession termiiutes the Crown substitutes a new
family. The new peers arc selected from the landed gentry, or from
successful adventurers in law, commerce, arms or divinity, who
having acquired wealth, contrive to get themselves adopted into the
land-owning class. In the idcntiflcaiion of the peers with the great
land-owning class lies their strength. As an isolated body they could
not exist for a year. ... a mere peerage conveys a very inadequate
notion of the position and consequence of peers.’

Nevertheless, the Peerage docs not lack class, as anyone who
coughs up his £38 for the work will admit. There are none of the
advertisements for Rolls-Royce or Twentieth Century Fur Hire
that grace the LG, but there aie 2,930 fine India-paper pages filled
with five-point type detailing the family backgrounds of men and
women from Sir Robert Abdy, Baronet, to the eighteenth Baron
Zouche of Haryngworth. Some entries arc stupendous: the
nineteenth Earl of Moray’s, for instance, continues for eleven
pages, with details of his extraordinary range of ancestors,
including Kings of the Scots, a gentleman known as the Wolf of
Badenoch and another (an indirect relation) known as the Wizard
EarlofBoihwell. The presentEarlofMoray shares his membership
of the House of Stuart— of which Bonnie Prince Charles is most

‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 77

notorious-with descendants «ho include the Dukes of Richmond,
Grafton. St Albans, ‘the British marquessate of Bute, earldom of
Wharncliffe and barony of Southampton, the United Kingdom
dukedom of Gordon, viscounties of Davcntry and Smmt of
Findhom and barony of Montagu, the Irish earldom of Castle
Stewart, the Scottish dukedoms of Bucclench, Lennoa and
Queensberty, also earldoms of Galloway and Moray, the French
Sikedoms of Aubtgny and the Spanish dukedoin of Penaranda;
besides several baronetcies.’ The nineteenth Earl was a colonial
farmer in the grand manner and marned one Mabel Wilson, the
chM of the late Beniamin ‘Matabclc’ Wilson of Battlefields
Southern Rhodesia. The twentieth Earl so^ds a less colourful
fellow, though married into the Earldom of Mansfield (the family
that owns Scone Palace in Perthshire).

Other entries, especially tor the life peers, whom one imagines

Bariie’sratherdespises,areshort.All.however,areintrodueedwiih

a splendid engraving of the family coat of arms-promptmg some
assiduous readers to colour in the coats of the peers they have met, a
sort of high-flown train spotting practised by ihe wealthier soul,
with time on their hands. The language of the P.er,«e i. suitably
pompous, and Is filled with abbreviations that are comrmm
Lwledge to students of the subiect but oulsidc.

The faa;fot example, that a certam Baton d.s.p.m.s. (*„„„ „„
mmeulc .uperJine) may not seem of peat import: in fiicl,
*ough. since it means he died “

could have a profound effect on the tarony, Ihc

Xps'd'tmhdtdtatwSmeoftheirmothers.lh.i^;^

Ce-i abbmviations can be as fawanating as some of ihe

sTrSy enough one short form that occasionally

eom;“a^'„ of the more socrtllyconscious

■coils’, which really doesn’t^ “ppe" “ ^ a. the

78 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment*

‘Oh, it’s aJJ right, I looked him \ipmDebrett's, and he’s in the Duke
of Atholl Colls., so he’ll do.’

Debreti'st though far less detailed about historic ancestry than
Burke's, is the Bradshaw of the present membership of titledom. It
makes no claim to table the deeds and misdeeds of the ancestors of
England’s great men and women; instead, in 3,2$6 rather smaller
pages, it lists all the living members of the titled families, gives brief
notes on their present doings and, ideally for Raffles-style burglars,
who subscribe to it, gives their addresses. Debrett’s is the useful
work, invariably well-thumbed, fashioned for hard wear, and a
work of commerce as much as of scholarship. The firm that
publishes the guide also turns out the Complete Form (‘An inclusive
Guide to Everything from Drafting Wedding Invitations to
Addressing an Archbishop’), and has started a service for anyone
wanting a family tree. Most early clients, when the service was
begun in 1977, were Americans.

Reviews of the 1976 edition of Debrett's pointed out its many
failings; the surprising large number of ‘Residence
suggesting to the mischievous that the peer involved might have
been carted off to the local asylum; the indiiferent typography; the
many gaps in the heraldic coverage; the occasional mistakes, such as
that placing the creation of the Moncreiffe baronetcy in 685, long
before the creation of the institution, rather than a thousand years
later. Mistakes, as noted a caustic review in The Times Literary
Supplement in 1976, ‘became more serious when we read that a
Viscount's daughter who divorced in 1968 and married a Marquess
in the following year has issue living “(by ist m)’’, a son “b. 1973”;
the Most Honourable’s entry fortunately refutes the possible libel.’

Unhappily Debrett’s loo, is succumbing to the gradual erosion of
fortunes and families, and will appear, the 1976 preface notes
glumly, ‘at longer intervals than previously’. The TLS reviewer
would happily make do with Who's Who and Kelly's; only Raffles
would be unduly pur out, one imagines, by the passing of the
address book of the very best hoards of national treasure.

There are still other works essential for true snobs. There is
another scarlet-bound volume, slimmer than either Burke's or
Debrett's, called The Re^alty, Nobilt^ and Peerage of the World,
with notes on all titled heads from Haakon to Zog. There was the
extraordinary Almanach de GotAd, filed at the Bodleian as a 'foreign
periodical*, which doubtless the financially harassed Hugh
Montgomery-Massingberd and Patrick Montague-Smith (former

■the fiddle-faddi-E of nobiliary enrolment’ 79
editois ot Burke-, and Debre,.’.

.di»s of publioaOon during the

publications to be. Genealogisches Handbuch des

pocnet-sizod and

Adeh, knoi™ appearance of a racing calendar

;Xrer“^.ao^

TheQueenma,belheFo^lom^no^l^^=^^^^^^

Committee for “f^fda^hereditary glories, but all

the vast scarlet volunaes *e ^°‘ ^ J

these august mstituti P ^ maybe, but only paperwork,
paperwork. Impressive PP ^ I^^ pjs into stylish, dashing.

The office that translates London-the College of

colourful realty IS housed m*Qty a„o„y„ous and

Arms. Into this office strutted an almost equivalent

common starlings, and out Iwve sot

number of proud quaintly titled officers, who

It is the College design and colour of his coat

advise a man on his choice 01 u ’ South Wales who

of ams. Aluti Gwynne-Jon > a smooth talker, and

gained a reputation as a ^ a Labour minister, was

who ended up as a writer on decided he would tell

ennobled in 1964 an , ce Anns that he wanted some title like
the Heralds at the College Welsh title, full of battle-cry

Glendower or Llewe V" Heralds were politely aghast— the
and national feeling. „ight be huge, especially among

offence, they discre J Glendower and the ancient Kings of
all the descendaius ot u another site for his title, one

the Principality. Could n ^^dyne? Gwynne-Jones scratched
diat would be s°mew^ suggestion, pondered over the various
his head and, at the He d worked. Where, the

places m which he ha stationed durmg the war? Gwynne-

Herald wondered, ha ^ dormitory town a few miles

Jones named an Perfect, the Herald replied-

outside London, Chali

. A I 4* Corfca included the Royd

' The old original Ab^ . ihough not the Spinish— and a gte*‘

House* and European ^^""cS^o**"***?*-

re were separate volume*

e,uu>q» •*.- — 1 1 rural eofoTtnatmiA- a— wire teparaie voiuu*-' -

deal of diplomatic and s . Barons, and for Getm»“

German for German and Ausuo-

8o ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’

how about Lord Chalfont? And so that is how the translation of
Alun Gwynne-Joncs to Baron Chalfont of Llantamam> Co.
Monmouth, was effected, absurd though it may sound in the telling.

His coal of arms, propped by supporters, as a peer’s is entitled to
be, is suitably militaristic, though not especially modem. In the
middle is a sword, pointing downwards, with olive branches
surrounding it; on each side is a soldier — on the left a South Wales
Borderer (Gwyrme-Joncs’s regiment), on the right a Herald with
his tabard emblazoned with the same down-pointing sword and
olive branches; above the whole lot is the Welsh dragon, holding a
black and silver (or sable and argent, to use the Norman French
rendering of colours still used in heraldic language) rod in his paw.
A fine design, all above the Latin motto ‘Cedani Arma Togae ' —
■‘Arms Yield to the Toga’, a sort of circumlocutory way of saying
that the pen is mightier than the sword.

The College, while not a British government department, is an
official body: the officials who man its dusty offices ate not civil
servants, but they are members of the Royal Household, answerable
to the Queen through the holder of the oldest English dukedom, the
Duke of Norfolk, in his capaoty of Earl Marshal (his best-known
duties as Marshal are to organize great ceremonies of state, like the
coronations and funerals of Monarchs). Its principal officials are the
three Kings of Arms: Garter, the senior; Clarcnceux, responsible
for grants of arms throughout England south of the River Trent;
and Norroy and Ulster, who looks after England north of theTrent,
Wales and Northern Ireland. A quite separate office on Princes
Street in Edinburgh, run by the Lord Lyon King of Arms, looks
after the curious and utterly complicated arrangements for Scottish
arms-bearers and clan chiefs.

The six Heralds— Windsor, Richmond, Somerset, York, Chester
and Lancaster — and the four Pursuivants— with their splendid
titles of Portcullis, Rouge Croix, Rouge Dragon and Bluemantle—
take turns as duty officers at the College, to answer the inquiries that
come in fromnew peers, or from farmers out in Indiana who believe
they are heir to a Norman bequest, or from old ladies up in town
from Shropshire for the day who would like to see their family trees.
For most inquiries the Heralds charge fees, all of which are
ploughed back into the College, making it a more or less completely
self-financing institution.

Walter Verco, the present Norroy and Ulster King — and sec-
■etary to the Earl Marshal besides — works in an airy office thick

82 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment’
However, there is some argument over whether or not the Duke
himself is entitled to wear the augmentatjon—a tricky problem
since, in all matters of heraldic judication, the Earl Marshal $
court reigns supreme, and if the matter were to be pul to the test, the
Duke would have to preside over hisown ease or appoint a surrogate
president of the G^urt of Chivalry. It seemed a worthy matter for
inquiry, so letters were dispatched to Norroy and Ulster King who
wrote back, charmingly, saying he had fowarded the inquiry to a
functionary titled 'Maltravcrs Herald Extraordinary', who worked
in Sussex. Back came a letter, stiif with the import of the matter: ‘I
regret that I cannot place great reliance on some of the statements in
Mr Masters’ book,' he grumbled. It was, all things considered, a
‘facetious suggestion' that Mr Masters had put forward. The letter
was signed 'Francis W. Steer — Maltravcrs', and written from the
Duke of Norfolk's seat at Arundel, where Mr Steer was archivist
and librarian. For all this help, no fee.

Once the Heralds, with the King’s approval and the Earl
Marshal’s sanction, have made the grant of arms and have decided
upon the title by which the new peer will be known, only one matter
remains before the lucky individual is free to supplicate for
membership of the House of Lords. He— or she, since 1 958— has to
pay the mandatory visit to Ede and Ravenscroft , the quaint old shop
in Chancery Lane, and let one of the staff exchange quantities of
scarlet cloth, ermine bands, gold leaf and appliqued sealskin for the
sum of £600. The robes, packaged in a traditional gold-trimmed
scarlet bag with yellow dressing-gown-cord ties so it can be slung
casually over the shoulder as the peer dashes for the Aberdeen
sleeper, will take a month to make, and will last for ever.

In case a coronation is heaving to on the horizon, a new entrant
may also be sold two other marks of rank: a coronation robe and a
coronet of degree. Only the Duke, who will probably have a fortune
already, will have to produce a coronet made of solid gold: an
essentially simple thing, this has eight strawberry leaves round the
rim, and fits around a velvet and ermine ‘cap of estate' that stops the
ducal brow becoming chafed. Other peers have plainer, silver-gilt
bands, though rather more complicated— the Marquess having his
adorned with four strawberry leaves and four silver balls, the Earl
with eight silver balls and eight strawberry leaves, the Viscount
with sixteen silver balls. Only the Baron’s is truly humble, as befits
his station: a mere six silver balls set on the rim of a silver-gilt
circlet. Most peers keep their coronets in Asprey’s or one of the

•THE E.DDLE-EA.DLE OE NOB.LUKV BNROLMEKT’ 83
London iewoUo«,

S:rdtcrnS?h“,as2n:9^^^^^^

be inundated with orders an jj^any peers will use, as

perhaps half an hour at Horhdis tablets during

then, to proteet their sandwiehes and rnen
the interminable wait in Westminster Abbey.

This then, is the basis of the 'nply'p'’tovided with

peerage in good “''"'“'”f,‘^^„fplforeiyets who entertain

tripwires and booby traps to fault hol«lul B agam

ideas of invading the ennobled . obsessed with some

commoners— not only foreigners, . them heir to a title, or a

vague idea that a * ^„lds, to the Lord Chancellor,

fortune, or both— write in, to £)e6reIt’J, asking for

to the Crown Office, to Burke < tntitlement.

information about or for granting of a title is an often

Few are ever allowed: for freouently frowned upon by

fickle procedure, with *.ms, for instance, is said

the mechanicians (the ^•i*®®f.|,..hoices for life peerages rnade

privately to have thought little are neither

by Harold Wilson), entry ’(tiy difficult. There have

appointed nor clearly “rS^ilteeforPrivilegessmce

been only tout cases ptesen^ °*„„s of 195 a and 1953.
the war: the Dudhope and „f Weddetbum esublished

Henry James Sctymgeout Wed Viscounty of Dudhopcl the

his claim to the Earldom of Dun , ip77 case of the Oxfuit

,,,6caseoftheAmpffiillbi^7-“fgg“:rease,orindeedanyc.^^^

viscounty. Tt is hard to think “f „r public interest as the

at all. that has aroused ‘‘g' Lords Reading Clerk and

Ampthill case,' said John SaiW * ^p,g„jy,y bizarre episode.
Clerk of the Journals. U pro Leinster ease of the

illustrative m the same mis lengthy account of the

ambitions tor utle.widr which toe.

enginework of peerage. episodes drily enoug .

Bn.ke'srecords .hecomm«»

inework ot peer-Bv. episoOes uu.y

urke's records the com™" CBE), served in Wot d

Baron Ampthill ( “f Croix dcGuerrewiffipalmsiUS

War I and in World War n, CB& 3y d,v. .9x7)

Legion ot Men. . . • »>• ‘V '.^1. John Harr. Leinster Regt..
Ch.istabel Hulmc, 550* , , , and has issue Geoffrey Denis

ofBroadhurst,Heathfield.Sussex

3rd

War

84 ‘THE FIDDLE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT*
Erskine, educ. Stowe ... He m. andly Sibell Faithfull . . . (d. Sept.
1947); he m. 3rdly Adeline Mary Constance and by her has
issue . . . John Hugo Trenchaid, educ. Eton.’ The four characters
played their parts — albeit two of them posthumously — in a drama
that had all the most bizarre elements a British newspaperman
could dream for: virgin birth> family feud, forlimes, curious sexual
practices, and the House of Lords. The story begins, appropriately
enough, with an advertisement in the The Times.

‘Lost in the North Sea mist’, the advertisement ran, in the agony
columns one winter’s day m 1915. “Three young midshipmen
serving m the Grand Fleet would like to correspond with young
ladies.’ One of the young blades serving up in the lonely fastnesses
of Scapa Flow was the Hon. John Russell, oldest son and heir of the
second Baron Ampthill, a deputy Viceroy of India; one of the
hundreds of girls to reply to the notice was a quintessential
forerunner of the Roaring Twenties, Christabel Hart. She sent a
photograph, met the men on King’s Cross Station and began a
flirtation with the Hon. John that was apparently as outrageous as
one would expect of a girl who rode her hunters astride, rather than
sidesaddle, and who was by all accounts an eager nightclubber and
founder member of the flappers. The war tended to muck things up
abitjofcourscjbutby 18 October 1918 the two, Christabel and the
Hon. John, were happily married and settling down to a life of easy
bliss. The only trouble was that Christabel, for reasons best known
to herself, either didn’t cate too much for sex, or didn’t care too
much for the bodily attributes of the heir to the barony. It was
separate beds for John and Christabel, from the very start.

Occasionally, however, John’s more beastly tendencies did get
the better of him, according to hmts and whispers from Christabel’s
maid, and he would creep into his wife’s bedroom and engage in a
somewhat more physical version of what was then known as
spooning. One night, that of 18 December 1920, something
occurred in Christabel’s bed that she preferred only to describe as
Hunmsh practices’— and 301 days later, baby Geoffrey, to
Christabel’s evident consternation, was bom.

Curiously, she did not realize she was pregnant until five months
after the ‘Hunmsh practices’ had taken place; and doctors who
examined her found she was almost completely physically intact.
The impendmg delivery was, so the newspaper later claimed, an
example of virgin birth.

The story moves on quickly after this, with an incensed Hon.

■the fiddle-eaddee of nobiliary enrolment’ 85
John suing his wife for divorce on the

rounded by admirers, and the H - i . managed to

claiming two co-respondents. In “ ’ ^ ^ committed

persuade iudges on »" as a resu^^

adultery, and that young '’“^^“r^ver had permitted

■marital rape’ by I°>»’ t'^tpl^w^Sy othL el*
him to sleep with her, but she had n P . jiygrce and

The second timearound.ho;«ver.IohnwaS6ran.edad^^^^^^^^^

Geoffrey was disinherited. The f^o Perhaps

gripped a fevered “ f„'g of rke divorce hearings

it was just as well; so lurid was Ac P 8 of the most

that rules were later introduced to curb the excess

lubricious press. 35 ihe matter of

Although the courts had had the ^ son

divorce was concerned, Chrisu c . j 23:2 verdict

legitimized; eventually the . ^.gjiock could be ruled

the Uw Lords decided t^tn^y^m evidence of non-

illegitimate by one or the °*' ^ g3t precedential importance,
intercourse. It was a legal ruling S rightful position as

and, of course enabled G'of''' “ ^ "red ver? much; at

heir to the barony. Not, one supposes, that nc ca

the lime he was only five. succeeded on the death of

After the divorce, ^hc third Baron, married again,

his father in 1935 w the ml no

became a widower, then ^ jon for His Lordship in

known fuss or commoti^, P -o far as both his mother and

i9SO-a half-brother to descend from the

father «crc concerned, the fin g ^-as

barony. Was II possible that the n Barony, and that

the rightful prospective viorld of theatrical

GeotTrey, by no>v a ^ „5 of succeeding?

management, could forg vjnd gripped the Russells for

A family battle of the most m 8^^ Geotfrey and his

more than a generation o ucre few fhe was once

supporters, who aside persuade him to renounce all

otfered ao,coo by Johnand hisall.es, who

imercsis in ihc case , ^ hrothers and hts sister,
included ^anJ CccdlK obs lously ignoring the

86 ‘the fiddle-faddle of nobiliary enrolment
£30,000 inducement, claimed the barony for himself; in I975» John,
now a successful, if rather less spectacular City of London
accountant, decided to challenge the petition and claim the title for
his side of the family. Battle royal was set, and joined early in 1976 in
Committee Room Four of the House of Lords, before the august
majesty of the Committee for Privileges and a representative of the
Sovereign, the Solicitor-General, who announced he was there to
guard the rights of the Crown and the Peerage*. Under a vast oil
painting of the Coronation of George VI, a horseshoe-shaped
arrangement of scarlet chairs was laid out to hold Lords Molson,
Champion, Erskine of Rerrick, Wilberforce, Beswick, Simon of
Glaisdale, Kilbrandon, Russell of Killowcn (no relation) and the
Earl of Listowel, as they prepared to listen to the kind of claim that
makes a lawyer’s heart— and vrallct — beat wildly. It was to be, a
newspaper said, a moment for connoisseurs of litigation to savour.

In the event it proved very nearly as dry as dust. Though some of
Christabel’s divorce evidence was read into the record and provided
a few pearls for news editors to sift from the sand— ‘He attempted to
effect penetration but 1 did not allow it*— and though the event
provided the press with an opportunity to dig out the spiciest of
cuttings from their yellowed files of the 1920s, the drama had in
effect been over for many years. True, it was fun to see the stiff-
lipped hostility— the ‘easy blend of politeness and cutting rudeness
which only the British aristocracy can carry off* as a newspaper put
It— with which the half-brothers and their seconds met. It was
exciting to gaze at the lissom French wife Geoffrey had brought
with him for the hearing, and good for the literary imagination to
typecast Geoffrey as a figure from the stage, with his silver hair and
his classic good looks— looks, incidentally, that were remarkably
reminiscent of the man claimed not to be his father, the third Baron.
In the end connoisseurs were left with the gem of the four-day
hearing: the use of the rarest of legal phrases, fecundatia ab extra,
which, Mary and Joseph would be pleased to hear, is regarded in
English law as ‘a rare, but not impossible occurrence’.

On 6 April, two months after the hearings, the Committee met
again to announce its verdict. On the basis of the earlier ruling that
illegitimacy could not be proved merely because one parent says so,
the Committee said that ‘The petitioner, John Hugo Trenchard
Russell, claiming to have succeeded to the Barony of Ampthill, has
not made out his claim. . . . ’

The House of Lords was being told, in effect, to deny John’s

■THE ErnDTE-FADDLE OF NOBILIARY ENROLMENT’ 8,

claim and inform tho Queen that J'°|mage of the third

wasGeoffrey.themanwholookedtho P S B
Baron anyway, and the one who had been
ambitious John. It seemed a Pl^tty was really

The sad irony of the whole affair was to y

at stake. Unds and fortunes were not on one ■ ^

involved in resolving the had cost the state, so

tabled questions asking how much I __,» it was said to have

incensedwasheatthis'fielddayforto.a^«s^.>'»^^^p^^

cost about £. 20 , 000 . It all seemed r t-u, wanted him.

especially to the political parties w o . on the cross

AthillsitsintheHouseofLordsfromnmetotune.

benches. vi ctmon of Glaisdale said in his

*If ever there was a family, Loe<i the birth

Opinion on the case, blessed by ^ jj^blc

of a child was attended by an evil spin . .jj russcUs. Its curse

to frustrate all the blessings, it was the AmpUiu

was litigation.’ ^ .k.,- was. however, some small

For one member of the faimly . determined virgin,

blessing. Christabcl herself, the adventures until well

who had lived a life of the most extra Galway a week before

into her seventies, died j ^he final humiUawo“*

the heating began. Shewasiobesl» never knowing the happy

Ampthill curse, though at the pn vindicated,

news that her cause was. eventually, to

THE DUKES

Mightiest of Them An

The Aga Khan a held by Wlowm tobe a iau, a

God An English Duke takes ptecedetKt.

LenetftomColltgtofA,^

Houioo^t ” quoted m

A fully equipped Duke cost* aa much i...
dteadnoughts. They are |ust as great a ler,,, f “P is tvto
longer, ’ 'hey last

David Uoyd-Gewg.,_
m NewcasUe uponTytT’'*™^*'®!!.*

Dukes Hotel, as befits Ks name, has an

and gracious living.Eteg«cew«h<>utoswni,^‘ut 4,

together with traditional and courteous
dicor.

From an advemsem®, „

part one

F or all the awe, affection, fear, mvth an Icam that

the persons of the British Dukes, it i» a * . Dukes have ever
there are so few of the breed and, indee , sying today— hOt

existed in the past. There are account for a further

including the Dukes of the Blood » pdinburgh. And fewer
three, or the Queen’s Consort, the Duke ^ and a

by Edward III, who made his son Duk
better memorialized, however, as c suffer by

The Dukes arc the only peers who ^

called ‘My Lord’ and addressed as ^ both he and his

a Duke-»d in fnnnal to remember .h.s

Duchessarc'YourGrace’.Notevery

fine distinction: 'Good n'onnnB-^ nc Coronation. No.'»>'‘

nntodncedtotheDnkeof Sntbertod«° . .geg pardon.

hissed his embarrassed S:mg ' b= Dnl« foil m .h= toe,

father,’ rejoined the child. y the Lord make ns truly

cned; Tot what tve ate to t ■ g,i„,ofsnffici=ntianlt

regards the Dukes as g... appellation

The Sove.e,gn,to.roS«^^„p,cial P..^«'.^“ ^
and style to be ’"o''^^ , beloved cousm . ^

‘Right trusty and as is often the a Duke and

the words ‘and 0°““ The by the Monarch

Member of the Pnvy Co'*”'",^^ that taken by m ^ ^

the wotus anu The bv the Monarch

Lend Chancellor, the Lord

THE DUKES

Sovereign^' betraying a Sovereign (i.e. for services to Pro-
testantism)} for being the bastard of a Sovereign [four of these still
exist, sporting the heraldic device for bastardy as proudly as any
rampant lion]} for having ancestors who served the State well} for
having an ancestor who was unfairly executed; for defeating,
subduing or otherwise taming the Scots or the Irish; for supporting,
or not opposing, parliamentary reform; for marrying a Duchess’.
The last on his list is the award of a dukedom foe ‘amassing, or
inheriting, or marrying into enormous landed wealth’ — |he Duke
involved was Hugh Lupus Grosvenor who, thanks to marriage,
inheritance and a well-developed business acumen, had, by 1S74,
amassed sufficient wealth to make even Queen Victoria appear
unpoverished by comparison. ‘My dear Westminster,’ the dying
Gladstone wrote to him (he was already the Marquess of
Westminster) on 17 February, ‘I have received authority from the
Queen to place a dukedom at your disposal and I hope you may
accept it. ’ The Marquess did so, and thus woimd up a series of
ducal awards that, so far as the current twenty-hve survivors ate
concerned, stretched back for four centuries.

There are not even likely to be twenty-five for very much longer.
The Dukedom of Ponland is tottering towards sudden extinction:
there are no further heirs now that both the seventh Duke and his
distant cousin, Major Sir Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck, who
succeeded in 1977 at the age of eighty-nine, childless, arc dead. His
heir, his brother William Benlinck, the former British ambassador
in Warsaw, had a son, but he died without children, too. The title
Duke of Newcastle seems similarly destined soon to disappear: the
present title-holder has only daughters, and his sole heir is a
bachelor who is over sixty. And although he is still eligible at fifty,
the ten th Duke of Atholl~one of the few Dukes to grace the House
of Lords with any regularity, and one of the most easily identifiable,
by his spectacularly large nose— seems bent on bachelordom; if he
remains unmarried the title wiU m theory pass to one of a number of
remote and elderly gentlemen, among whom are some distant
relations apparently well setUed in South Africa. That title may

11 be wrong >n n di»t no fasanaied female

Mr Turner may cjeaied « dukedom: Queen Mary Stuart only did to in
sovereign appears ° VTiHuun Aruie’adukedoma were political

conjunction with her tw Perhaps Turner was

or nuhtary, and j^^jugbshenevetolfered a dukedom lohtrgiJiie, John

jinking of Queen Vi fascinated her more than any other man.

THE DUKES

remain, but may leave the shores of the kingdom for some long lime
to come.

If the Atholl title left these shores for Africa, it would not find
itself alone. Two Dukes — Manchester and Montrose — have farmed
in Africa for decades, the latter having been a member of the
rebellious Smith Government in Rhodesia. The Duke of Bedford,
too, is a persistent expatriate: he lives in Paris at present, and flits
from Charles dc Gaulle airport to distant capitals — Peking, for
instance. The Duke has made over Woburn, his stately home, to his
son and heir: his dukedom is bound to return, unless his son flees
the coop as well.

The remainder of those living in the British Isles are
determinedly non-metropolitan. One, the Duke of Abercom, lives
in Northern Ireland, fairly well insulated from the miseries of the
place. Three, Norfolk, Richmond and Newcastle, live on the south
coast of England; one each in Cheshire (the new young Duke of
Westminster, Gerald), Norfolk (Grafton), Gloucestershire (Beau-
fort), Wiltshire (Somerset), and Berkshire (Wellington); two
(Marlborough and Leinster) in Oxfordshire. Vast stretches of
countryside in the English Midlands are considered imsuitable for
ducal habitation, and it is not until we come to the southern side of
the Pennines that we And the Dukes of Devonshire and Rutland
living in vast mansions in adjacent valleys in northern Derbyshire.
‘Our estates march together,’ says Devonshire, using the old term.
The estates, he means, share a common border, rurming along a
thousand-foot hillside up on the East Moor. The Dukedom of
Portland used to be based nearby, across to the east in the
Nottinghamshire flatlands around Worksop. Then as we go north
another hundred miles of Duke-free land: the ugly excrescences
(though from which many have made parts of their fortunes) of
Sheffield and Manchester and Barnsley and Rotherham provide
homes, so far as can be seen, for virtually no peers at all of any rank,
no matter how humble. And we have to wait until the far north of
England and the lovely old town of Alnwick before we come to the
many-towered castle that houses the Duke of Northumberland.

After that they appear thidt and fast: a ghetto of Dukes in the
Scottish borders — Buccleuch, Roxburghe, Sutherland; another of
the species, Hamilton, a few miW out of Edinburgh. Up in the
Highlands Atholl and Argyll hold sway, and the Duke of Fife lives
obscurely m the well-heeled region of Kincardineshire, near
Aberdeen.

THE DUKES

Not that their titles have a ''^th rccmtly.

Discounting the Duke of Bedford, w five of the Dukes

property in Bedford but no«l,ves ove«^^^
either live m, or have substantial P P pf Atholl

which they arc tnistakmly suppoK pf Nonhumberland is

livcsatBlairAthollmPerthshii^ ^^,^^^^l^^^jy county;
one of the most important fibres Argyll’s Inveraray

Roaburghe’sFloorsOstletsmhtsowneounty^rgy^^

Castle is similarly foursquare m fasmesses of

Westminster, whose father retired Cheshire, centres his

Northern Ireland, and who himself l.v« ■=“

enormous landholdings m invented merely to

For the rest, it is as though the Devonshire to

confuse. So difficult did it become vouth-west from their

disclaim any connection with ■’‘' ^* e„„p took at the patent

vast lands in Derbyshire that someon county wrongly— but

to see if a scrivener had spelled dte no^m ““'y of

he had not. ‘Duit Devon’, *'|f^^,g_by ducal standards,
Norfolk has precious httle land m Castle in Sussex. The

that is— and rules the roost from Richmond and 200

Duke of Richmond, fifty miles frotn part of the

fromRichmond, Yorkshite,haslan Devonshire’s is in

Duke of Rutland’s esute that Moitinghamshire. The

Derbyshire, though most of the res niiles both from the

Duke of Portland, whose old family sea (though he owns

Bill of Portland and Portland Square m ^ j^gntioned, the Duke of
the latter), lives in London. And of soil in the county of

Sutherland does not own a single squar ^ jal, the journalist’s

the same name. That all the mobility ofthchighesr-

Wife who is now the Countess. |3„j.gjies, that part of Not

ranking nobles that even the jeaf-wearing grandees,

tinghamshire once stiff with Duke of Portland dead, and

rates little mention: with the sev

D,vo»’ 1'^“’ .ddttl 'by munul covmi’.

was alTMdy m Earl of Devon, ““If •“

m » why Dfomh,™ «« b.™ I«“»

lands w«c u> that county-W**

THE DUKES

Welbcckunduked, not a one lives there now— the Scottish borders
have replaced the dull fields of Nottinghamshire as the best-loved
watering-hole for the finest specimens of the breed.

Discounting the Duke of Fife, a somewhat anomalous dukedom
created because of Royal marriage, the string of extant Graces, from
that of Norfolk to that of Westminster, encompass 391 years’ worth
of the grandest style of living history. We tend to think of our Dukes
as paramount rarities, splendid in title and fortune, supremely
arrogant and self-confident, strutting their great estates with an
easy grace, gently pursuing the vague interests of the fabulously idle
rich. How true that picture still is today can only be answered by
looking at the individuals more closely.

PART TWO

‘What shall we do about your driver?’ asked the Duke of
Devonshire. It said something about the courtly assumptions of the
highly tilled few that His Grace should assume that visitors to
Chatswonh's inner sanctum all came chauffeur-driven. Sadly,
though, it was all a mistake: 1 was driving a left-hand-drive car and
Henry, the butler, helped me out of what most people would rightly
assume was the passenger side. The shadowy figure glimpsed in the
assumed driving side was, in fact, my wife.

‘Oh gosh, 1 am so terribly sorry. So rude. How delightful to sec
you, my dear.’ (Henry had quite recovered his composure and had
need around the back of the car to let the lady out.) ‘What a most
pleasant surprise. You wilt come inside won’t you? And do stay for
luncheon.’ To Henry: ‘Tell them we’ll be three for luncheon.’ And
that was that. No argument. No embarrassment. Perfect recovery.
Faultless grace.

Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish, PC, MC, the eleventh Duke
of Devonshire, is said to be a snappy dresser, and photographs taken
of him scurrymg earnestly about as a government minister in the
196CS suggest he was a stickler for sartorial exactitude. Not any
onger, however. Pictures of him in the journals of the horse
w orld— the world that fascinates him most these days — show him in
c^losly worn tweed jackcu, mufllers and baggy trousers, precisely
me w ay he was dressed w hen wre met. All the buttons w ere on the
jacket, but it had somewhat ragged sleeves; the Viyclla shirt was
cotnforublc, but had seen better days. The red polka-dottcd

the dukes 97

ncckctchicrandthcbro»T.puUovcr.lhcs™iTcdsucd=sho«^^^

oal= beige corduroys, tousled and unpressed though they tnight
been, displayed the Duke preeisely as he would hke to be
displayed; comfortable and relaxed, family academic, faindy
buOTlic cultured, equipped with suflicient taste to arry the wMc
ensemble olfin any surroundings, and ever so slightly dotty, nc

^ -ittithaDDcncd.providcdancxcuscforhjmtolcUastory.

“mey loltked old, and probably were. They might well have been
the veL trousers he wore in dte last war; tt was the of

t « ihTf broucht the dukedom to him, and not to his elder

"at edTa^dfareewrappeduptoged^^

Mother, a b j ^ Marquess of Hartmgton (the

two yean his , ,i,le). who had married Kathleen

Devon Jitc ■ '^p,£sidc„,ia| family) and seemed set for

T as tititted Maior in the Coldsueam Guards dur-
t the war It became the custom for officers in the Eighffi Army
mg the and it became the custom for German

snffit to waed out British servicemen who wore the cloth,
snipers to wee a„ officer, was worth ten m serge,

assummg *at on September 1944, a sniper

bemg thot the Marquess of Hartington dead,

acting on otospcct of entiUement to brother Andrew,

instantly shift * M Italy as a Captain. Andrew was

“‘'^bvhls^ataltogOfficer.Thenewseame.hesaid.as
summonc y moment he had been preoccupied with

h““own fuiai^cial problems. The Devonshires were rough
ms own second son coming to the end of a

ptimogem t ,he difficulties of arranging a suitable

person^y himself with no fortune but noble name had

peacetim tmpleasantly on his horizon. William's

f bti fmuro, was aUred-though probably doubly

‘''Three vears before, while stiU a mere second son, Capum Lord
A H Cavendish had been married to one of the five
hinslv talented Mitford girls, the daughters of the violently
astonisn B j Redesdale, who is so horrifyingly caricatured in
o'^ ,p nf Lov^ by perhaps the most literate of his brilliant
f' h,“ , Nmcy How ffiis creaking ■>« autocrat and his weakly
“ mric wife managed to bring up the rebellious and hugely furu»'
girls is another tale altogether; Nancy became an

THE DUKES

accomplished writer, Jessica a sage observer of Americana, Unity a
friend of Hitler and his circle, and Diana the wife of Sir Oswald
Mosley— the last two both determined members of the Bntish
Union of Fascists. The baby of the gang, sweetest of all in the
photographs, was Deborah, *Debo‘, with her pale blue eyes and a
haunted beauty. While the pubescent girls prayed nightly for their
‘Mr Right’ to come along, Debo yearned out loud that hers would
be ‘the Duke of Right’.

When in 1941 he did eventually come he was a mere Lord
Andrew by courtesy: but soon the ghastly accident in Belgium
ensured that her wish came true. Debo is still enchantingly lovely,
and the couple, Duke and Duchess, are clearly, in an aristocratic
world where marriage and divorce are taken far less formally than in
the social horizons below, deeply fond of each other.

On this particular day the Duchess was away shooting, and the
house was quiet and peaceful. The Duke seemed almost lonely, a
little bored. His life certainly had been a good deal more active m
the past than it is today.

After succeeding in 1950— he heard about his father’s death
while on a trip to Australia— he had to abandon his hopes of
pursuing a political career in the House of Commons, even though
it would of necessity have had to have been a brief one since peers
were then firmly prohibited from sittingdn the Commons. So his
two attempts to win Chesterfield for the Tories, which had failed,
were in vain anyway. In the Lords he was considerably more active
than most of his fellows: durmg the mid-ipsos, when attendance
was well below 200, the Duke was there often: his interests were
mainly in the field of foreign affairs (it was, he sneered, and as a
consequence won some publicity, the membership of a ‘wicked
canaille’ who had suggested that ‘Israel attacked Egypt at our
suggestion’ at the time of the Suez crisis; strong inside-track
rhetoric for the time). For two years in the early 1960s he was a
junior Commonwealth Minister, and was promoted by his uncle,
the then Prime Minister, to be Minister of State at the Com-
monwealth Relations Office and a man responsible for the final
dismemberment of Empire. He represented the Prime Minister at
President Kennedy’s funeral and then, once the Tories were out of
office, retired to the signal boxes of the Establishment to keep his
mind gomg and his energies employed. He became Chairman of the
Royal Commonwealth Society, Chairman of the St Stephen’s Club,
Executive Steward of the Jocl»y Qub. A racing, shooting and

100 THE DUKES

and the world the Duke can see, should he lake one of his splendidly
successful racehorses up on to the moors above Chatswoith, is one
in which he would now have precious little influence. One suspects,
too, he has little interest now, and prefers to cultivate his interests as
a Duke, rather than anything else.

Apart from his immense landholdings in Derbyshire and
Yorkshire, he owns a great deal of the seaside resort of Eastbourne;
Barrow-in-Furness, the industrial city of the Lake District; and a
few houses in Carlisle. Oddly enough a house in which I spent many
years in that last town was until recently part of the Duke’s estates;^
Cavendish Terrace, one of a hundred British streets named after
him. His landholdings alone probably make him worth about £33
million and his urban rent roll, or the capital value of his entire mass
of brickwork, would probably double that fortune. And yet at
Chatsworth he doesn’t give the appearance of ownership: rightly so,
since in fact he pays rent for his quarters in the big house, and is a
tenant of his estate’s company. Not an unusual arrangement, and
one that, ignominious though it may sound, helps meet the
inevitably gigantic tax bill.

‘But I am very much against the rich pleading poverty, you know.
It IS a habit some of the landowners have fallen into. I am a rich man,
there’s no doubt about it. But I could be richer. I could sell up and
invest overseas; I could live overseas. The fact that 1 don’t says
something about my feeling for this place.’

He sits in a study crammed with stud books and newly bought
pictures and deep leather armchairs. A silver tray on one desk is
littered with bottles: the inevitable gins and Rawlings tonic water,
but some good whiskies (Famous Grouse the principal blend) and
some excellent malts from Campbeltown and Speyside. There was
soda water, but the bottled Malvern spring water was upstairs: he
did not ring for Henry or one of the footmen to bring the water, but
rushed upstairs, all flapping tweeds and perspiration, and returned
five minutes later, triumphant, with a jug in his hands. Such staff as
he has, receive, it appears, the most elegantly polite treatment. His
secretary at Chatsworth is called Patience, and he speaks of her as
gently as one of that name deserves.

T^re are all sorts of oddiues in his house that he loves to point
out. One door of the study, and several in libraries upstairs, are false
sets of bookshelves, such that when closed the room is all books and
win ows, an unspoiled panorama of leather, gold and vistas of
par an . The trick of the old library masters was to indicate the

THE DUKES

lOI

location of the doorway by a series of urbane literary puns. Thus,
the false books on the door have titles that ring oddly true, but only
oddly: ‘Dipsomania, by Mustafa Swig’; ‘The Open Kimono, by
Seymour Hair’; and a set of Johnsonian travels across the Western
Isles with titles like 'Skye, by McCleod*. Not all arc puns; some, like
'Homer’s Craniology of the Pygmies', are just plain silly.

It is in this cramped old study, surrounded by books by Rudyard
Peddling and Hoo Flung Dung, by bottles of Grouse and lists of
horses at his stud farms, and with great Bronte-esque views of
Pennine hills sweeping away to the north, that the Duke likes to live.
He writes: his book on Park Top, his best-loved and most successful
racehorse, did well in the racing circles in which he was welt known.
He performs his functions as Chancellor of Manchester
University — which consist principally of writing letters — and he
worries about the future of Chatsworth, which loses ^100,000 a
year, even though it has been open to the public for two centuries
and is one of the most famous of the nation’s great houses.

‘But my problems are realty voluntary ones. I could duck them all
if I wanted to. It is very unbecoming to complain. Our losses here
are very substantial; the new taxes are making life very difficult for
the big landowners. And yet 1 believe passionately that what 1 am
doing here in Derbyshire is important for the people and for the
county. I have a duty to see things are not changed too violently.’
Why, one wondered, did he take that duty so seriously, especially
since there was a possibility that public disapprobation of the titled,
privileged and wealthy minority might become too strong for
comfort?

'Frankly, 1 like it. My family has been here for a long time
[Chatsworth first sported a grand bouse for the Cavendishes in
1 552; the present house, built under the personal supervision of an
enthusiastic first Duke, is three centuries old]. I don’t think I ought
CO cake the step of changing the family habits of so great an age. In
sum, I live here for quite selfish reasons. The duty is always thereat
the back of my mind, but what prevents me pushing off to the
Bahamas or somewhere like that is thar a man could hardly want for
anything more pleasant than 10 be able to live in this perfectly lovely
house m this wonderful park, in England. A man like me, anyway.'

Besides, he did have responsibilities to people. The Chatsworth
Estates looked after about 400 people including present employees,
former employees, relations and old-age pensioners. It is not
dithculi to find stones of miusiice and feudal cruelty on almost any

102

THE DUKES

large estate,’ but Andrew Devonshire tries to take pride in the very
low degree of criticism from his tenants, or from his employees, past
and present. Patience was asked to nm up a list of the number of
employees as of January 1977, and came up with figures to show
that 133 people were employed by the Duke in Derbyshire alone;
102 of these were married, and an additional 76 children were
believed to belong to the various families. Of the employees, 86 had
houses provided by the estate, free of rent (though the weekly wage
was doctored to account for the provision of the housing, as one
would expect). Of the people living on the estates 109 were counted
as old-age pensioners, and of these, 90 were given houses— houses
which, like Albert Hodkin’s Brook Cottage in Beeley, cost about a
pound a week in rent. In addition there were 1 1 1 farm tenants, who
paid the Duke rent for buildings and land, and made what they
could of the acreage for themselves. In Derbyshire alone there are
three post offices, two pubs, the Cavendish Hotel, a mountaineering
club, a pottery, a smithy, two schools and two shops all operating in
cottages and houses owned by the Duke. It seemed, as he suggested,
a considerable responsibility: ‘More than the average factory
owner. And I think the people we house here are happier and more
secure. It’s a country life. They are taken care of by the Estates from
the moment they are bom until the day they die. They feel great
affection for the land and the estates, and 1 don’t in all honesty think
that’s an exaggeration.

You know, I was on the BBC, the wireless, the other day, and I
made a mistake. I told the interviewer 1 supposed I felt guilty
having all this land and all this wealth and all these people working
for me. Well, I thought about it coming home that night, and I don’t
ffiink I ought to feel any guilt at all. I’ve done nothing wrong. I
inherited a property, and 1 am doing my best with it. A great
number of people benefit— and yet we are attacked nowadays to
such an extent that I tell people that I feel guilty. Well, I don’t. I
should never have said any such thmg. It was an accident of birth,
that’s all.’ And remembering Hanington, and the German sniper,
an accident of death besides.

Luncheon was a marvel of simple felicity. A small round table in a
ong gold-and-white room, half shut off with a black lacquered
screen to keep us warm. The room itself had a Rubens portrait of

Pn f"* that ID an my iraveli acrosj the landed estate* of

and ScoUand I did not come aero** one example of feudal cruelty. The press

in Britain insists, though, that rt occur*.

104

THE DUKES

that precise ritual all their lives, and find it unworthy of any remark
at all.

The Blue Drawing Room, where the family relaxes each evening,
would be almost chintzy in its cosiness, were it not for the splendid
Reynolds and Canaletto, the Battoni and the Sargent on the light
blue silk wallpaper that gave the room its name. Only over the door
is there a touch of modernity: half a dozen portraits by Lucien
Freud, whom the present Duke regards as an artist worthy of his
patronage and who, in consequence, is enjoying success that might
not have come so easily. Artistic patronage seems less of a hobby of
present peers than is artistic collection (or disposal, since so many
paintings have to go on the market to settle death-duty bills; one of
Devonshire’s Poussins was sold in 1981 for nearly ,^2 millions), but
the Duke believes it should be another pan of noblesse oblige, one to
which he gladly subscribes.

He is a shy man, in the sense that he appears glad to have his
opinions sought and diffident in the manner by which he offers
them. One imagines he abhors loud and tasteless behaviour, but is
not wholly intolerant of it. He is not as rigidly conservative as so
many of his colleagues are supposed to be: he voted for the abolition
of hanging; he doesn’t hunt, though hasno disapproval of those who
do. His letters ate models of urbanity: one recent brief note from
him has phrases and words that exemplify studied gentility: ‘thank
you so much’, ‘charming’, ‘quite enormously’, ‘do be good enough’,
delightful’, ‘warm regards’, ‘yours ever’. He signs himself
Devonshire’ imtil he gets to know you, then ‘Andrew Devonshire’.

As we shall explore later, there is much to be said for and against
the ownership of land and wealth on the scale of a man like the Duke
of Devonshire.

Many find his notions of feudalism' unpalatable, and his vast
forties indefensible. Cynics will say that the tenants and workers
are in fact unhappy, and that they arc afraid to speak out for fear of
being turfed out. All this may be true, though at first and second
examination it does not appear to be so. What remains undeniable is
that, if all peers and privileged nobUity are bad, those behaving like
the Duke of Devonshire arc probably the least bad; and if they are
goo , en men like the inhabitant of present-day Chatsworth are
quite certainly among the best.

re of tenure with tights that

” bo* *Kk. of the bargam. Strict feudalism
England by the Statute Quia Eniptores in the thitteenth century.

THE DUKES 105

In the realms of Cotswold Gloucestershire are the 52,000 acres of
Badminton Estates, the Duke of Beaufort’s prmcipa] landholding.
Sir Henry Hugh Arthur Fitzroy Somerset, KG, PC, GCVO, the
tenth Duke, is principally distinguished for his close friendship
with the Royal Family, with all the concomitant advantages that
brings, and the steadfast mainteitanceof his position as the Greatest
Huntsman in England.

Arguments for and against foxhunting rage with extraordinary
passion across the British Isles. It is arguable that more temper is
wasted discussing the methods of controlling the island’s fox
population than in debating the rights of the elderly or the very
poor: certainly people are angered more by hunting than by
hereditary privilege. The Duke, the pre-eminent practitioner of the
sport, is thus regarded as the arch-villain of the piece by those
enrolled in the League Against Cruel Sports, and like bodies. The
League ceitainly has done its cause precious little good in recent
years', its extreme methods and its aiiraaion of hooligans who
merely enjoy participating in the disruptive japes used to foil
huntsmen have turned much public opinion, previously on the side
of the fox, very much into no man’s land.

For a man with two essentially domestic inieresis— the horse and
his land^the Duke has been the recipient of a quite extraordinary
number of other titles, and legions of colourful foreign orders. No
doubt his membership of the Royal Family by virtueof his marriage
to the late Queen Mary’s niece (he was also for forty-two years a
Great Officer of the Royal Household as Master of the Horse, with
precedence over all other Dukes)’ played some small part in his
harvest of the European glitter. As for titles recognized on the
British scene, this sole descendant of the Plantagenets (he can trace
his line back to John of Gaunt, no less) is also the Marquess and Earl
of Worcester, Lord Botetourt, Lord Herbert de Herbert and Baron
Herbert of Raglan, Chepstow and Gower. He holds any number of
local dignities: he has been Lord Lieutenant — the Monarch’s
representative— m Gloucestershire and Bristol since 1931; he holds
the Royal Victorian Chain, a truly splendid gift from the Throne;
he has been Lord High Steward of Bristol, Gloucester and
Tewkesbury, Hereditary Keeper of Raglan Castle . . . the list goes
on almost without end. So far as foreign orders are concerned he has
that of Leopold, Faithful Service, House of Orange, Si Olav,

' The Matter of the Horae hai overall retpoQubihoe* for the Ro}al Household
'oui oriloon'.andsoiocludeialUraDipononSuteViiitabyforeiga Heads of State.

THE DUKES

io6

Dannebrogj North Star, Menelik II and Christ, ensuring him free
dinners at the embassies of Belgium, Holland, Norway, Denmark,
Ethiopia and Pottugalj* and he is one of the few Knight Grand
Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order — an award handed out
by the Queen to her personal favourites at Court. An immodest
amount of international decoration, one might think, for a man with
a record of essentially British, and bucolic, achievement.

The Duke’s reputation rests on his ability as a huntsman, and his
family’s prowess in the field for the past several generations. His
Bentley, as is well known, has the initials MFH i — which prompted
the owner of the car registered FOX i to write to the Duke via the
columns of The Timei, asking, iokingly, to be assured that there
would be no ‘unseemly incident’ should the two vehicles meet. The
Duke, whose public sense of humour is a little limited, dismissed
the letter by pointing out that his Hunt went nowhere near the
factory that owned the car. The Hunt, while still massive and
impressive— rarely more so than in the days when Beaufort would
ride at the head of it on a frosty Cotswold morning— has been badly
hurt by the construction of the South Wales motorway; the
construction of motorways often places conservationists firmly on
the same side as huntsmen like Beaufort, which perhaps makes for
an uncomfortable partnership.

The Duke is neither an ardent conservationist nor a man
generally happy to ally himself with those who dislike his chosen
sport: he is, in truth, something of a loner, a man who gains his
support from local ruddy-faced farmers and those from farther
afield who would be followers of the hunt. All of which is not to
sneer at the Duke or his kind: it is simply to note that he presents an
advertisement for ducal attitudes which is at considerable variance
from that presented by, say, a man like the Duke of Devonshire.
While Andrew Devonshire is a lover of elegance and wit, art and
intellect, politics and responsibility; ‘Master’ (for himting)
Beaufort would not disagree with a thumb-nail sketch of himself as
an ebullient sponsman with little time for the effete in whose
company Devonshire would feel quite happy. If Devonshire’s
friends would tend to be political dandies, Beaufort’s would be the
horsey members of the county set. Each man believes, no doubt.

It IS said that the Order of Kutusov. First Oast, entitled the holder to free travel
00 the Moscow Underground Railway the honours given to the Duke of Beaufort do
not. literally, permit him to dme « foreign enOsassies.

THE DUKES

107

tat contribution to the

public opinion is starting to might not be too

hetetiitary nobility s ™'™“f. „^^^jDevonshites of this land

reckless to suppose that It coul k* more kindlv disposed.

to whom the public at large mig t Queen. Her Majesty, a

The Duke of Beaufort, Badminton at

faithful patron of the county set,!

the time of the famous Three* y ^ jjsti and remarkably
there is no denying that the ^ grounds of one of the

beautiful happening, held in *e ^ ^hile playing host to Her

,country’smostelegantPallad.^hous«.Wh.lep^

Majesty ta Dube is as P^<>“ “ ^ "hh raW when he
monarchical rectitude. In *957 normally flies from the

found tat the Royal Standari was missingl a

Badminton flagstaff when the Que ^ standard was

functionary had forgotten to sm ^d^

placed on the next down exp > , . . -j^ ^he Great

station that a former Duke price tor being allowed to

Western Railway Company as part of the pr«^

bring iron horses, rather than r . rime the crowds had

standard was fluttering tto® * 1 “ staff V Should the

gathered for the first day of the ven , jucky; Badminton

Lstake occur again the M who

station was closed down m 19 ^ bv the taxpayer just a

luxury provided for ta Duke UtSe with the

little hard to swallow. H.s Grace put p

railway chiefs, but lost, to his lasting III, a niece

The Dnke and Dnchess. she a fore.cept for the

of the late Queen Maty, live o'""' They have not had

servants and a pet parrtn ca e cousin, bom in 1928-

children, and the heir is therefore s„„ivor of innumerable

Since ta Duke, though a fit ^ *a "o lesser mormls, is now
hunting accidents that would ffo" j ^ mis extraordinarily

over eighty it must be Ptosu”'" ™ man half a century this

lengthy ducal tenancy IS in sigM. Badminton: one

robust Nimrod has ptesid successor, the eleventh Duke

cannot help but wonder whe^e ^ ^

of Beaufort, will fit *^° 5 ® ® «nhilitv than it was when ‘Master
perhaps less ^Va^™' ■“

Beaufort assumed his roocs

THE DUKES

io8

One dull March day in I97i» the Conservative Member of
Parliament for Edinburgh Nonh> an indubitably Scottish-looking
countryman known to his friends and foes alike as ‘Johnnie
Dalkeith’, was riding his hunter out on the low hills near Selkirk
when suddenly his horse stumbled. 'I remember pitching over and
down on to the grass, and then the horse fell on top of me. There was
a sharp cracking sound from behind me, and I could not feel my legs
or my feet. I knew I had broken my back. There could be no doubt
of it.’

He lay there for fifteen minutes. ‘The moment I realized what I
had done I tried to adjust mentally to what lay ahead. I thought to
myself; your life is going to be totally changed — wheelchairs,
walking sticks, no driving, no politics maybe; you’d better come to
accept that pretty quickly. And after five minutes’ thinking along
those lines I decided there was not much else 1 could do but come to
terms with the new facts. Then I lay back on the grass and had ten
minutes of quite blissful peace, before they found me and carried
me off.’

The idyll ended when other, more distraught members of the
Hunt found the injured Dalkeith, lifted him on to a five»barred gate
and carried him off to hospital, where he stayed for the next
month— cheering himself up a bit by giving up smoking. The
convalescence lasted through most of that summer, and by October
the Member for Edinburgh North was being wheeled back up the
Tory aisles in the House of Commons. 'Splendid chap, splendid
chap,’ murmured the Member of Fife Central and patted Dalkeith
on the shoulder as he was rolled past.

It is not easy to decide which is more remarkable: the total
sarig^oid of the burly Dalkeith during those agonizing moments on
me Selkirk turf; or the greeting from the Member from Fife
entra . Perhaps the latter — since the Member concerned was the
scourge of the nation’s titled rich, Mr Willie Hamilton, and
Jo^ie Dalkeith’ was more accurately known as the Earl of
Dalkeith, heir to two of the grandest dukedoms in the nation, those
of Bucc euch and Queensberry. Butin fact Willie Hamilton, though
he would have all Dukes burned at the suke, the blaze tindered by
Monarchs^d fuelled by a mixture of aU the other ranks of peerage,
» ^ y make an exceptioc for the man who, in 1971, was

rr>.> t ® doubt he is an exceptional man, a

m er 0 one of Scotland’s greatest and most reputable families,
me discomfort of appearing, chanbound, in the House of

THE DUKES

Commons, was only going to last Jot a ch!^g= S

tho eighth Duke of Bucckuoh dted. Mkotth ^

name and assume my tadividual in all of Europe.-

the greatest amountoflandhedbym^

More than a quarter of a ^ Jhs, together with a

come under the direct treasures in the

clutch of some of the most beau furniture to rival any

land, and a /“’"‘I"®- ,, of Buocleuch is t^^

collection on the face of the eart in nrivate hands, and

owner of the only Leonardo deViocipam private

presides over an empire which, y “ accommodation with

suzerainty that has not been ,i,e Dukes of

the attitudes of this century. T ^ ^ plateau of

Buccleuch is to experience the enno ^^mcnis and political

privilege and excellence, far aTsunder.

manoeuvres that Jd „„re houses than any other

A century ago the fifth Duke na Pcmnlantig Castle,

Briton; of the grander «i«es g-anxholm Hall, Boughton
Dalkeith Palace, Bowhill, Eildon «“"> ® pawston Hall. Ditton
House. Beaulieu Abbey, “°“T‘a S on the Thames

House, Monugu House m *'■” , fjw less than this

near Richmond’. The present D --ndhalls Dalkeith is loaned

impressivearray:ofd.eSco.tishcasto»dW^D^^^^

to a computet company and th entourage,

three grandest are months in each year:

In fact he stays at each of the in Selkirk; for the summer

from January to April he js at ’ ^ ^ f^r the autumn he is at

he is at Boughton, m la^rig Castle, near Dumfries,

the magnificent pink fantasy o transports the family from

Ap=rfectlyorgmizcdlugist.cidm,cb.nctr»^^^^^

caravanserai to caravanserai wi In the houses, incomparable

only the Leonardo travels wit ' j'.-easure remain to delight the
collections of paintings, fumitur of the public who, in I976»

Duk=andDuch=ss-md.h»cm.m^ s°^

were iirstpetmittedaccesstojc horn

That visitors are being allowed ^ou^“J j, Uc for

thattheplateau'sedgeiscoromg w ^^le to

long that the fortunes of this t

Duke of Buccleuch

THE DUKES

survive unscathed: but, public or no> the world of this Duke is still
quite unlike that of any other.

At Bowhill, probably the least attractive of the Buccleuch
mansions, it had been snowing hard. The house squatted
humourlessly on the hillside above the Eltrick Water, grey and
Manderley-like against the white helds. On the winding, gravelled
drive up to the front door a party of guns strolled by — businessmen
from Edinburgh, down for a day’s shooting in woods that have
provided good sport since the earliest days of the realm. Indeed, it
was somewhere deep in the Ettrick Forest that the name by which
the Duke is principally known had its origins: a man named Scott,
acting as a hunting ranger for the King of Scotland, seized a
cornered buck by the antlers after it had turned on his master’s
hounds, and threw it over his shoulders into a deep ravine, a
‘cleuch’. The ravine came to be known as the Buckcleuch, and Scott
was awarded a regional appendage to his clan name— Scott of
Buccleuch. The land around the Ettrick Water has remained with
the Scotts ever since, and the first house was construaed on the site
of the present Bowhill early in the eighteenth century. What
glowers across the valley now, a house disliked more than a little by
the present Duke and his son, the new Earl of Dalkeith, is a
structure that dates from the beginning of the nineteenth century—
a time when many asylums were constructed along very similar
lines.

The first sign of the Duke’s present infirmity comes at the front
door of Bowhill. Two wooden runners, built to take the wheels of
his electrically motorized chair, slope out on to the driveway so that
the Duke can cruise around the gardens or take to his car. He likes to
drive a curious eight-wheeled vehicle known as an ‘Argocat’ when
touring his estates. It is advertised as a *go-anywhere’ car, ideal for
foresters, keepers and stalkers; the Duke, like his father, is not a man
to stand on ceremony and happily chums around the mud and bog
of his lands in a vehicle that would normally suit only ducal
employees. But he does drive a normal car — a hand-controlled
Mini; his only concession to his injury is a red flag he keeps in the
glove compartment. ‘If I break down I hang it out and someone is
sure to stop and see what’s the matter. Anyway, I’m fairly well
known around here.’

After the Polish butler — the old Duke’s valet and chauffeur, kept
on out of affcCTion and, coinddeatally, lo reinforce the Duke’s
arguments about landownership (85 per cent of Polish land is still in

THE DUKES

he likes to say, nodding to the butler for

Sr^thasbeenhls^^^^^^^

re^^ahSenong—

closing door, stop, release

turn, put chair '7™;"^^h^dle„„„ayth^^^^
door, into forward gear, g ^rher men might have legions of

behind, dose it and P™"' ' ° j, ^ something for the way

liveried flunkies to perform *eta*. y _^^

the present Duke was reared that he does

he must. touch and spartan, with a long sail

He is an imposmg fisot^tU. t^^ gh^ ^

of a nose and thinning s^ y ug,;^,ing any temptation to sink

pulloversandpressedwillsla^, h

into a quite . o„ showing a visitor everything

though it must be dreadfully alj. The Madonna and

in his house. The Leonardo, of » ^ j away on its own;

the Yamtuinder, a tiny, the quite priceless portrait

splendid Reynolds “ ^hfch would be the last painting

ofElizabcth, Duchess ofMon g * fortunes led to a wholesale
to go if a sudden decline m j^^ugh, Claude Lorrain; an
disposal of the Canaletto and several scenes of

intricate pamtmg of Whitcna ^ jle loves, he says, the

Venice by his contempor^, them quite liberally to museums
treasures in his houses, len mg delighting in his decision,

and art galleries across the wor people to walk through his

taken comparatively recently, to allow p

properties. enough, the French furniture

If the art other houses is the envy of the

amassed at Bowhill and the ^

world. Disputes arose ezi y entire estate and contents of

Rosebery was being forced Buzzard— contents that were

his house, Mentmore, ^ oiUections of French furniture in

said to mclude one of the ^^^ess of journalists, easily able to
Britain. One suspects tMt afternoon from their offices in

travel to Mentmore and a sympathetic press ueaiment

Fleet Street, had much to do _ suggestion that the

the Roseberys received tor furniture might have

miuon would 'lose' eprwetes bo*

THE DUKES

II2

become somewhat less strident had anyone cared to point out that
the Buccleuch collection, incomparably finer than not only
Rosebery’s, but also that in the Louvre, was likely to stay in Bntain
for generations to come. So the Louis XIV Boulle commode, the
Louis XV kingwood writing tables, the ancient Boucher clocks, the
Aubusson tapestry-covered chairs, the jardinieres and the
marquetry card tables, the Meissen (from Saxony) and the Cary
globes— all will stay at Bowhill, thanks largely to the financial
foresight of the Duke’s father; when he died in 1973
Government was deprived of £io million in death duties.

In great houses it is invariably a single object that strikes the
visitor as truly remarkable, rather than a mighty collection or a
display of special charm. At Chatsworth many are struck by the
witty trompt-Vail violin, which appears to hang behind a door in
one of the music rooms but is actually painted on it. At Bowhill one
comes away haunted by memories of one of the most magnificent
pieces of silver ever created. It is a great cistern— or wine cooler-
standing foursquare on a plinth carved from a solid block of coal
from one of the Duke’s mines at Dalkeith; from handle to ornately
carved handle (both in the shape of rearing horses) the brute
measures nearly five feet; it has the arms of the Duke of Argyll
carved inside on the base. Itis solid silver, witha 1711 hallmark and
fashioned by one Benjamin Pyne. And it weighs no less than 130
pounds — more than nine stone of exquisitely carved silver, once
gracing the British Ambassador’s residence in Madrid, and worth
more than the elusive fortune earlier granted by King Charles I to
the then Argyll in the form of what is still supposed by many fortune
hunters to be m the treasure chest of a great galleon lost beneath the
swirling water of the Western Isles. ‘I think before all those divers
go dou-n looking for the Argyll treasures,’ says the Duke, ‘they
ought to come over to Bowhill.’

The Duke, presiding from the very pinnacle of privilege, has

takenagreat deal of criticism from the press in the past, and dislikes

giving interviews. He is thus little known outside the immediate
policies of his great estates, and prefers to keep things that way. He
ukes those few meetings he has with outsiders very seriously
indeed: he had prepared four pages of notes, in a neat and elegant
hand, for our long-sought encounter. They arc worth quoting in
full, since they indicate the defensive attitudes struck by even the
most confident of the nobility.

There is a tendency abroad to think of the existence of the Dukes

113

the dukes

md Earls, wkh their large

lead to Communism. Yet the expen Marquesses and

a community where there are mo fewest

Earls per square mile than here in the Scottish

Socialists. You really have to look for ^ and

borders. On the other hand m j bclt-the Socialists

aristocrats with estates are fewest

and Communists thrive. exoericnce of political

‘This theory is amplified by pe elections— not

doorstep campaigning over fourteen y theti

in die lush pastures of the

contained some of Europe s -vsnetofcathcrmyownnest.

thatlwas less suspect than many of secKmg feathered, but more

psrhaps because it was Sodalhn' by “y™ ”

important because it was clear deprivation, slums, lack

eradicate the toot cauaes ot „,ributing to discontent,

opportunity and the many me aristocracy all live on

Vr. is a popular misconce^^^<“^,^._ footin' »d

huge estates devoting “ ^ important part of estate

iishin’ Fat from ''-“'*°“*H5°„a„i2ed activity tented out

lEe, it is mote normally a highly oe8a»>

syndicates on a eonmictcialbasi^ ^^j,ge,landowning i

■Because land is so limited and pop^l"^^ ^e land, md

a most serious other business it has a vY

ensuring multiple use of It. y.. and herds arc a lifetime ’

long-term nature; fertility. ^ ...one hundred and forty j

ctopsoftteesanythingfromfortylo^^'^,^ „aeds exlt^y

more. Planting high-quality ’ panning several
lona-term olanning and contmuityjP ^g„„ps of farms

more. Planting high-quahty ’ panning several g

long-term planning and astmes wi* Bt™P" able

this is crucial to success. eupied f“-” -“'f “

far better placed than smg e ja to say. the na-jon

ptoblems of multiple land “^^nning. forestry, oonsetva i ^
of the often conflicting ““““ and amenity and spott^em

landscape protection, puhli ^ managed estate. ® p

all best be blended in one “ „d balanced develop^

asf.,astos.ythatd.ecomp.eh® estates l*e th^

me countryside is only have served

■Perhaps . am “dtbof adesnoyeto„a„

ordinary seaman on in four times an

wartime, to have been clcctea

Gardner to a ball-

THE DUKES

II4

(He did not actually mention those last facts in conversation.)
Talk was a total defence of tlie propnety of mighty landowner-
ship along much the same lines as outlined in his notes: Dukes keep
out Socialists, arc possessed of the long-term view essential to the
best development of the British countryside and arc, like Guinness
(the family of which has, nanirally, been ennobled too). Good For
You. And it is a remarkable fact that, since Tolpuddle and the
Luddites and the Captain Swing riots, there have been precious few
disturbances in the rural fastnesses of Great Britain — the fasmesses
of the Dukes and Marquesses, Earls and Viscounts, and the lowly
Barons all. Landed nobility is essentially an immovable object, and
yet the areas of the country well settled by peers— Wiltshire,
Perthshire, the Scottish Borders and rural Oxfordshire— are
regions without strong Socialist movements, despite the temptation
that the resident squires and lairds have presented for so long.

Why does the International Socialist Movement not blockade
Bowhill, pillage Drumlanrig or kidiup the Duchess? How, in so
rapidly changing a society, can a vastly wealthy Duke drive alone in
the Scottish countryside with perfect impunity, assured in the
knowledge that no one would want to waylay him with arguments,
or worse, about the evils of the system he supposedly represents? Is
It that the British arc unusually tolerant of their Tsars? Are they
ignorant of their existence? Or do they know that, so far as the
bucolic denizens of Perthshire and Wiltshire, the Borders and
Oxfordshire are concerned, the sound of protest would be quickly
and effectively stilled? And if the answer is the latter — why? Does
the Duke of Devonshire so satisfy his workers and his tenants that
they will happily vote Tory year after year to preserve the status
quo — one in which they own no land, pay fealty, know their
standing, observe the niceties of feudalism, touch their forelocks
when necessary and, like Albert Hodkin, refer to ‘His Grace’ or
‘Her Grace’ as naturally as they might say ‘Father’ or ‘Mum’? Why
do the people admire the Duke of Bucdeuch— why tolerate him still,
bearing in mind he can command a fortune at a flick of his fingers
that the inhabitants of five and a half villages' in his ownership
could not raise in a lifetime? The questions are disturbing, and go to
the heart of the debate that smoulders beneath all discussion over

, “ Nonhatnpionjhwc: Wbe»ilcy, Wirkwn, Grafton Underwood,

La tile Oakley .Newton and half ol GaddujBwm. Ntore than 200 house* are run by ihi*
^^eni of Buccleuch E*utei Ud. the company the present Duke’s father set up

THE DUKES

Ii6

herd of cattle— unlike Chillingham Castle, a few miles away over
the Cheviots in Northumberland. There the seat of the Earls of
Tankerville boasts the sole remaining herd of wild white cattle in
the British Isles’— but not the Earl, sad to say. He lives in San
Francisco.

The Duke, who married in 1953 — breaking the precedent of
generations of Buccleuchs by marrying completely outside the
nobility, though into the distinguished Western Islands chieftainly
family of McNeill— is well endowed with heirs: Richard, the Earl of
Dalkeith, can expect to rise to the dukedom one day. When he does
it will no doubt be a sobering thought that, as well as having to take
charge of the grandest estates, the iinest collections and the noblest
houses in Europe, he will also assume a bewildering variety of titles.
He will become Marquess of Dumfriesshire, Earl of Buccleuch,
Dalkeith, Drumlanrig and Sanquhar, Viscount of Nith, Torthor-
wald and Ross, Lord Scott of Buccleuch, Whitchester and Eskdale,
Lord Douglas of Kinmont, Middlcbie and Domock, in Scotland;
Earl of Doncaster and Baron Scott of Tindall, in England. (Sir Iain
Moncreiffe, as Albany Herald, had to recite this intimidating list
from memory at the old Duke’s funeral in 1973— a task he
performed with nary a single slip.) He will also be entitled to add his
supporters to one of the richest and most impressive coats of arms to
be seen— and one that tells the significant details of the dukedom’s
origins. The coat of arms is quartered, with the arms of King
Charles II in the upper left-hand setting. The Caroline arms are, of
course, similar to the present Royal coat of arms, except for the
inclusion of the French fleur-dc-lis in two of the quarterings. But
the Buccleuch quarter has a narrow white band running across it
from upper right to lower left: it has been ‘debruised’, as the
heraldic jargon has it, ‘by a baton sinister argent’: the historic
representation that the otfspring awarded the particular quarter was
the natural child’ of Charles II— ‘children of the mist’ of that
libidinous monarch endmg up the holders of no fewer than four of
the dukedoms existing today. To sport a baton sinister over a
Caroline coat of arms, as do the Dukes of Si Albans and Grafton, or
a brodurc compony, like the Duke of Richmond, is regarded now as
the highest of honours. ‘Grace by the Grace of such mothers’,
Swinburne wrote, ‘as brightened the bed of Kmg Charles.’

The supporters to the arms of the eighth Duke of Buccleuch were

’The Dukeof iluniltOQ 11 preKmngancauivitent itrsin of Cidzow VThice catlle
*< ucfinoiLlove

THE DUKES

1 17

two women ‘richly attired “ o£ three

conducted ““= ''“^^'^“'^TtL.mlizinBly half-naked: ‘two
Lyon’s approval, and downwards, in blue kittles

female figures, habited from the ^ uncovered, around

gadteredupat^eknees ^ arms^-i^

the shoulders flowing m present Duke is in any way an

hand’. It is nor, one ^'f;j'd““against calling the outflr

admirer of cheerful imlgarity *• j j Activities’ beeause of

tunning his houses .^'“‘Xs vague plans for forming

theslightlyrudeacron^,anddro^^^h« v^®^ P

a ’National Union of D“''“ of their antiflue habits

But precisely why the a“I>P of their under-robes azure,

vert, and ”^'*'7="'; ' *“"y„les gathered up unto the thighs is
or, heaven torfend, thei . j„sjpie young man, given to

not yet knoim. Richard Dalke^

“d^rrial" - - - best Of

'“Sly weTh“ld5la«™“'”‘”P"'P'^

Bukesokccleuchhav^^^^

Prince of the Ausin ^

Undon, at ^urt, estates. ’How oddl’ replied die

Uincc. That IS ' jpHucncel' the IJuccleuchs are not.

Esterhazys arebereft of thm

Still, one a“ap“ ^ ancestor, the first Duke of

rr IXrm w which die Buceleuch. are, in theory.

entitkd“ He fell foul of the Monarch of the day and Wat ezecuted-
wiS a blunt aae Three times the axeman tried, fai in, each time to
sever the neck of the nobleman. Fina Uy . to ifliate the agonies of the
Duke, the executioner ''''3'"' » Wfe.

Monmouth’s saddle and «‘ll at

Bowhill-the saddle on a bfc-sizc horse moulds f,„tn pij^jg
Dukes of Buccleuch and Queensberry are nut unc» to forget their

THE DUKES

Ii8

ancestry, and appear to be bent on sparing themselves from the
creeping evils of Socialism in the manner that Monmouth so sadly
failed to do in the time of James II.

PART THREE

The trial of Patricia Hearst, who was accused of co-operating wiA
her terrorist captors in carrying out a bank robbery in California in
1974, was a costly affair. America’s highest-priced lawyer took the
brief in what was to become one of the most celebrated crimes and
subsequent court cases of the century: the details are well known,
and are not relevant to the British peerage, save for the single fact
that the case cost the Hearst family a great deal of money. When
they were meeting these bills they found it convenient to sell a few
items of value they had accumulated over the years. One such was a
set of china, made in England in the eighteenth century, and
decorated with the crowned heart and the three white stars on blue
of the great Scots family of Douglas. They were willing to part with
the set for S8,ooo, and, for the fifteenth Duke of Hamilton, 6,000
miles away in the great, grey Scottish castle of Lennoxlove, the sale
came at a most propitious moment. An agent who lives in New York
and keeps a weather eye on any British heirlooms up for sale in
America saw the Hearst sale and snapped up the china service: it
arrived back at the castle late in 1976, well in time for the Gathering
of the Clans on 17 April, when all family treasures from Gretna
Green to the far tip of Dunnet Head were due to be on proud
display.

The ducal house of Douglas Hamilton provides a family better
known for their romantic and occasionally bizarre history than for
even their great present-day distinctions, such as the VC, the
Cabinet Ministership and the boxing championship that have come
of late. Consider, for instance, that there was in the family a young
man given the unfortunate name of Lord Anne Hamilton, in honour
of Queen Anne but to the fellow’s presumed deep embarrassment;
that the family from whom the Hamiltons bought Lennoxlove had
provided the original model for Britannia, and had named the house
after her— the Duchess of Richmond and Lennox; that there
was a Duke of Hamilton sufficiently eccentric to order a syenite
sarcophagus to be buried in and then order his servants to ‘double
me up’ w hen they found, as he was dying, that he was too long for it

THE DUKES ^

(he had to have his feet gJiMm^Saabeth

modest’ (this from Horace W P ^ , jj^auched Hamilton

Gunning could so capttvate that eventually

thathemartiedheratmi^g d „„ed head on the

gave her more peerage dignities than any

Le of the Earth-all these facts T" ““ “'i. 4 ofan

the Hamiltons, the pre™“ Angus Douglas Hamilton

anticlimax, then, to find the pre oassionatc interest in

to be an extremely normal young m being continually

ancient motorcycles and a beautiful** who IS baing

coached in the art of riding a small Sutuhi,
complexities too subtle and keeps falling oH. j , 1 ,^

tL Duke, though pleased ago. is

Heatst china, w^hich left the Duke sfMily ,1,^

not so well off as he would like. income necessary for

industrialdtyofHamiltondonoipro crunching interests of

maintaining ihe castle and the

the family: the castle was due to P Mary, Queen of

Edinburgh lured to see a suppos ^ sojne grand

Scots (but which one ^[®^"^,hhtoryofsomeofthebest-loved
paintings and a toopeningthe house, the Duke

families in the lowlands. In ad . Canaletto went late m

is having to sell off some of his p abroad. Taxes dog

1976, causing some critical comm ’ Hamilton and Kinneal

the present Duke and his estates P the nation in I 978 >
Emtes Ltd; High Parks „„ ^ regular basis siuce

Leimoxlove has been open to UK P“ if Lennoxlove

1980-SO tar. this venture has been sjibiy, the wealth

ceases to attract fee-paying * ’

of the Hamiltons may soon evapot d^gedom has arrived

It is perhaps a matter of regret w . i, y„„„g

at its most critical stage whra the n someUiing else

who quite frankly admits he wisi legacy. As Lord

rather than the administrator 01 ^ and

Clydesdale. Angus Hamilton gjaitdctsportsofUie

Oxford, and plunged with gieaiw tt,a, „ Torpids;

I950S and 1960s. He rowed, distinaion

and got a Fourth Class degree m w Nurbutgting; he learned
m itself. He raced cars at Le i^p. is a skin-diver and a

to fly, he became a test pilot. )o^_^^„ti„g, rich young man,
skilled motorcyclist a ®

120

THE DUKES

eager still to use his energy for the kind of activity he likes, rather
than presiding over the gradual decay of titledom.

His is a talented family. His brother, Lord James Douglas-
Hamilton, is MP for Edinburgh West. Another brother, Lord
Hugh, is a distinguished historian and a bearded, be-kilted member
of the Scottish Nationalist Party. Of brother James, an arch-Tory,
Lord Hugh says: ‘I regard his position with respect. I think he s
doing his best according to his lights.’ A cousin, Iain, is a noted
zoologist, an expert on elephants and an adviser on the beasts to the
Government of Tanzania. And father, the last Duke, who died in
1973* was famous as a brilliant boxer; the first man to fly over the
summit of Mount Everest; and the man chosen by a misguided
Rudolf Hess to carry a plan for peace to Winston Churchill and the
British Government in 1941. In fact, for no other single event are
the Dukes of Hamilton better known than the sad saga of Rudolf
Hess, who parachuted on to the Duke’s estates with his offer of
peace, was disbelieved and then locked up in the Tower of London
for the remainder of the conflict. Hess lived on, alone and now in
Spandau prison, long after the old Duke died: his navigation maps,
which show his intended flight passing directly across the Western
Isles, are lovingly kept at Leimoxiove, and are one of the major
attractions to the tourists the Duke so badly needs to keep the
trappings of nobility attendant upon him still.

Other Dukes live more obscurely. The Duke of Somerset manages
to keep away from the public in a small country house in Wiltshire,
where he listens to the music of men with the kind of names he
knows: Count Basie and Duke Ellington. His private passion is jazz.
The household still dress for dinner at Maiden Bradley, but the
land that once enabled the Seymours— the Duke’s family name— to
be classified among the greatest landowners in the country, is
virtually all gone. Somerset House, where records of births,
marriages and deaths of Britons of rank high and low were
maintained, has not been in the Duke's possession for generations.
There are about 5,000 acres around Totnes, in Devon, which are
now being sold off in little chunks to help pay for the ravages of
inflation. Few people know the Duke exists. He rarely comes up to
London, virtually never speaks at the House of Lords and—
^thmkable for a ducal family only a smgle generation ago — the
Duchess at home does the cooking.

The Duke of St Albans, another descendant from the well-worn

THE DUKES

. K« that best known of all
bed ot Charles 11 (in St Albans case, by in

courtesans, Nell Gwyn) lived until te^n ly ^ „

London; the only concession to ia„ly was his modest

thick black letters, on the lin«' „„ land and, though he

houseinCheyneGardensinCheUea. .-aHcredilary Registrar

is Hereditary Grand Falconer of Eng » privileges attached to his
ol the Court of Chancery, has no notable P did once

title. He once lived in f"™'*'** no connection with the

hvc in St Albans, though the family incidence that led the
town, and it was either sentimentali y from a

then Charles Beauclerk there) and ‘"h^ ^^^^d for the films

distant cousin. Atthe time he became^ken ^ from

division of the Central months after accedingto

lordly. He Stayed on at his job fo obtrude on a care

the title, determined that no duke world was swift once

clearly enioyed. But his rise in the finm ‘ r,rr. ipformation

mantle of nobility was firmly upon him. and s
services were behind him. ^d advertising domp

Before long he was p , any cynic that he

aplenty, in numbers that would sugg ^ j^rike than as a ptom
worth a thousand ttmes more to Cny r.,,irb he assoctamd

untitled Mt Beauclerk -nte one would .magme^

were not always successful or ^^vesiigated for tjie

being attraaed to; one in the gossip ^ to

dealings. The family .^hen tax problems

London press. The “ Gardens, lintel an . “ ' d in his
sell his little house m ^e^ frindly man, Dukes had

The Duke is a genial an j rtunes that , „ds, and

business and rebuilding the ^ rhe House ut^ rif

does not ovm a robe ^^it Pt'orn^J d one night having

pictures mhis Chelse tourist ^^^''^.t-atincludedastay

anmaeliveDukeibulunhkc ^^he

public scrutiny. ojincipa^ home o rhaiswonh, and sits at

122

THE DUKES

once perhaps the most romantically noble of England’s great
houses. With huge turrets and spires and indeed a ‘bel voir across
the great Vale that bears its name, the castle was run with little
thought as to expense or prudence. Until quite recently a watchman
would pace the grounds, shouting the hour, and ‘All is well , to
the consternation of sleeping guests; trumpeters in powdere
periwigs and full livery would pace through the chill halls of e
immense structure, blasting on their instruments when it was time
for the inhabitants to rise, or dine, or leave for the morning
constitutional. Musicians, who were never to be seen by guest^
played from a chamber adjoining the dining-room; peacocks, whi
form the Rutland crest, strutted around the grounds by the score.
To visit Belvoir in the early part of this century was to drift back
into an elegant Regency fantasy with medieval overtones— and to
see the castle today is to recall some of the magic of those times, even
if only the peacocks arc left, and a sad old Duke, who weaw
monogrammed slippers, and whose energies are now devoted
almost entirely to stoppmg the National Coal Board from driving
mines into his beloved Vale.

There is a strikuig irony in the battle for Belvoir Vale. The Duke
of Rutland, who presides over a fortune built, to some extent at
least, on the winning of coal from northern mines, is now in fierce
combat with the Government over its plans to dig mines m his
lands. In this combat, his greatest allies arc not the farmworkers of
Leicestershire, but the white-collar commuters whose high
incomes in jobs in the big local towns now enable them to live in the
country. The National Coal Board has told the Duke that there are
some 450 million tons of coal beneath his castle and his estates. He
has told the Coal Board to go and look elsewhere. His position as
Chairman of Leicestershire County Council, and his rank as a
Duke, have given him enormous powers to win headlines in the
local press and, at the time of writing, have turned his campaign into
a cause celebre. Hundreds of tons of lime, spread out in vast letters on
one local hillside, proclaim ‘no pit’; yellow posters screech
Achtung— Minefield*; the Duke helps it all along by telling the
local reporters that he will lie down in front of the first bulldozers
that come to dig the first pit. ‘Oh, it’s true we mined coal in the past,
he told one reporter. ‘But we surface mined, and we did resurface
and build no end of public buildings with the money.’ That the
taxpayer, and the average Briton, will benefit from the winning of
450 million tons of coal from the Vale of Belvoir seems to have taken

123

THE DUKES

,.o.dplac=,andson.= hosmeedi»m.»^-;^"

kind’s future. ‘I don ■ „ith capital transfer tax and

lime,’ he said early in 1977- «« in the same way. But I don’t

inflation I don’t see how we ^ have to.’ Charles

think you -Bad’ Manners, they used to say

Manners (the Duke sfim ly Manners’ when another was

of a former Duke; Minister, Lord Salisbury)

Principal Pnvate Secretary to* Bte Dukes in two

was probably „te of natural wastage there should

centuries time. At the pr „eat 2175; between four and five

be no hereditary peers at all by V

noble names disappear J" yes in the country, and receives,
Rutland is one of the richest non ^
as such, a oonsidetab le rno^ ^ Council decided, m

There was “"“"““''X „ith an official Daimler because jt was
1974, to Si, Grace to have to try to find a

considered ‘undignified Povee His occasional brushes with

parking space for his own Rom* y attention than are the

the constabulary are fine for failing to stop at a

mistakes of lesser men; ms peccadilloes are lovingly

road sign, his speeding ^tional press,

chronicled by both the reg newspaper cuttings relatmg to

Indeed, close scrutiny something about the constant

Charles John Robert nobility. The news is

fascination of the British j-pets— rarely is there anything

invariably in . ^n an analysis of his suiubility, or

approaching a . -psUion in the county hierarchy, no

otherwise, of his otticia failures as landowner,

scrutiny of his riches or of wealth. The items are

employer, oonservationi occasional notable doings of an

simply there, recording ^le man. His application for a

otherwise not J, •_ rciected; his Bentley is stolen; he is

building licence for a ho freehold of his house in

convicted of speeding. V -_tches a couple cheating at whist at a
the West End of Lohdon, an award of £i,ooo in the

public party up at gets six years in prison for fraudJ

PremiumBondlottery.Hisbutl

124 the dukes

His Grace sells the Peacock Hotel; he makes a speech in which he
says he will not ‘emulate the antics of Dukes like Bedford’ and bring
a 20oful of lions and elks into his castle grounds. He gives two
peacocks to a local school; 16,000 of his own turkeys die; he buys an
hotel in Dovedale. He grumbles about the state of the nation; causes
questions in the House after starting a training flight of the
country’s little force of atomic bombers; is forced to give up a token
horseshoe to the Lord of the Manor of Oakham (the fee for any peer
going into the county town of the now sadly defunct county of
Rutland it seems); and is given the CBE.

All this and more — and it is much the same for every Duke, every
Marquess, Viscount, Earl and Baron of whom the newspapers ever
take note— and yet only in the extremely rare case is there any
attempt at a public examination of this most privileged group of
men and women, and how these privileges are used. There seems
just to be a placid acceptance among most Britons that in every
village there is a squire, and in every county a brace or so of the
Quality, and in every region a man with close constitutional tics to
the Monarch, and the wealth and social position with which W
maintain them. No one seems to worry about asking why— why the
Duke of Rutland is able to use influence to try to stop an industry
from which his family once made money, why he merits attention,
why he is different from a man with equivalent wealth but no title. It
seems a little disturbing, as though the Dukes and their colleagues
unwittingly manage to anaesthetize the common populace into a
form of apathy, ensuring ;hai the two far-distant edges of the
spectrum of class remain precisely where they are.

The Duke of Richmond, found sweeping out the offices of a
garage in the London suburb of Cricklewood; the Duke of
Roxburghe, now married to the lissom and beautiful sister of the
new young sixth Duke of Westminster; the diminutive Duke of
/Argyll bravely raising money to repair his magnificent home,
Inveraray Castle, after a disastrous Bonfire Night fire in 1975; the
puke of Wellington, being induced by a New York antique firm
into publicizing iheir exhibitions — all such events make good copy
for the press. But as to w hy, for example, the Duke of Westminster
has managed, despite taxation deliberately set to trap the very rich,
to maintain a posiuon as the wealthiest man in the realm — such
matters arc never discussed. Which is fine for the Duke of
Westminster, of course.

The marriage between the fifth Duke’s daughter and Guy

j 26 the dukes

The Duke lives in Paris today simply because he wants his son,
the Marquess of Tavistock, to get to know Woborn *e
tesponsibilities of senior titledom early enough tn his life. Beoiora
has uncomfortable memories of his own youth-disinheritance, a
measly allowance, formal disapproval from above of his nrst
marriage. That kmd of thing— coupled with ruinously high rates o
taxation, the public disapproval of pomp, a certain stuffiness among
Dukes and their unbridled classmess-he believes could well be the
end of all of them. So for him it is all lions and circuses, the burning
down of derelict farms for public enjoyment, the permanerit isp a
of a room full of ten million pounds’ worth of Canalettos, gimmic s,
a reputation throughout the world for being an aulhonty o
tourism, for making stately homes pay and for bringing history up
to dale. Some of the crustier members of his rank disapprove.
of the public think the whole Bedford machine too graceles^ os
Londoners, for whom Wobum is a country sideshow just a Cori^
ride away from the television sets, admire the Duke, and what he
done.*

Bedford, back in his modest home on the quai d’Orleans, hop
young Tavistock will uke happily to the responsibility thrust upon
him by his father, and learn the lessons the eleventh Duke so we X
omitted to teach the present incumbent. That way, he hopes,
dukedoms will survive— perhaps their political powers will have
been taken away; perhaps some of their influence will have beeti
forcibly diminished. But at least, unlike the dreary grandees o
neighbouring nations, they will manage to retain some of their o
style, dash, grace and panache. Far better extant and styus »
Bedford says, than bent on power, but extinct.

The two other expatriates, Manchester and Montrose, are less
flamboyant characters. Manchester, who left for Kenya in I94 »
lived in a style that would be unthinkable in present-day Britain; he
had a staff of 187 at his ‘fann’ at Hoey’s Bridge, twenty of whom
were gardeners. When he first went to Africa he lived out in the
bush: what he had when he died it is fair to say he built up himself,
and he enjoyed the dividends of his labours, and the collective zei
of his forebears, in the sun. Most of his properties in England,
KimboUon Castle pre-eminent among them, arc long since sold.
'The only thing I miss about England is the shooting,’ he said once.
He missed little else: the Holbeins ('1 think there are seven, but I m

• The onsuul too d Wobum w** no (ountl Bimnuck, but the icieoti6c colle^w“
of the Ute Duke, who haJ • profound aiul tchoUrly love for antnuli and bird*.

THE DUKES

127

not sure’) are out with him in the heat, as are some Dycks, an
Aubusson carpet and a library of seyernl thousand volumes. Some
of the paintings left behind in hts rush to get away ftom the dank
mists of the Atlantic, including giganttc works atmbuted to such
masters as Tintoretto and Veronese, went for less than twenty
guta apilc“ His first wife resolutely deelmed to call naUve
Lnyans anything but 'niggers'; her son, who had the utle of
Viscount Mandeville. and is the new Duke, lives m Kenya too. He
Wongstoaelubthat sounds rather less worthy thantheBrooks'sot
White's or the Turf that follow most titled names: it is caUed the
u 1! ■ f-|„h and ftom what one can gather about the future of

“e Mmchesters, it will be the surrogate Boodle's for some

^TheUst DuS'toally married an Ameri^ woman ftom San
Francisco- Lord Mandeville, the Pt'f'' ^uk', matned a girl ftom

»orrdf;tS’dLofwanderlust.^theMi?^-

''TLXkTo?MontroseisRhodesto,---'?mememberotta
Sm?^'?mial O— and

"irronUothltewemmo^^^^^^^

Stripped of his pnviieg .u_ ^ncc owned 130^, Lords.*
Declining lands in „ manages the rcmainiog 1? '* ^

Montrose estates, now h Africa^

his home near Glasgow-f”^”; „„ g^hbepm, it)

month or so until * poring the Rhodesia, 12?^
disasters in " no might have been inK,^««!o he

Stayed away from -throw. But now that Zioi.^^*^eisoa

had he ever arrived at e pleases, and police^ /‘^beca
hom he ComcS and goe familv are m— ^Cct 9ivm

iinaucfJVL* ashep>«SCS, sUiu FV«Cec55 . '

bom he comes and g family are give

him a second glance. Grahams (the Diik< j, Moral

Rearmament, lending .jjjjendarcunionsupjn.,'^cf the
Grahams though never a curiously evj; J’**a 1977,

ao„ce-in-e-genemtio»G^^^^^_^^___^^^^,^^,

The Duke livei in Pari! today simply because he wants his son,
the Marquess of Tavistock, to CM to know Woburn md ^
responsibilities of senior titledom early enoueh in hi! life. Beatoto
has uncomfortable memories of his own youlh—disinhenmre,
measly allowance, formal disapproval from above of hi! nrsi
marriage. That kmd of thing-coupled with ruinously high rates oi
taxation, the public disapproval of pomp, a certain ^^*^^** .

Dukes and their unbridled classiness-hc believes could wcU oe me
end of all of them. So for him it is all lions and circuses, the
down of derelict farms for public enjoyment, the permanent isp
of a room full of ten million pounds’ worth of Canalettos, gunmi »

a reputation throughout the world for being an authonty
tourism, for making sutely homes pay and for bringing histo^ up
to date. Some of the crustier members of his rank disapprove, om
of the public think the whole Bedford machine too graceles^ «
Londoners, for whom Woburn is a country sideshow just a
ride away from the television sets, admire the Duke , and w bat he
done.*

Bedford, back in his modest home on the quai d’Orleant, bop
young Tavistock will uke happily to the responsibility thrust upo
him by his father, and learn the lessons the eleventh Duke so wo i
omitted to leach the present incumbent. That way, he hopo*>
dukedoms will survive— perhaps their political powers will M'®
been taken away; perhaps some of their inllucncc will have been
forcibly diminished. But at least, unlike the dreary grandees o
neighbouring nations, they will manage to retain some of ihciro
style, dash, grace and panache. Far better extant and styh >
Bedford says, than bent on power, but extinct.

The two other expatriates, Manchester and Montrose, arc less
flamboyant charaaers. Manchester, who left for Kenya in 194 »
lived in a style that would be unthinkable in present-day Briiainj he
had a staff of 187 at his ‘farm’ at Hocy's Bridge, twenty of whom
were gardeners. When he first went to Africa he lived out in the
bush; what he had when he died it is fair to say he built up himself,
and he enjoyed the dividends of his labours, and the collective zea
of his forebears, in the sun. Most of his properties in England,
Kimbolion Castle pre-eminent among them, are long since sold.
‘The only thing I miss about England is the shooting,’ he said once.
He missed little else: the Holbeins (T think there arc seven, but I’m
' The otigmal 200 at Woburn wai ootouiiM gunnuck, but ihe scienufic collection
of ihc late Duke, who had t pnifound and acholarly love for animals and birds-

THE DUKES

121

not sure’) are out with him in the heat, as are some Van Dycks, an
Aubusson carper and a library of several thousand volumes. Some
of the paintings left behind in his rush to get away from the dank
mists of the Atlantic, including gigantic works attributed to such
masters as Tintoretto and Veronese, went for less than twenty
guineas apiece. His first wife resolutely declined to call native
Kenyans anything but 'niggers’; her son, who had the title of
Viscount Mandeville, and is the new Duke, lives in Kenya too. He
belongs to a club that sounds rather less worthy than the Brooks’s or
White’s or the Turf that follow most titled names: it is called the
Muthaiga Club, and, from what one can gather about the future of
the Msmehesters, it will be the surrogate Boodle’s for some
generations to come.

The last Duke finally married an American woman from San
Francisco; Lord Mandeville, the present Duke, married a girl from
South Africa. The last Duke of Manchester to marry an
Englishwoman was George, the sixth Duke, in iSaz: there has been
foreign blood, and a great deal of wanderlust, in the Mancunian
veins ever since.

The Duke of Montrose is Rhodesian, a one-time member of Ian
Smith’s illegal Government until he proved too racialist and
reactionary for even the former white chiefs of Salisbury. In theory,
the Duke might have been liable to prosecution for treason for his
associations with the Smith regime, and until the Zimbabwean
settlement of 1980 there were moves in Britain to have him formally
stripped of his privileges as a Member of the House of Lords.*
Declining lands in Scotland — he once owned 130,000 acres of the
Montrose estates, now his son manages the remaining io,ooo from
his home near Glasgow— forced him to flee to Africa (as he puts it)
in 1931. He used to trot home to J-ondon on the BOAC jet every
month or so until the 1960s to make a speech on the impending
disasters in Central Africa. During the Rhodesian rebellion he
stayed away from London — he might have been arrested for treason
had he ever arrived at Heathrow. But now that Zimbabwe has been
bom he comes and goes as he pleases, and policemen do not sive
him a second glance. Some of the family are members of M I
Rearmament, lending to the Grahams (the Duke is

Grahamslboughnevcrcouldattendareunionsupperor as ’

a oncc-in-a-gcncralion Gathering) a curiously

‘ The Duke of Montrose’* fither detigneJ the first Aircraft cam» f
N**-)’. *«J the &nuly cU^ni* areal patnousaa.

THE DUKES

128

sits uncomfortably with the coronet. One sister, who stands six feet
two, makes marmalade on the island of Arran.

The Duke once wrote that ‘It is common observation that the
African child is a bright and promising little fellow up to the age 0
puberty, which he reaches in any case two years before the
European. He then becomes hopelessly inadequate and disappoint-
ing and it is well known that this is due to his almost total obsession
henceforth in matters of sex.’

In 1976, when talks on Rhodesia’s future were proceeduig in the
great capitals of the world, he wrote to me: ‘For forty-five years
have played a part in developing this land that has been called The
Jewel of Africa”, from primitive barbarism to a sophisticated
society. The development is not only of the land but of the African
people too. For instance in 1931 many of them were still walking,
even into town, in nothing but a loincloth; today many are holding
down good jobs or have considerable businesses of their own and
are dressed as well as the white folk— better in many cases.

‘Now it seems that to satisfy the political dogma of intellectuals
who will never have to live with the results, the whole edifice is to be
thrown to the ground. Believe me, this is what will happen if black
government eventuates in no more than two years.’

Remote, awesomely rich, irredeemably upper class, the Dukes live
on like ancient oaks, bending slightly in the gales of reality,
occasionally crashing to the ground in a spectacular shower of
branches and twigs. Tales of their distance from the cruel world
outside their palaces abound. The tenth Duke of Marlborough,
father of the present one, once visited the home of one of his three
daughters — a mansion considerably less grand than Blenheim,
given to the first Duke by ‘a grateful nation’ for his victories against
Louis XIV. Before breakfast on the first day of the visit the
daughter was surprised to hear the old Duke bellowing down the
stairs that his toothbrush was ‘not working’ — it was not foaming
properly, and would she kindly arrange for him to have a new one?
The puzzled daughter went to investigate, finding the cause
immediately. Toothbrushes only foamed, she carefully explained to
her father, if you applied toothpowder: the valet at Blenheim
usually performed the task for His Grace each morning, but since
no one was available at the daughter’s house, the Duke had to be
taught to do it himself. Doubdess he was grateful to get back to
Woodstock and away from the horrors of middle-class life.

THE DUKES

129

Another Duke, unidentified in the anecdote, presided over
estates that were ravaged by finaacial mismanagement. Decay
abounded; bank balances had plummeted; the tenants were in
constant fear of collapse. The Duke himself accepted the situation
complacently, uncaring and uninterested. The trustees ordered a
full review of the situation: the Duke’s finances would be
relentlessly probed. For six months the wizards slaved, coming to
the inevitable conclusion that severe cuts in expenditure had to be
made. Someone must tell the Duke the bad news — how, a terrified
staff wondered, would he react?

Eventually the agent was selected to carry the news to His Grace,
and travelled down to the Castle. The Duke was slumbering in a
deckchair out on the Capability Brown gardens. The agent woke
him.

‘Your Grace,’ he trembled, T regret to have to tell you we are
going to have to make some cuts in the expenditure of the estate.’

'Oh yes,’ harrumphed the Duke, angry at having been woken,
dismayed at the trivial nature of the intelligence. ‘Such as what,
precisely?’

'Well,' the timid man returned, ‘Our staff have calculated
everything down to the last penny and we urge that, to start with at
least’— he paused to draw breath— ‘one of the two Italian pastry
chefs employed in the kitchens at the Castle will have to go.’

The Duke went faintly purple, then darker as his face suffused
with rage. His white moustaches twitched. He sat bolt upright,
aghast. ‘Whail’ he boomed at his terrified subject. ‘Whaif Can’t a
fellow even enjoy a biscuii any more?’

The sixth Duke of Portland may well have been the subject of the
talc:‘ it is perfectly true that when he was faced, in the 1930s, with an
urgent request for some trimming of his expenditures, he could
only come up with one proposal for economy. The supply of sealing
wax m the guest bedrooms at Welbeck Abbey could, he conceded
grandiloquently, be dispensed with. The consequence of the
smallness of this concession was that the Portlands had to give up
the Abbey, with its underground passages, w idc enough for a coach
and horses tobe driven through, its massive suhterrancan ballroom
and its underground riding school lit by five thousand jets of gas.
The Army took over the place, and the then Duke moved into the
much smaller Wclbcck Woodhouse down the road. There could

‘ Ttte biscuit story it ab» iinkcU to tbc Uu Duke of Buduaghua.

130 THE DUKES

probably be scaling wax in ihc bedrooms there, since there arc fewer
than a score of them.

The last dukedom to crash to the earth in the agonies of extinnion
was Leeds. The family was one of the five w hich v. ere clustered, by
chance or by the suggestive strainings of the Industrial Revolution
progressing in the Black Gauntry nearby, in w hat arc now known as
the Dukcrics. Newcastle, Portland, Kingston, Norfolk and Leeds,
with great houses at Clumber Park, Welbcck Abbey (itself once a
Newcastle scat), Thorcsby Hall, Worksop Manor and Kiveton
Park, lived in an unparalleled concentration of nobility and wealth
within twenty miles of each other. Today Newcastle is in a little
cottage in Hampshire (about the only Duke to suffer the indignity©
li\ ing in a house identified with a wretched number) and Portland is
tottering towards extinction. Kingston became obsolete in I 773 »
though his bogus and bigamous Duchess— found guilty by her
peers after one of the most celebrated Lords trials in history-
survived until 1788; the Duke of Norfolk's official scat is Arundel,
in Sussex; and the curtain fell on Leeds in 1964. The Ordnance
Survey still calls the area The Dukcrics, though its appearance as a
ducal housing estate, w uh park matching w iih park and crenellated
battlement peering over forests at Tudor mansion and Grecian
fully, is long gone.

The Duke of Leeds who was rightly associated with the sad
extinction was the eleventh, and actually died on z 6 J uly 19®3 *

wretched illness that involved the cutting off of both his legs. For a
few months a distant cousin. Sir Francis d’Arcy Godolphin
Osborne, assumed the mantle of Leeds at his house in Rome. But he
was seventy-nine when he acceded, and died soon after, half from
the excitement of it all. He left no sons, and thus the Leeds line
chuffed to its terminus.

The eleventh Duke left a daughter, Camilla, who was bom in
1950. She married a relation of Lord Harris, a Kentish nobleman
with an exotic coat of arms that includes hedgehogs, bombs, the
standard of Tippoo Sahib, a tiger (the latter beast with a curious
Persian symbol on its brow, an arrow in its chest and a crown on its
head), a grenadier* soldier of the 73rd regiment, the flag of the
French Republic, a sepoy of the hladras establishment of the East

* In the old days every infantry regiment had a grenadier company, who originally
threw grenades; they hadnothingtodowith the Fust Foot Guards who were made
into Grenadier Guards for defeating Naperfeon't Grenadiers of the Old Guard at
Waterloo.

THE DUXES

131

India Company and a nice litde sketch of the drawbridge and the
gates of the fortress of Senngapatara. He is a nephew of the actor
Robert Harris, and lives at Belmont Park, near Faversham,
somewhat obscurely. Thus was the name of Leeds buried, though
the old Duke would probably not mind that the last surviving
holder of the remnants of his title is bound up with bombs and
hedgehogs and drawbridges. It all seemed a rather proper burial
casket for the last member of a rare species; unhappily for the story,
though. Lady Camilla Osborne and Mr Harris were divorced in

1976.

There have been 162 ducal titles created in history, leaving out
those of the Blood Royal. Many have been rogues and villains; some
have died on the block for iheir excesses, some have been killed by
gout, some have vanished m a stupor of scandal. Those few that
remain are some indication of the variety and ineradicable ecla: that
must have been a characteristic of the Dukes who went before.
None of those surviving holders of this grandest of British titles—
the most noble men in the land, save for the Throne— can be
classified as mundane. Some are dull; some pompous; some
excessively stupid. Few 'take an active part in the running of the
nation; most are content— or have been forced by financial
circumstances— to spend most of their time maintaining their
estates, which, for the most part, arc still impressively large. But
they are not a group that can easily be classified. They have
disparate interests, responsibilities, s-alues, valuations and political
views. They are twenty-five individuals, almost as varied— as
Harold Macmillan, himself a Duke’s uncle, said— as a selection of
Britons whose names began with the Jetrer G. They arc all related,
though some by a fair distance, and by marriage, not blood; and
they are all entitled to be called 'Your Grace’, and ‘Our right trusty
and right entirely beloved cousin’ by the Monarch. Aside from that
they share little— either with each other or, ben t on preserving what
they stilt retain, with anyone else. Dukes arc above all an isolated
and dwindling society, still able to make the timbers of the realm
tremble a little, but increasingly given to trembling themselves.

THE MARQUESSES

The Noble Misfits

Tm a very fit man. I walk tny dog every day. I don’t have to
wear spectacle*. 1 still have my own teeth. Why should I marry
some dried-up old bag?’

The Marquess of Honcly, January 1977,
annouacuig hi$ engagement, ac sixc/'
eight, to a twency'year*o!d nurse

P„chedsom=whatuncomfon.b.,b„w^

tha dukedoms and th=earWom^.th= Marquess is a fairly recent
of the peerage rolls. The ^ ^archie, and was once

invention: the word comes fro otiarded the ‘marches’—

applied on the Continent to ]n Britain it became

the borders with neighbouring c • frontier between

customary for those who had ^ Scotland, to receive

England and Wales, or betwcen Engl^^^^^^

marquessary honours, . f jJJ^rch^d the principal English

the English border was the Ear The

peer on the Welsh border wa f . a particularly

appellation ‘Marquess’, or dubbed with the title, a

well-received honour: the ^ ded with King Richard

worthy named John .. .Maquis of Dorset is a strange

to give him something else ystead. Marq

name in this realm,’ he said. , onlv one, the Marquess of

OtU>c*iny-scv.uwho,u,.^M»^^

Cholmondcley (pronounced ^uni ) o„ j other.

Welsh Marches (in a castle at Malp . Jedburgh. The

Lothian, lives in to all corners of the

remainder arc scattered by America, another in Canada, a

kingdom, and beyond. One Marquess of Winches-

ihird— the most senior, as n napP of Man, a scattering

ter, lives m Zimbabwe, .pw- jj^U; of the holders of this

m Ireland and five in Scotian . England: three in

second-degree peerage ® .,„hire. one in Sussex, others in
London, two in Kent, tvvo brace, Normanby and Zetland,

East Angha and the M'dtods, ^ Walcs-thc

make the English ^,„„lyhome,PIasNcw.7‘ld,isoncof

Marquess of Anglesey, w distinaion of being the

the finest in ihe prmcipaluy- ne

136 THE MARQUESSES

senior peer to live in the land of the Ordoviccs and the Silurcs: there
arc no Dukes at all in Wales, only one Earl, a scattering of Viscounts
and perhaps a dozen Barons — precious few, bearing in mind there
are several hundred of the last rank. Peers still own plenty of land in
Wales, of course, but for some reason they find Scotland more
congenial as a rural retreat, probably because of the distribution
there of the red grouse, the trout, and the stag, which means so
much to so many of them.

Marquesses arc evidently lesser men than Dukes, but scarcely
grander than the Earls they precede in the official rolls of the land:
indeed, very many of the Earls arc infinitely wealthier and more
formidable than the holders of the marquessates. And probably the
grandest Marquesses of all arc those like Hamilton, whose title is
only there by courtesy, but who one day will succeed to the
dukedom— in his case, of Abercom — currently held by his father.
The Marquesses who arc lorJs-in>waiting for higher things can
rank as potentially splendid: those who have the rank by right are
neither as meritorious as the Earls like Eden and Kitchener and
Mounibattcn, nor as ituiatciy impressive as Dukes like Westminster
and Devonshire. Theirs is almost a title to embarrassment, a falling
between two gilded stools, provoking comments like that directed
to present-day drivers of the Bcmicy motor car. If you’re so rich,
why not have a Rolls-Royce: if you’re so grand, why aren't you a
Duke?

There has not been a Marquess created since 1 936, w hen the Earl
of Willingdon retired after five years as Viceroy of India, to be given
a marquessate for his services. Subsequent Viceroys either had the
degree already (as did Linlithgow, who was Viceroy from 1936 to
> 943 ) or were promoted to an earldom (like Wavell and
Mountbatten, both of whom flew in to calm the troubled
subcontinent as mere Viscounts, but who departed through the
sandstone Gateway of India in Bombay as exalted Earls, advanced
one degree of the peerage for their pains in the heat and the dust),
^^^tquess of Reading, whose title originated in 1 926, was a

iceroy too; the Marquess of Milford Haven, a prince who had
married into the British Royal Family and became a British subject,
was given his marquessate when he changed his name from

attenberg to Mountbatten, from something signifying foe to
something redolent of friendship. The Marquess of Cambridge,
who was the result of the union of the Duke of Teck and the
granddaughter of George III, was similarly raised to a British

137

THE MARQUESSES

o„ .he

Marquess of Linlithgow ha -;ven his title on completion

favourite of Queen Vinoria'a^d was 6»en h s ^

ofhis touras firs. Governor GenerdotAum"-'^^^^^^^

century Marquesses, greater colonies in the

required for the degree-.

farther reaches of the EmpitCj^or th p colonies of any

reaches of the Royal Fatnily. presumably not merit a

grandeur left to administer (OM the British

matquessate for looking after the become

Virgin Islands), and those who mar^ m h y q-brone)

of hereditary peerages lapses. jjjere ever

There is. by the way. no .^b^he D>ik' ^ Argyll i.

been. (Though the son and heir PP ^bjbional vowel.) The

the Marquess of home. . . . a„d means an erection. The

the Marquess of home, spelle a„d means an erection. The

phrase is rhyming slang, of » ’^„,resy title of the eldest son

Marquess of Granby does exis» pfthemostpopularpublic-

nftheDnkeofRutland;butrtisalsoone popular

tJrDro«uZdibu.i.lsa^oheof.hem^^^^^^

house names in Englaud. drara^^ The tact that he was bald
eighteenth-century soldier of th barbers’ shops, as

has since rendered him an eponymous

»'"■ .n. demographers of the pcetage--

For some reason unknown to die dornj^^^ h.rth,

and there ate some, ‘"‘‘“'“" 'cmiobled Briton who ever was.
marriage and death records „„ ,he relative length of life

and producing volumes of schola^P j^cbly gteatei)-

ot Dukes compared ,f“?';^d.vorc= rate. All the peerage

Marquesses have an ^re than the test of the British

Marquesses have an than the rest of the British

suffers from, or en)oys, a high mtorroally arranged

populadon-a “mbinanon, P«ha^=. ^ale m class-

marnages that still go on at the top can command

population— a coiUL.i..» social “

marriages that still 8° “ wealth many P“'S
conscious countries, and the 8™' ..j ppaes. That their riches

with which to pay alimony to di^' „ „ fortune-hunting

and then status make diem doub^f die sut.snc. one

females also has more 'ha““'jhc 5ign.ficandymote liable to
suspects. Butwhy f cunoblemen., no one knows.

divLe than the other foot ranks ot

138 THE MARQUESSES

They arc, though: of the Marquesses who have married, only
nineteen have married but once. Thirteen have married twice
(though one was, for a brief while, a widower; the others are
recorded in the reference books as having had their ‘m. diss.’), and
four have married three times. There arc said to be some forty
Duchesses for the twenty-five Dukes; there arc some fifty-sis
w'omen in Britain entitled to be called Marchioness— the female
form of an already fairly feminine-sounding title.

One of the most hallowed names in British Conservative politics is
that of Salisbury. Three times Prime Minister, the third Marquess
of Salisbury was the last peer to enjoy the Premiership, but quite
suitably took the kingdom into only the very outset of the twentieth
century, during which he and his kind were to become increasingly
regarded, politically, as whales stranded on the beach and thrashing
hugely, but uselessly, against the relentless pressures of a more
egalitarian form of democracy. That is not to say that the Cecils—
the family name of the Salisburys, and one of the most talented
families in recent history, rivalled only, perhaps, by the Russclls—
did not make an impact on the twentieth century: they did, and still
do. But the impact is lessening by the hour, and while the famous
fourth Marquess, James, was a Tory elder statesman almost from
his coming of age in 1882, and led the Conservatives in the Lords
during the 1920s and 1930s; and while the fifth Marquess,
‘Bobbety’, bravely championed the Empire and all that British
imperialism had stood for in the quarter-century of his reign—
despite all that distinction and all that energy, the political Cecils
are now almost washed up, finally out of synchronization with the
mainstream of their beloved party and their beloved country. The
fifth Marquess might have seemed more at home in the capital city
of Rhodesia, which took its name from the marquessate, than at
Hatfield House, the great Jacobean mansion north of London from
where successive Salisburys imprinted their stamp on the conduct
of British foreign policy.

Bobbety, one of the four children of the fourth Marquess, was
born into a theatre of privilege and talent rare even in its day. His
brother went on to become Professor of English Literature at
Oxford; one sister became a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen
blizabeth the Queen Mother, and married Lord Harlech; the other,
grander still, though younger, was Mistress of the Robes to the
Queen, and married the tenth Dukeof Devonshire. The Marquess,

laQ

the mabquesses
, p„.es.a„ in .he House

Establishment kind, fought all hi nolitically he never

s..nd„ds and views he had /en.oeraey.

grew up; he faded to recogni British supremacy in Africa,

set his heart on the mamten^ce
ignored the call of Europe and the siren song o

He was anachronism personified. . , , j „bellious Tory

I.wasrhisLordSalisbu^who .n .968,h^d^^^

peers into an abortive fight to ^ ^^5^ ibe illegal regime in

imposition of United Coleraine and Lord

Rhodesia. With other diehard Tones h

Grimston, Salisbury huffed and P“^ ,J„sin8 the

division lobbies, actually Commons. But it was a slight

Labour Government's maionty in me Government

victory, and a Pyrrhic despite fresh grumblings

reintroduced the Order and ha P . f reform measures

from die noble Bobbery, .he ter The reforms

designed to curb the PP'™' j, can be safely said that it
were later defeated on technica » Salisbury that did much to
was the intemperate actions o unfriendly to the House of

bring about the present climate „i:stic to predict its demise

Lords that it now no longer seems have

within the next decade or “ ^ho, among others, took it
been the fifth Marquess of Sa‘»seury towards the

close to the precipice, and, unwittingly, gave

edge. Robert Edward Peter Gascoyne-

His son, the sixth Marquess, succeeded to the

Cecil, is altogether a more placid be. ^ ^

marquessate on the death o Cranbome (the

the Tory press that, so as MP for Bournemouth

courtesy title he wore) dunng h. poUiics, that he might

West, and so quiet had tw be Upper House. ‘The first tune

actually demur at taking his «a ^ four hundred years! the

there has been no Cecil m ^ fortified perhaps by a £ 1

columnists forecast, in dte^ » House and two London

million will and the „ the estate that came to him.

theatres (Wyndham's and rhe „„gc a„d proffered his hand to
the new Marquess did grasp me .jpoolsatk. Once in the

the Lord Chancellor and bo« Monday Club tor a while.

House he succeeded as 1 res. m 1976.

and opened rhe debate on Rhodes

140 THE MARQUESSES

Little else has been heard since, save for an announcement that
Hatfield House would open to serve EHzabethan-style dinners for
wealthy visiting Americans. The new Lord Salisbury was, like his
fellows, having to turn showman to survive. From three times
Premier to purveyor of comely serving wenches to the aristocracy of
Texas in three-quarters of a century!

In the London GazetUy the official newspaper of the realm,
announcements concerning changes at Court come at the head of
the front page, well before the irritatingly complex notices
concerning the running of the country. One day early in 1977 there
was a brief note, datelined ‘Buckingham Palace’, and reading to the
effect that ‘Her Majesty the Queen has been graciously pleased to
accept the resignation of the Earl of Rocksavage as a Page of Honour
with effect immediately; the retirement is necessitated by the Earl s
age, which has reached the point at which retirement is stipulated-'
What the notice did not say was that David George Philip
Cholmondeley, the Earl, and son of the Marquess of Cholmon-
deley, was sixteen years old. Early retirement is one of the
disadvantages of employment m some of the byways of a mon-
archical system.

The Marquess of Cholmondeley is one of many peers whose life
is inextricably entwined with the workings of the monarchy— he is
one of a number of the most highly titled who have sprung up, like
glittering convolvulus plants, to cosset and enclose the Throne, to
help ensure its survival and its exclusivity. Cholmondeley is one of
the so-called Great Officers of State who, together with the peers in
the Royal Household, form the inner sanctum of the Establishment,
the core, if you like, of the realm. The Great Officers are the Earl
Marshal, the Lord Chancellor, Lord President of the Council, Lord
Privy Seal, Lord Great Chamberlain and the Lord High Steward—
the last appointed only at coronations. (There is also a Lord
Steward of the Household and a Lord Chamberlain of the
Household but these, in umustrtcto, ate not Great Officers of State,
they are just rather nice to have around.) There are Hereditary
tjrand Falconers (the Duke of St Albans: he is permitted to drive
cmiages along Birdcage Walk as his sole privilege for this defunct
Office). There are Hereditary Chief Butlers (Lord Mowbray, who
wou pour the wine at the coronation banquets, if there were such

ingst ese 3 ys)> Hereditary Keepers of Dunstaf&iage Castle (the

I4I

THE MARQUESSES

. t kii»rnii<><«ates and ceremony go well

Duke of Argyll), and so ““'“““/L „avennyisaLadyofth=

togethst, it seems: the Marchionc» Hereditary Grand

Bedchamber; the Marquess of Exeter is is Her

Almoner of England;

Majesty’s Representative at Asco , a Marquess of

Earl of Roeksavage, dte of England.

Cholmondeley. is Joinr Hereditary Great Cham

The iob is not entirely a ^ man named Aubrey

Since -33, tvlten King Henry la^mredam

de Vere to tun the Palace of ,ust as though it was a

Britain’s Parliament has been e^ijmte

Royal palace-which, m '•'eory became overawed by

when Harold W ilson, in the decided to try and ‘nationalize’

the trappings of inherited prwi g . die Monarch. It

the Palace of Westminster an because of the complicated

proved a " of the administrator, the Lord

history surrounding the person

Great Chamberlain. century. Aubrey de

It had sutted out O""' and the Chambetlainship
Vete's heirs became ^Aubrey passed neaUy from father

with which Henry had endo dme because of

tosonforgenerations-missingabeatlrorru.^^^ treasonable

the inclinations of the day f have seen, titles

activity— and looked all set fore fifteenth Earl of

do occasionally become extin ’ deteriorated into an ugly

Oxford died without a son the sue ^^^5, when

shambles. All sorts of noblemen Monarch passed the job to

matters bccamcroyallycc,mplex,»d,hcM

a man named Robert Bc.t.e, Lord WU „ ^e

further confusion lay ahead, wi that shocked the staid

task by 1779; two y®^*’L ^*"’jHJvided equally between two sisters

Complete Peerage, the office w ^^^turies after Aubrey de Vere,
of the fourth Duke of ^bo were not his

it said, the office was ‘split up arms’. If that wasn t

heirs and were not even «>t»tl ^ben someone had to be

complicated enough, gre« gdward VII, by which time

chosen to officiate at the Coronau

Dunstaflhage, wd so o" Scotland, who turn out for num
Queen’s Body Guard for S>cooan
quite free

142 THE MARQUESSES

the ‘senior’ descendants of the two ladies had become the Earl of
Ancasier and the Marquess of Cholmondeley. Who was to be
Chamberlain for the new King? The Crown argued among itself for
weeks: a House of Lords Committee got in on the act, but the ruling
they produced was so difficult to follow that they might as well not
have bothered. Following the death of Alberic Willoughby de
Eresby in 1870, unmarried, it was decided that the Willoughby
half-share should be divided between the Willoughby and
Carrington families, the Monarch of the day having as always the
final word as to who should act as Lord Great Chamberlain. The
Earl of Ancaster last had the job when George VI died in I 952 >
fifth Marquess of Cholmondeley took Elizabeth II's offered
posting in 1953 and stayed with her until he felt it prudent to retire,
at the age of eighty-three, in 1966. His son took over the onerous
duties in 1966, adding the title of Lord Great Chamberlain to a
bewildering set of dignities that include the Earldom of
Rocksavage^which he lends out to his only son— the Earldom of
Cholmondeley, the Viscounty of Maipas and the Baronies of
Newborough, Newburgh and, once again, of Cholmondeley. With
the peerages he also has 10,000 acres of land in Cheshire and another
8,000 in Norfolk—but for the prosecution of his Palace duties, the
landownership is scarcely lelevant.

One would imagine that, since aristocratic scuffling has broken
out at least once every century since Henry I handed out the job, the
post of Lord Great Chamberlain is either highly rewarding,
inordinately stimulating or endowed with some great and ancient
privilege peculiar to no other mortal. It is indeed the last: at the
Coronation of Queen Elizabeth in 1953 the fifth Marquess of
Cholmondeley found himself carrying all manner of tnnketry and
womanly accessories for the new Queen to wear — gloves, a coif,
swords. Royal robes and crown. When the Monarch is a King this
sixth great officer of the Crown actually dresses and undresses the
man on Coronation Day, acting like a particularly costly valet and
footman rolled into one. With a Queen, Mistresses of the Robes
manage the more private tasks, but there is a lot of fetching and
carrying for the Marquess to do besides.

In addition to this pleasantly servile role that the Chamberlain
has to fulfil every two generations or so, he also had overall
responsibility— and this is where Mr Wilson comes in— for the
a o Westminster. Until 1964, when Charles (now Lord)
anne managed as Minister of Works to gain control of the House

THE MARQUESSES ^43

„ e Piinlmondeievs and the Ancasiers, the

of Commons from ,e f„,bid Members of Parliament

Chambeilam ’ Snms bfmeen Friday and Monday. Marcia
from entering th p before she was ennobled as Lady

Williams, as she was m the day^ bet

Falkender, was once be was Leader of the

Wilson s room in handedness that Labour politicians

Opposition-the kind “f ‘“S'; “ j Mr Pannell to eradicate,
understandably foimd „hh Palace officials, the

After a protracted bn eventually forced to relinquish half

MarquessofCholmon ^ . . eatpet begins where the Lords

of his hold on the Palace. A ^ Central Hall of the Palace;

Lobby leads off the echoing and n^^ y

from that carpet, clear through Chamberlain. He

still firmly within *e bailiwick of Courts-Royal.

has the House of Peem it . ^eyal Gallery and the

Chancellor’s. Judge s and ’ ^be inner courts and half of
Robing Room, the Peers Librar . ^Qj,n^n:,ons to the Clock

the River Terrace. The remajnder,uv Commons and,

Tower, is the ^ and fittings of half the Palace

ultimately, of the people. r jjje Monarch through the

still come under the * Ig^where the Monarch’s writ has

Ancasters and nepotism remains a feature

now ceased to run. The degree on the wane— depends

ofihe House of Lords— and of the time. From what

entirely on the wishes of the $ixth Marquess has been

one can see the conduct o « „_nual <»st of some four million
exemplary and the Lords, at
poimds, runs itself tolerab y w

ndeley is ® fairly ancient peerage.
The Marquessate of ^jety of national majesty; the

redolent of much of the > than a century older,

Marquessate of sport of boxing, the fall of Oscar

draws its associations rom j^j^^jotm-scandal that first drew
Wilde and latterly from a cun ^ ^^^try lane outside the village

public attention after an cv ^^^j.jshire, in ^9^5- The great-

of Chipping Norton, m up

grandfather of the fisucuffs, and the sorry ule of

fonu ihc basis of “,,b„„v.b.Thcoutcomeofu,tp,„^„j

Wilde’S exposure arc boU' Cotswold lanes is, m Us

Marquess’s tutorial activiu«*n
way, scarcely less fascinating.

144 THE MARQUESSES

His Lordship is, by way of introduction, a talented master of
ceramics — Professor of the science, no less, at the Royal College of
Art in London. He likes to drop his title for his students, and be
called merely Professor Queensberry. He is adept at judo, rides
motorcycles and has a sound commercial head on his shoulders. He
says he inherited his artistic side from his mother; but from his
father, the eleventh Marquess, who was a stockbroker and ‘a fair
philistine over things visual’ according to his son, he inherited the
genes that go with profit making. So he runs two emporia called
the Reject China Shops in Beauchamp Place, a ritzy little street in
Knightsbridge; and he once owned two stalls in the magnificent old
Covered Market in Oxford. In 1977 he launched a new line of
wineglasses for the common man, though they were called ‘The
Connoisseur Range', and the makers made jolly sure everyone knew
that a real Scottish Marquess had a hand in making them: there
seemed no stopping the commercial instincts of this very ambitious
young man, nor his contribution to what is regarded as good British
design.

Lord Queensberry lives on the fringes of the avani-gardet largely
by virtue of his calling. In 1961, when he was just thirty-three, he
was to be seen on the marches organized by the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament—but his radical tendencies in youth must
have mellowed a little, since he does not care to take the Labour
Party Whip in the House of Lords. He fostered an eighteen-month-
old Nigerian child once, called Bimbo. He went to the Lords to talk
about the problems of homosexuality during the second reading of
the Earl of Arran’s famous Bill in May 1965; and sent his daughters
to Holland Park Comprehensive School. So far as credentials were
concerned, the Marquess was impeccably endowed with what
passed in London for radical chic, and was much loved for it.

In 1965 near Chipping Norton he was giving driving lessons to a
young lady named Miss Alexandra Mary Clare Wyndham Sich. It
seems as though the then Marchioness of Queensberry, who had
been Anne Jones before she took her first husband, took a rather
dim view of her husband giving driving lessons to pretty young
ladies, Md the ennobled pair split up in 1966. Two years later they
were divorced, the grounds being adultery with the aforenamed
Miss Sich, who, inexplicably at first reading, had by then changed
her name to Douglas, which is also the Queensberry family name.

at, one wondered, was the purpose of the young lady going to all
t e trouble of changing her name to that of her husband before the

I4S

THE MARQUESSES

probably inevitable marriage that 6^7' while Miss

free them for? An answer h^rd a child by Lord

Douglas was still, tectaically. ^

Queensberry-a „f rhesc matters will discern.

That, students of the subtle By his first wife the

produced problems of a most Alice. He was. at the

Marquess had had two , ,„ale heir of his body-
time of his divorce, technically brother. Lord Gawairi

though the marqucssate could p unmarried and

Douglas, nineteen years his juni

thus without heir. iq6o of a child named Sholto

Yet the appearance on the seen gbolto was an heir, all

Francis Guy Douglas posed a dile^ „,„io„ship and. at least at
light, but the offspring “f “ “““ ^iw. in Scotland as well as m

thattime, an illegitimate child. „bo were the

England, provided that heirs CO certainly was not.

legitimate offspting, which bho ^ be can only be

‘Although young Sholto “ „sup,’ intoned one authority

plain Mr Sholto Douglas when he g ^_^j ^be wedding

of the day, tathet „ Alexandra, made the same

between His Lordship and j ,, circumstances he would be

day. ‘Hadhe been bommeonven peerages is very

Viscount Drumlantig. The I w » _

cleat and very strict in this ^n ■ date from 1682

So the Marquess, being a S~t ^ Lordship Douglas

and include an Earldom of Qu ^^^_^_^^^^frbese matters. the
of Hawick and Tibbets), appi'cu ^ Edinburgh. Lyon in those
Court of the Lord Lyon Ling or ^^entric man by the name of
days was a much respected, if SB ^ and when, as he usually

limes; but he had a 'my rqueaking into it -Lyon'.' most

did, he answered the teW^^ i, sounded so very peculiar. The
callers lust collapsed in a ^ Qccensberry's demands,

LordLyonwasnotamantoW ^,rb archaic titles like

and neither were his Heralds, Hniconi Carrick,

Rothesay, Albany They accepted Hi, Lordship's

Ormond and FalUand m » ,cguunacy of Sholto Douglas,

plea for a formal declaration .Marchioness 10 sweat 11

Lidlef.lhe.Matquoaaanddic

out , oueensberry beeante p^giiam, causing

Then ihc new i,«on. »f ^

further cotnpUcaicvl 4 pc<“

146 THE MARQUESSES

undoubted Viscount Drumlanrig — what would Sholto’s position
be when he grew up? How would the precision of primogeniture be
applied? Would the Viscount inherit the title and Mr Sholto
Douglas the money? Would the two boys swap names at the coming
of age of the older? Would one have to be sent off to join the French
Foreign Legion? Happily the Marchioness provided the waiting
world with a girl, Kate Cordelia Sasha, and all was well. Precautions
to prevent a recurrence appear to have been stringently observed
from that moment on.

Finally in 1973, after no less than three and a half years of the
most recondite deliberation, the Lord Lyon announced his verdict.
The Scottish Legitimation Act enabled the eventual union of the
Marquess and his new bride to bring Sholto into that category of
human offspring legally regarded as being ‘a lawful heir’ — and since
there was no doubt he was the child of the two purported parents, he
was therefore ‘an heir male whatsoever’ (the Scottish peerage law
gives the marquessate the characteristic destination to heredibus
mascuha qutbuscunque, quite different from the English destination
for the same rank, which makes reference to ‘heirs male of the body
lawfully begotten’) and entitled to succeed to the Queensberry title-

(It should be noted at this point that only some Scottish earldoms
and lordships guarantee that a female can inherit in default of a male
heir, and only English Barons whose creation was authorized by a
writ, rather than by Letters Patent. Merely because a title is
Scottish does not mean it can pass through the female line:
marquessates cannot— or more precisely, the marquessate of
Queensberry cannot. Only males can take that title.)

'vas much relief and celebration in the Queensberry home
in the immediate aftermath of the ruling. Amusingly, the sober
authority of Burke’s Peerage tried to overlook Sholto’s existence
altogether: the last edition, printed in 1970, indicates the marriage
between the Marquess and Miss Sich, but only the presence of two
articles of ‘issue’ resulting from the first marriage. The 1976 edition
0 Debrett s is frank about it, but — and this is what makes Debrell's
such a treasure trove of familial oddities — it merely notes coldly the
dates involved. The Son Living is Sholto Francis Guy, bom i June
*967 (by second wife). Marriage to second wife, if the eye happens
to wander through seven lines of rubric about ‘crowned and winged
hearts and six cross crosslets fitchee’, took place in 1969. The
^omaly— sadly it is missing from the 1980 edition of Debrett’s—
nides a fascinating tale.

147

the marquesses
There are. surprisingly. ™8P« “nong to in

members otto House \Clge-fo'. *!

prison-sliEhllyn,orethanto.iat.nMlav«^ ^ M„,ue s

offeuees ot fraud, sesual assault „ent tot was. to

«ho was involved in the heat of tot last summet

stir to hearts of the masses in to sultry ^
before the Second World Wat! „ London s

The suave villains who rob e jAayfait Gang .

Burlington Arcade ?“ „gs and silver were taken act

his part in to heist, in which to'”“" y young blade who has

ouLnightpaeketfordisposalmPat.s.ag«^^^

since become a Matouess got three »

released in 1941 when 1« was y (,he name is •’““y „jy
At about that time Victor *jyf,om Bristol, to Hew y

■Harvey’, like to sherty-unportmg^^ ^ all km*

seat, and title, too, though thy eossip columns. ...Jed

warer. constantly in to y'W^Xatoeto wW*»='“““f^

father was made Marquess .y-d m attempted arm ,^„of

much later, in .960. he was ” hoir one of the darlings »

Spain-which served to mai^' wars. He was deelaKd^^
the oennV'Papef r*^*^*^*^*^ • f . r.

bXrfotawh,l=,withliab^

he had in his trouser pocket Monaco sun.

shillings and twopence. 55„led m t e jj^„„ds.

The Marquess, now ■aver ''y, die town of Bury

used to live at Ickwoith Hows , of the v y j„g

in the Suffolkot which he«'™^som disp

He installed a hook-vcnd.ng ““"mbership =t

detective novels to Pa“. j^youtofautociaey. [,imtoroingl=

He is ceitamly ^ '^„„orcl.istLeagu=pe ^ogy

theGtandCouneiloftheM ” opkestoweat

with many members ,ors ofthe Bulgat European

a„dtheLekasandm=^'E»»“„og„mEless.tonks^K^^^
a number ot gaudy, and .^_^^„daysortoBa^^._^

metalwork that date r fEisdaughrer ‘ and a sword:

Queens. At the ehnstem g “'.^“tmia were King Simeon

his third Marchioness.he^^y^jyV.ctotu^^

among the go‘'Pare''“ f j Bulgan^S’ Q dy me

aud Queen PiScess of ,„a„ao to to rwo

Albanians and Mary, golganan
British Marquess to

I4S THE MARQUESSES

Queens, was used to cut the cake. Photographs of the event show the
young nanny standing three paces to the left of His Lordship, while
photographers snap away at the ennobled pair: ‘The nanny who
kept to her station’, one paper sneered.

One oddity about Lord Bristol is that his title gives him the
advowsons of some thirty local parishes. The practice whereby
rural squires can exercise patronage in the appointment of vicars to
the local church parishes is ancient and revered: it was created in
days when peers enjoyed the kind of freedoms that rarely placed
them in conflict with the law. No one has seen fit to deprive the
marqucssate, even temporarily, of its rightful links with the
Established Church. So, Lord Bristol, when he takes time off from
entertaining Ruritanian Kings and Queens, from dealing m
properties and holidays in sun-dappled islands in the tropics
(Dominica, the Bahamas, Cyprus among them), and from running
his stud, can appoint no fewer than thirty men to livings in his
churches— a record, it is believed, for the greatest number of livings
within the purview of one man.

The only Marquess to make his permanent home in Wales is Lord
Anglesey, one of the peers most closely connected with the world of
serious artistic endeavour and conservation, and as such a well-
respected and admired noble. The marqucssate was awarded in
1 8 1 5 to the then Earl of Uxbridge after the battle of Waterloo, and
after one of the most ccicbratedly reserved exchanges of any
attleficld. After his brilliant handling of the cavalry in the field that
June day, Uxbridge was riding off to camp with the Duke of
c ington, to whom he had been second in command, when astray
roimd of grapeshot smashed his right leg into pulp. He is renowned
« having said to the Duke: ‘By God, sir. I’ve lost my leg!’, and
'vcuingion. taking a spyglass from his eye, looked across at hU
ounded colleague and retorted: ‘By God, sir, so you have!’ and
nJk his scrutiny of the retreating Napoleonic forces.

of his leg taken off and was back in London
on j I V ^ delighted Prince Regent making him Marquess

world- of all AUrquesscs of the day had the

wooden leg provided for him— an
Ldw ardian umes *' *’^^“** found on sale in medical stores m

home of t^'p^/ ‘he /Vnglcscys since the creation of the title, and the
aget family for four centuries before that, has been the

149

the marquesses

.,.„mce«.NewPUc=;o,P.a.K^^^"

Menai Straits, on the island , i^<,„eofthetnostspectacular

oneofthegrandesthouscs— certa y command a

sites-in Britain: the '“''“‘“"'"“fo.ecnarvonshire shores and

sweeping view across the strai Vydsh mainland the tow,

the high peaks of Snowdonia. P™-" “ ^ „„h the famous

white fapade of the house stands j ^ i,,cnd otherwise

Tubular Bridge, one of the two Etaf , costly house to

httle distinguished for visitors. Marquess spent his

maintain— indeed it was not un die mansion in the i93ds

fortune on both the inside and ontsrf^of*^^ me,r

that Bias Newydd was die chief patron of the

principal home. The sixth - ^lonedtocoverthcwallsofone

artistRexTOistler,whowascom.mss.oned^^^^^^^_^,^^,^^^^
specially reserved room , fe. Thousands come to Plas

as the finest memorial to his P”'‘“';,de,,andonly incidentally

Newyddeachyeartopayho^S j.,jj,^ijdoo.

to the descendants of o‘‘‘ ^ f bom in 1922 - maintains *e

The present, seventh ““''’“ . responsibility that have mrked

standards of patronage and 7amily-=2'=P' for

nearly all the members of said he kept braaiersaligM

Marquess. whospentmoney wildly be should

inhisforestsduringthe Whiter n.^ 1 ^bat when one of *2^

warm himself while taking „„dh some £ 3.000 on o *e

burnt him, he threw a betewelledc^t bankrupt nhrs

coals. Scarcely surprisingly, the ^ separation of

own estate, though Bias Tdowable wealth.

his personal andhis mote obviou ^ _^^^bet of “’i j

His successor is, ‘ Tmi the SfeS^Se

British bodies e js a member, among « Council for

buildings of the nation. the -uinness has

wT‘ ™fof Women ’s Institutes

Wales and the Welsh Federation of church

been Chairman of the jje has an abiding offices, the

and the Welsh wrims btks-his

buildings of the naW^h^^^^ Churches. history of the

the Friends of r y jcccivcd, associated

biography of 'Onc-hrS p^.ly has long

cavalry "g“““ volumes m W’ , ofsurrounding lands,
was published m two s ^ ,6o acres oi

In 1976 he gave the bouse

IJO THE MARQUESSES

together with a mile and a half of the beautiful
Mediterranean trees and shrubs, to the National Tms
the conditions by which the Trust accepts su* tuildmgs oy
providing a cash endowment that will enable the Trust to ^ P
house open without digging into its own, not sj^bstanual, cotter •
The Marquess and Marchioness live in a wmg of PUs Newy i
their connection with it will be the last; before long as ®
will become just another museum, with a caretaker drawn per a
from a family that has no conneaion with this assembly o
the most talented of Britons. All the Marquess has «^inea wx
himself is the famous Anglesey Column — but it is har y possi
for his heirs to live inside a sixteen-foot-thick limestone po e.

One pleasant little custom in which the Marquesses have engag
for the last 150 years has beentheir mode of letting fhe ncig our
know the time of the arrival, and the sex, of all their enno e
offspring. Each time a boy has been bom heir to the marquessa >
ten cannon shots boom out across the Menai Strait: ea^ time a gi
has arrived, five shots. Answering shots are fired
Caernavonshire shore. There is an heir, Lord Uxbridge; e a*
younger brother, Lord Rupert Paget, and three sisters. ,

present Marquess has been at Plas Newydd, the cannons rese
for the armouncement of a birth have fired thirty-five times ro
each side of the mile-wide water.

One of the means of spotting the territorial influences of the Ian e
families in Britain is to look at the street names in the bigger cities.
So in London there is Grosvenor Square, belonging to t e
Grosvenors, Dukes of Westminster; and Bedford Square,
belonging once to the Duke of Bedford; and Cadogan Square, an
so on. Cavendish Terrace, in Carlisle, indicates part of the northern
realms of the Dukes of Devonshire; Bute Street, Bute Terrace,
Dumfries Lane, Dumfries Palace and Bute East Dock in Card ,
capital of Wales, indicate the influence of a peer whose home an
principal lands are 200 miles to the north, the Marquess of Bute.

Lord Bute — who holds as one of his subsidiary titles Baron
Cardiff of Cardiff Castle — is one of the larger landowners in Britain.
His father used to own St Kilda, the group of islands out in the
Atlantic to the west of the Hebrides, but bequeathed them to the
National Trust. He still owns Great Cumbrae, an island in the
of Clyde, plus a good deal of land on the Isle of Bute, the long island

15 *

THE MARQUESSES ^

thatstretthessouthwardsoftthewcsKinS^^^^^ nationalist-

been attacks on his hi, friends insist he is one of

minded press north of the Botde'. t criticism of the

the kindest and ablest of men. m friends ask, should he

‘give us back our land’ style. To anyone other than the

retutnMThelsleofButeneverbelo^cdtoany,^

Matifucss and his ancestors, they » '■ he major Ca*ohc

Roman Catholie-and '■'“““.“ “w'nnfnterested in the House

landowner in the country.) He “ pnrsible to a welter of

of Lords, and devotes as much ^ Scotland. He,

committees and to the Na™«‘7„7“rinss-nine. compared wi*
Bristol, is a patron of a number Catholic he is m th

Bristol’s thirty. But since he “ ^.c present’ to those living m

ftusuating position of being o of the Pro c

the Church of England, which IS. at

persuasion. . j ^ few eyebrows early in •

The Marquess of Hunily ^ the

Huntly, whose title ^'.. Marquess of Scotland and the

distinction of being the ' . jptjnviewofhisescapa )

monikerfperhapsunfortunatelyapt ^.year-old nurse m

O’ die North’. ° divorced

January of that year. had been the daugh „ fifjv.six.

keepiS the ranks nicely „bcn he was a mere fifty s^

Kemsley) some doaen marry ag^^.f.„

Now, at sixty-cight, he f jhcepigraP^'®^"’ 3

celebrated remark that app headlines, over ® ^ hes.

Cock o’ rhe norths .

Ma^;uLh.ddledw,tho»»-’“

surprised Aberdeenshire, fa,, falling

save the title; a lit and aeastle, ioconyeniem claim

of significance, no „bented there w pf Gordon.

“a SStSHunrly

^pTsSthad d.o.ared^«5^’S chleO m the fifteenth century

family (of which Huntly IS the

152 THE MARQUESSES

was invalid, so he, Sir Alexander, should inherit the Scots
Lordship. The Committee for Privileges at the House of Lords
admitted that the claim was a serious one, but after a long
deliberation— followed by the press of the day, though hardly as
assiduously as the Ampthill baby case of 197^ — decided against in
any way diminishing the honours due to the former Farnham
motor-car salesman.

The Marquess — a singer and, later, the adopted parent of a pipe
band, no less— is an admitted ‘backwoodsman’. Like his colleague
Bute, he is a Tory of the Old School; he— Huntly— thinks that
Harold Wilson ‘should be suspended from the end of a long pole .
He has left the tunning of the Aberdeenshire estates to his son, Lord
Aboyne, and takes his ease now in a wing of a seventeenth-century
house near Guildford. When pressed to answer whether or not he
felt it appropriate for the Cock o’ the North to marry a iwenty-ywr-
old girl while he was well towards his fourscore years and ten, he
performed a trick for watching reporters: he bent over and touched
his toes, just to show how fit he was.

The estates of Bute are considerable; those of Huntly are
insignificant; and there is plenty of evidence among other
Marquesses that reduction of their landholdings is proceeding
apace. They have not managed to insulate themselves as nicely front
the ravages of the present century as have the Dukes. We see holders
of old titles like the Marquess of Normanby successively sell piece
after piece of his once sprawling estates — a few miles of Sussex
coastline between Bognor Regis and Littlchampton going for £3
million (it was bought by the Post Office Superannuation Fund),
the great Inglcby Greenhow Estate near Whitby up for auction,
other portions of the Yorkshire lands allowed to melt away.
Normanby is still able to pay for the services of a butler at his
Mulgrave Castle, however, and to send his sons to Eton and to rear
five daughters besides. But the days when the Normanby lands were
a force to be reckoned with arc over.

Likewise, Lord Linlithgow, owner of the greatest Adam mansion
in Scotland, Hopetoun House, has had to go on a selling spree:
books, paintings, a house in Sussex, all have had to go, either to pay
taxes or to offset losses incurred by his somewhat less than
successful business ventures..This Marquess, who spent more than
two years in Coldiiz Castle during the Second World War (and won
the Military Cross), is another who has to put up with the public
poking among his possessions— Rubens, Van Dycks, Canalettos

153

the marquesses

price of survival.

. < is more notably a story

Generally then, the story of the Maiq « to Be

of decline than is that of the presen jot example, had to

more tragedies-the Marquess of « the

endure the shooting deaths of _ eonsiderablc sales of

famous Meikkour House, m Pen Marquess of

furniture, and separation fron. "“i„ge part of Islington, rn
Northampton, who died in 197 ’ qM books as having pai ou

north London, is still listed m <,00, to an actress named

more for a breach of a^'tSHo plight his troth) thim

Daisy Markham to whom he Marquess was f"“^

any other Briton. At the “f Scauseofrisingeosts.He.too.

quit the family seat at Castle A*hby. ^ of land, or pa'”™®*
ioined the queue of those "f"'"® oededhim is having even greater
other assets, and the son who

dilRculty in maintaining the <>nl o,mile man ainong Aose of
And there is a slight trace “ „t Zetland, a “

the second senior rank, -ntc ^ wa ore

Vorkshire-5,000 acres near Aske, ^^^^^^ ,„

Cleveland, and further found had *e cohtra« “

ofaprintingfirmthat.toh.sho^™f' y, son, Lord D-ri

producing the rad,c^ kuro^«',„, r^^^^^^^^

Dundasywroieate evis

MaiqucsshimsclfdtJ ^ of lugging forelocks

Yorkshire town 'Th' ^ ,vas made

Zetland mio jiaicme . j action

aie over,’ he ^chmond Suffice to say no

“ ■'''^.he rudc ak ^

against the "d' “ j stand tot ^ .Ma<q„e5,es

alderman 7“"? ^.gmally less ef before one of their

something for ihe ma t ,,j surlac

Ihatlhiskindof rebellion.

tahk. ^ J^jy_iwcnt> -ninc of them

.k,..^v-sc>en i ords and a thirtieth, the

“rr - Uoncgall, Down.hlre and

WatertorJ. l'l>a

154 THt MARQUmtS

C:on>nKlum-jJc Ituli mJc» ilui will be dcilt with vn a
clupur. Ob»<r\am foUawen will rcalue that ll-x aJJjUon a t.rf
ihuty able JO ill in the U'icJhcr with ibc eifthJ Invhnim.

exteeJ ibc lUJcJ total by one. 'Htu i» l>c<auvc the dcika of ti-*
Home of Ura» tccojyiue the Duke of Abeiium by hit tsutw

Kinc^otn nufiiuctuie.thc title by wbiJt he it able to uke hit teat.
We cUttify him at a DiAc» thou£h. anJ u>, typically, Jv<l the
racmbetthip of the Houte: whcnctcf the .Maiiiuctt of Abcuoni
appean— which It infrequently-- lie ittcfciteJ to at Hit Of a*e, not
Hit lainivhip. It it that kinJ of miuiutchcJ appellatioo that tnaket
fur confuiiun, anJ no vtonJer.

lly the en J of tint century there will be many few er of thit iJcjrcc;
at prevent three of the nurqucitatct arc to be rcg-iilcJ at ‘at nik m
that the holJctt ate rapidly appioachmg, or luve reached, the icrci
of their fecundity, w uh no heir on the Iwruon. Tlic Marqucttaie w
Cambridge, tirtt otfer cd in lyi? to the t*'n and heir of tlic UieDuke
of Teck by the lattet't marruge into the Utitivh Royal bamily, it
expected todivippcar within the decade, 'nie title of Matqucttof
Willingdon, given to the Indian Viceroy in 1936, became extinct
recently, dcvpitc the bett ctforti of the hcitlctt lait .NUiqueti to
keep the title vivible and active. He would travel upiolhe HoUteof
Lordi each week— a journey of luty milet tlm mutt luve been
oneroutfor him. He w at over eighty when he died, tiill in lumevt.
'ITic Matquctt of Ormonde, alto bom in ihc nineteenth century and
the holder of the tevcnih in vucccttion of an Irith dignity handed
out in 1825 to a former Lord lieutenant of Ireland, livct m il«
United Statei; when he diet the marqucttaie die*. He lut only
daughter* (l.ady Cunvtortcc lluticr, now, to cgaliianan-mindcd
Amcncant, timply Mr* Henry 2>oukup, of Hmtdalc, lllinoit; and
Lady Violet Uuiler, now juit Mr* Dtmald Robb of Chicago), and
only males in the diiiant family cm mlicrti jutt the carlJomt of
Ormonde and Oivury— such is the brutality and complexity of the
law.

And the Marquettate of Dutfetm and Ava— that, too, is wanting
of an heir. 1 hit, among the most glamorous of British titles, could
go ro the wall, except that the holder is still a youngster, and has
been married only since 1964. The young Sheridan Frederick
1 erence HamiUon-Tcmplc-Blackwood, with family connections to
the Guinnesses, a seat m County Down and houses in liindon and
Kent, has been a perpetual vlailing of the gossip columnists and the
social buucrtlies. He inherited when he was seven, after his father

155

THE MARQUESSES

.as kilkd in action ^'o to estates

:iandeboye, the lovely Insh house. ,„stees said at the

£.20,000 'to maintain his station tn^ Kh,.„, Billy

Le. And how he mainlined '“oSite Ce‘i‘>S“ =“‘‘ “ *

Wallace, the Earl ot Dalketth, Lady P „,„eteenth

other luminaties ot the .950s three massive commg

birthday party. The fireworks “'°“be ‘just like Woometatocket

of-age balls two years later '^arc . gjjctable stun re ^

range' The young Marquess spein a “ tuptoOsfordmipbo-

inghisroomsat Christ Church,t»henh hth get

A^d when this ‘debs’ ‘‘.''‘tUflent to b'eeding and statton-^
married, it was to a precise A family, ^ of note

cousin, of course, in 'fd «er°to““ Lindy, “ P/«“

Belinda, but known theti and e j , he brief world of gh

and,lik=Duffyhimselt,lov=dbyanm

everyone said *= ■'=« Guinness (but not ^ ,hll flit

who could call the stuff). rt? ,hete is no

imagtnes, who actually d tnk the -''“tlions are in

into the limelight from time t t relation ^

heir-and such “'“".h harony. Even th^

remainder only to ih cjf ftancis Elliot av'ay.

remote and elderly Baronet, to hves far

is childless-and he, h

California. Vhan— they somehow

hlndy and Dofly, "C^-Anglty,

Sit still has us "’‘^hty j^ese show

Marquesses. The “ Buic-but ^cn somewhat

rnTdr serors^sbo»^''J^-r^^^^^^^

system »n which _

^cs in the realm -

155

THB marque^*®*

„as killcil in action “ Ws estates

Ctadeboye, the lovely Irish h ^ as the trustees said at

£,20,000 'to maintain his station m Mu . Khan, B.lly

time. And how he maintained ' „ ^aCadoganand aroyti

Wallace, theEa.lotDallteith,I^dyDa^ „,„„„„th

oflier luminaries of the ,950s three massive coming

bitthday party. The fireworks « “'J^Tostlte Woomerarockn
of-age balls two years later were sa jble suin rede

, anieb The young Maruuessspenta“n p^„Oafor^

inghisroomsat Christ Church,»henh ^^ «”“''L^ilia

And when this 'debs’ in breeding and smnon^^^

married, it was to a precise q ^ ess family, nam
cousin, of course, in the seteam' “um ^ ^r ^

^a:SS;?i"XSSaved;ya«.nMuhr,efwod^^

'“he marriage was at Wesmin«« ^^e? 3 !'’SerroM

who could call therns there is no

imagines, who S time: as yet. are in

into the limelight fr ^ ij to that title, a

heir-and such mal barony. Even * gj^^ekwood,

remainder only to ^ Sir lives^far away, m

remote and elderly Baronet. Ormondes. Uves

is childless-and he,

California.

California. Khan— they somehow

UndyandOnfiy.C-de^rdfna-^^^^^^^^^

system m which i ^
names m the realm ■

THE BELTED EARLS

I amot conceive »hv to »» » m M, op,„,„„, „c

crazy; I loathe poUtiaans. and ! can’tthmk where this country
IS going to'

The Earl of Carlisle, 1976

O»n.keepet/B..1.0 ■e<lu»'‘> » “'<* SaHorfsl-i.e, S»,le-
uameKesj^ ( include game-teanng on a small scale,
nf duck flighting, supervision of syndicate fishing

management of duckmgti ^

country bred-

Advertuement placed in Thi Field, 1977,

by the Earl of Lichfield

The Eatl of Longford, quoted by Susan

Barnes m BcMnd tA« /mage

T he Earls, backbone of the British peerage system, have been with
us for longer than any other rank. Indeed, the peer with the most
ancient title of all is accorded the rank of an Earl-a Scottish
countess. Lady Sutherland, whose fantdy won tts coronet back in
I2J5 or thereabouts. (Naturally, the Sutherland claim has its
challengers. The Earldom of Amndel was created m .138, and.
while it is normally held by the Duke of Norfolk it can, in certain
rate dtoimstances be separated from the ducal array of titles and
stand on its own. And there is the oldest peerage of all, *e Earldom
otMar.whichisheldbyaladylivingmasmallhouseatNimberio,
Cranberry Drive, Stoutport-on-Severn in Worcestershire. Udy
Sn tie is 'lost in the mists of antiquity’, ts claimed to have been
eoL “rung under the guise of bemg a •mormaer -a local dynast
Z° lL evolved into an Earl-as long ago as 1114, But the

introduced to Engtad ^o™^^

century whenBriton wn not

the brutal Danes. •{ „„bleman as distinct front a 'ceotp’

which was supposed to s gn y ‘churl’, and which ’

from which we get ™°o„„-„,nior further defines the last'word
lowly peasant^ The g^d to say, evenb of die

as a rustic, DOor, u vK lifted the veil for a few brief m,n
latter months of 1974 of aristocracy for all to

and exposed the is perhaps more suitable for

convinced many tha at least. The third most . .

Earls than chutls-some of them at lea lUos, se„,„

. TO. noun. «. soo„»a-. no.

senior m precedence These .re the t"

the belted earls

the five ranks of the British peerage has, thanks to the activities of
one Richard John Bingham, seventh Earl of Lucan, been weighed
in the balance of public esteem, and found badly wanting.

Richard Bingham has been missing since 7 November 1974. For
most o 197 5 a caravan of British policemen and attendant reporters
unte t e errant nobleman from the Sussex coast to Patagonia. So
m^y supposed ‘sightings’ of the tall, stern, heavily moustachioed,
thirty-nine-year-old Englishman flooded in to Scotland Yard-
rom otith i^ncrica, Swaziland, Portugal, Mozambique, Ger-
many, t e United States, and a dozen other nations besides— that
there was a biKl craze for wearing T-shirts printed with ‘I am not
thJ Scotland Yard, which wants

m, his children’s nanny and for attempting to

Tr™ I ' maintains an open file, though dust is beginning to
fliphf n ^ of the wreckage strewn in the wake of his sudden

the wnrM fof auction’, one headline read, giving

and dAnv,,?* ';Potiym to slide between Hansom and Macadam,
a vicarionA** Sivmg the reluctant peer reason, if he is still alive, for
a vicarious sense of triumph.

as tnl "’'c""'*' Briton to disappear into thin air.
S °amn v»urH ® r"'- '’"'8™= Henniker

three years later the morning peacefully at home:

of his’house He h discovered his skeleton in the lumber room
mysl!r?ous c:," d-' i" Paace. An even more

Campbell of u” '*^**'d Lt-Col Sir Bruce Colin

boarding-house in W vanished without trace from a

the baronetcy after 7' had only just succeeded to
Sun.ai,rA „ “ ^ Bts father rn a prison camp in

All his bills were paid h”"'" ““d'"' SP'"®

reports he was soff . ’’“''ct order. There were some

managed a tin mine hllr ^repmg sickness, picked up while he

the heat y UnZ h k"”’ have been lost in

hr a pau^e^s gmve 'S;.? “"d "uried somewhere

Burma, havinc a snn ^^ports say he had been married in
evidence of chher But there is no firm

somewhere in ,** * **^ though clearly if there is a son
would be the rightful Baronet is dead, he

litlc-holdcr With the nv,, ."av r merely records Sir Bruce as the

has been received sm ^°“^°rmation concerning this Baronet
srea, milna" d iZZ’S ‘''om a family of

f unction. Of the fifty Campbells of Cawdor, to

l6i

THE BELTED EARLS

Which Ardnamurchanbelongs^whol»^^|;''^^^"^‘®pi,tin

have won Victoria Crosses, fifteen nav

Service Order.) „l,„iether more sensational, not

The case of 'Lucky’ Lucan »aa ,„volved, but

least because a ‘’“'TTlre'’S Sme "8^00 a comer of

also because for a short w ^anHcized about, rarely accurately

British society generally only « „f a tight-kmt group of

reported. The picture which ^ ® ^e ultra-right, their

moneyed men and women, intelligence severely limited

bigotry deep-rooted and intens , . thirties’ Berlin and

and their attitudes and behavmut engaged in a giddy,

as repugnant as seventies Ug . j ,l,e seedy gambling

boisterous, quite The exposure shocked Britain

clubland of after-midni^t London. ^ je eould exist md

even more than the murder S “e naiion came as a dull

thumb their collective noses “ her symptom, many said,

blow at the head of the P , still worthy of respect or

of the steady decline of Bntam as a nation

pleasant in which to live. Lucan’s disappearance was

The actual crime that PtaoiP^ “ Thursday 7 November,
shocking enough. Just ””b°„se at 46 Lower Belgrave

Lord Lucan arrived at bis Duke of Wesraimster s vast

Street, the quietly smart tiuartet of ^ ^ kis estranged

estates. Inside the house, as ’^uuse, so he suspected,

wife and the children, ^b^"' “ ghter of a factory worker
would be Sandra Riven, the y kad been hired as nanny

from Coulsdon who, four weela U , eighteen months,

die children. She was the eighth namy P Veronica

but, unlike her Pmdecesmrs s«.^ Lappy.^^^ Thursdayi diat
Lucan. Her day off, as Lo'd Lu^ „u„an in the house should

evening. If all was as normal, the only Bu, on this

have Ln the iLir«--vemy' - d ^ ,,eide^

particular Thursday Sandra Riveltna

m ,00. It was .0 be for her a *= equipment he needed

When Lucan arrived he was cat^g ^ jju had a United

to nd himself of the wife he desp'S^ ““ * of lead p.pmg

States Post Office mail ”d he had^^a^ darkened house,

wrapped in sticky tape. He J"“„, socket and waited for ffie
removed the hgh.bulbfromU.ebasenw^^^ downstairs fe

woman-his wife, as he thought t o dock

the cup of tea she habitually made m tune

i 62

THE BELTED EARLS
news. He heard the footsteps, saw the form of a woman, and lashed
out with his lead pipe with quite extraordinary ferocity. Once,
twice, three times and mote he brought the blackjack down on the
woman’s skull. Tea tray, cups, jugs went flying down the stairs. The
woman pitched forward. Blood splattered everywhere over the
walls and ceiling. Pieces of bone fragment were smashed over the
stairwell. When he was satisfied she was quite dead, ‘Lucky’ Lucan
crammed the body mto the mailbag — a difficult task, considering
the bag was only four feet deep, and the dead woman, whom Lucan
probably still assumed was his wife, was a good foot and a half longer.

Then, however, he heard his wife — not dead, but yelling down
the stairs for her nanny, 'Sandral Sandral’ she shouted, racing down
the stairs into the dark.

‘And what happened then?’ asked the Coroner at the inquest the
followmg June.

'Somebody rushed out and hit me on the head,’ Lady Lucan
replied.

‘Was there more than one blow?’

‘About four.’

‘Did you hear anybody speak at that time?’

'No, not then. But later I screamed and the person said "Shut
up!” ’

'Did you recognize the voice?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who was it?’

‘My husband.’

Lady Lucan went on to tell of the violent struggle that ensued—
Lucan thrusting two gloved Angers down her throat, she grabbing
hold of his testicles and squeezing. Lucan sioppmg, running out of
adrenalin, apologizing, letting his wife go and lie down in the
bedroom. And then the terrified Countess fleeing from the house,
ninnmg to the nearby Plumbers’ Arms, burstmg into the bar,
covered with blood and screaming: ‘I’ve just got away from being
murdered. He’s murdered my nanny. He’s in the house.’ And
finally, collapsing.

Frances Bingham, the ten-year-old daughter, gave evidence at
the subsequent inquest, displaying all the innocent impartiality
towards the parents that a child is instinctively bound to utter. She
had heard a scream after hermotherhadleft the room at 9 p.m., but
thought the cat had scratched her, nothmg more. ‘But at about
9.05 p.m. when the news was on the television. Daddy and Mummy

THE BELTED EARLS

164

Lucan staining one end. But by this time most Britons had come to
the conclusion that it tvas the Lucan Set who were the truly
‘unpleasant people to sit with’. The policei whom the moneyed men
with their braying laughs would treat with contempt and open
scorn, felt uncomfortable and, in truth, behaved with less ease and
efficiency than had they been investigating a more routine crime,
involving common criminals. The press, too, found it could get
nowhere: a velvet curtain of silence had draped the witnesses, a
Mafia-Ukc code of imperturbable reticence stood between them and
the possible truth. A Daily Express reporter, well used to the
byways of villainy, commented: ‘To try to talk to this tightly knit
circle of friends is like hndtng a traitor in Coldiiz. They shrink from
interview ... for fear of breaking that masonic bond which links
that certain breed of men whose "stud book” lines mostly lead back
to the same stablcs—privilcgcd prep schools, Eton, Oxford, the
Household Brigade. The honour code binds their silence.’ But, one
might have mentioned to the reporters, other criminal fraternities**'
nay, most other fraternities, criminal or not— have honour codes of
silence. Why was this particular code (o be singled out as being
especially unpalatable?

The reason is to be found, one imagines, from one's inborn
expectations of the English upper classes. One has for long
recogmaed their style of living as being grand, out of touch with
reality, unimaginably different from that of the masses; yet at the
same time one expected of them qualities that were essentially
British: honesty, reliability, decorum, taste, style, a lack of
ostentation and a deeply fell loyalty to principle, rather than merely
to person. One recalls the Tranby Croft gambling scandal, and the
calm way the guilty party accepted his cashiering, his ostracism by
his friends; one remembers the Profumo case, Harold Macmillan’s
shame at being lied to, and Profumo’s long but successful climb
back to acceptability. But this, the Clermont life and the Clermont
people, this was something darker and less forgivable. There was a
singular absence of dedication to any particular set of values; there
seemed only a vitriolic hatred of those not of their kind and a
determination to presen’e their own way of life at all costs, to
protect their privacy and their entrenched, neo-Fascist views from
the light of public inspection. That was something neither the
Express nor the heavy-footed policemen of Scotland Yard could
take, and it has left a sour taste in the mouths of all who came into
even the faintest contact with the affair.

THE BELTED EARLS

And where is in the Sussex

South Africa, or Switzerland. „ j 3„d Newhavcn, where

Ouse, the rivet that tuns The bones of a man who

his cat was found the day after

had gone missing in 19^5 w'" f skeletal remains

” HeliM^pearenwing £62 .<»o: at

£5,000 worth of his hlmer too In .98., if l>=

coronet and robes have ^ne o fourteen, will be

fails to reappear, young Georg ® ^jiat of the courtesy

able to apply for the elevation Earldom of Lucan,

appellation Baron *'.'t,at young George will

of Castlebar, created m 1795- « believe Lucan to be alive

make his application: for Us cronies, there is

still, protected by his friends imd The sense of

confident assurance he wi which Lucan moved seems

solidarity among the upper classes in wnic

thick enough to cut. Number 46, sadder but a

And Lady Lucan? She lives " she has given a number of
little wiser in the wake of this “* J actress chosen to portray her

interviews. In 1979 she j ,ban her, more gamin and

inaTVplayi'Ihaveamoredeto f tones. At

fey and childlike. I was a ^at the night that Sandra

another time she said: ‘You *5 my life But, in a way,

Rivett was murdered was Aew husband— aided by those

the horror of the years before, "B™ was cumulatively
closest to him-tried to have^eWa^fXchmanye
much worse. It was not an an

their dignity intact. dignity. Dominic

And some people lost a lot m j^spite of more intelligence

Elwes, a sad failure of a specim^ > Clermont gathered

and wit than the entne was

together, had somehow mve.gle^«^y^^^j^^33„S„3tplaytoa
suspectedofhavinggivenphoto^ph ^

Sunday „ewspaper-»d » he killed hmiself

bullies of the group that, despite f ^heir class, like

with an overdose “f -seems .0 have been
Dominic Elwes,’ wrote Nigel he is last seen heading

talking to the enemy-«hich rs you and me

THE BELTED EARLS

down the hill into the enemy camp like a prairie dog, holding a white
flag in his teeth.' Elwes wrote a farewell note cursing those who, he
felt, had driven him to an early grave: all he had tried to do
present an honest picture of Lucan to the more responsible
members of the press who were fascinated by the revelations the
murder brought in its wake. 'I hope they ate happy now. he
And at a service held later in 1975 fnr him, a service attended by
many distinguished figures from the mote distinguished edges oi
the stage on which Elwes bticlly danced, there was further uglin'“-
John Aspinall, giving his version of a eulogy, was punched on
nose for his pains. He slumped back into his cat as the assailant, a
distant cousin of the dead Dominic’s, walked off. I ® use o
dealing with animals,’ he said. Kenneth Tynan, hearing o c
incident, quoted Belloc. Elwes, his friend, had been memorialized
that day 'to the sound of the English county families baying for
broken glass’. .

And then there was Sandra Rivcti— -almost a byproduct oi tn
scandale, her death seems now as irrelevant as did Officer Tippett s
to the assassination in Dallas eleven years before. Perhaps she was
about the only normal creature in the whole sad deaih*dance. Her
husband had left her a few weeks before she happened on Veronica
Lucan: all she had was her black cat which, so much did she
apparently like the Lucan children and the Countess, she returned
to Surrey one day to get and bring to Belgravia. Her death was a
grisly mistake, but one which became swiftly eclipsed as the curtain
was lifted on the world she briefly entered. Her role in this is similar
to that of Stephen Ward, the osteopath caught up in the depraved
and similarly arrogant world of the Qiveden Set. To that group.
Ward v/as ‘m’ doctor’ in the same way other Sets would have had
‘m’ butler’ or 'm’ groom’. Mrs Rivett was ‘m’ nanny’, and it was
characteristic of the callous attitudes of the Set which she so
tragically encountered that one member remarked, according to the
police, that it was a shame she had had to die 'because nannies are so
hard to come by nowadays’. ‘Of course,’ one of Lucan’s pals said
later, ‘out of politeness, one says it’s very hard on the nanny,
although I don’t of course feel a personal sense of loss.’*

Neither did anyone else, apparently. She was buried six weeks

' A critic says he has never heard the phrase 'in' doctor’ or ‘m’ nanny’, and the
author must confess he has not, either. But the altitude, suggesting at least part-
ownership of some who perform service, u common among the wealthier in Bntain,
as m other countries too.

THE BELTED EARLS

167

,fter the killing, with suggestions still rampant that it had been a
ealous boyfriend, rather than a belted Irish Earl, who had smashed
her skull Her parents and the police sent flowers. No one else sent
anything She left this world to the sound of the British upper
classes Ltely moaning that girls of her sort were so hard to
come by.

There are I7T non-Irish Earls and Countesses dotted around the
country and the world. Mercifully for the breed few are of the same
• ^ Tj -.-isoryi Tnhn Bingham*, most are incomparably pleasanter
mrrmdettog to the society benefits that are almost enough to
the monstrous debt incurred by Lucan and his mindless
offset „ographical distribution, unlike the patterns

cronies. T g ^ ^ Marquesses, illustrates the

?? hulon of the SoT. select regions of the nation. Central and
W ^ twenty-six of diei, numhert file chalk

wi^ ond Salisbury ate home to a cluster of six (Pembroke and
hills . 7 Radnor, Chichester, Avon and Monntbatten

Montgomery. RotheLM inhabited by”

hLeinCtanber^,Dcte,^Sw^^^^^

AlblUZ'stradbrote^^^^

themselves away on “"S' „ Uieir terminus far

Norfolk, using n,ore fashionable railway n * 1 ^ ^

and the House raiher th^ **

Paddington and be called ‘Our right mjsiJ

territory for those en 1 distinguished from

well-beloved cousin appellation ‘Right u

in briefer f°nt-sl ,?'a dutch nestle^

mstcad of *7porth froroQu"”tf"ty wHad^ touthem

banks of the Firth of \ j, Dunmorc, Haddui„ ^1°”— the
Earls of Rosebery, g„iat houses on ft ®'“y”

and Balfour; othed rule f „ »taou rivets

from Tayside to SP'V"*'' „ca„,„most (aside
Sutherland, up at *'jLes Leveson-Co.,;”® l-ose who

live in Ireland) is iu'" , Callemish, on ihc qJ ' fifth Earl
Granville, who has a Earl of Jersry^j Hebride^.

■,:Sd,e"m\heCha„-->‘'»'‘«^

I68 THE BELTED EARLS

lives at Ballamodwa on the Isle of Man. One lives in America,
another m Australia, and the Earl of St Germans makes his home
not at the village of his name in Cornwall but, perhaps more
appropriately, in a distant canton of Switzerland.

The merciless decrepitude that hangs about the peers like green
moss makes it likely that at least five of the titles will vanish in the
next decade or so. One, the Earldom of Stamford, quietly lapsed
into extinction in 1976 when the seventy-nine*year-old tenth Earl
died at his house in a Manchester suburb. Roger Stamford had lived
with his mother until she died, aged ninety-three, m 1959: he never
had any children, and no cousins, brothers or nephews appeared on
the scene to claim the title. It had been in existence 3s an English
peerage since 1628; the Barony of Groby, which the old man also
counted among his dignities, was created in 1603 and that, too, died
with him. Auberon Waugh was about the sole recorder of his
passing; Tt is my normal practice after I have met an hereditary pew
for the first time to colour in his coat of arms in my Peerage. Now
Roger Stamford's shield will remain for ever uncoloured, his tufted
unicorns unguled.’ (A nice epigram, bur sadly a little less than
accurate. The Stamford coat of arms displays, as supporters, ‘two
unicorns ermine, armed, unguled, tufted and maned or’; had
Waugh permitted himself the pedantry he noimally adores he
should have written ‘his unguled, tufted unicorns unetmined, their
manes tinorrcd’.)*

Another earldom at inuninent risk of extinction is Ancaster,
which has especial significance. Since that title and the Marquessate
of Cholmondeley share between them the Hereditary Great
Chamberlain’s office. Unless James Ancaster can summon up an
heir at the age of seventy, it is tempting to suppose the
Cholmondeleys will inherit the office for life, and for ever — or at
least until their line has died out which, according to the statistics of
the matter, it should do between now and the end of the twenty-
second century. Research shows, however, the matter is infinitely
more complicated, and the Cholmondeleys will not have the good
fortune, at least for the time being. There is a lesser heir to the Earl
of Ancaster, the Barony of Willoughby de Eresby; and although the
heir presumptive to that title is a woman — and one with two sisters,
moreover— and although no Great Office of State can be held by a

‘ TheGreys— thefamilynameofUicLordsStamford— hadbeenpeersinthemaU
line since the diirteenthcenlury and the very beginnings of Parliament. For a brief,
and all too sad, moment one of them, hady Jane Grey, was Sovereign.

1 69

THE BELTED EARLS
.Ke.e is ..=sy PO»s«i,

deputy to take over the ^ „f Lords says that the

addition to that safeguar , f Lincolnshire can share

descendants of the extmct Marquessate 01

the office as well. ^ . demise, the Earldom of

In addition to Ancaster s Earldoms of Fingall

Middleton recently became , jotis end in the coming

and Ypres look like grinding “ “ m sitting ^ords because

years (the Earl of Ypres Breadalbane, held now by a

of his bankruptcy). The Eatldo ^^^^jofBreadalbane, anda

man with a mother called Amore , ^ ^ „ earn

history of havmg playcti **“ J* ^ extinct, then at least donnant.
money, looks like becoming, t „ dalbane cousins to mherit
No one has any idea if there ate any ^ p,bre:!'s is vagac
the title; the Earl has neither ee„,ai„der to the earldom

to the point of tascinauoni among „f |e„g.lost cousins of the

ate the 'descendants it any of J 5 geon gpthRegimntt’

present Eatl. Men like 'Cohn .“iat-gteat-uncR the

eldest son of Captain Robert ,,4., or like 'Dmcan

Sixth Eatl, who died in „ Campbell of GRn-

Campbell, youngest son of Robert

falloch . . . bookbinder to the Que ^ admit to an extincnori

Theguardiansofthepeeragerollswillno mysterious

if they can possibly 'I'" top“Lps a generation after

Breadalbane family they will hold P arrd declare the

rhepresentEarlisdead before theyt^l^adrnn^,^^^^

title gone to the grave with him. Malayan jungle m

that some shaggy figure will "^gfmessotpapershefoundm

twemyyears'timeandclaimlbaraso^y pm„s beyond ^

a strong-box at the bottom of a tin to earldom. Since the tit e
reasonable doubt that he is e attachment of .

was created in .677 there is „„ce wen. with the

keepmg 1. going: the fortune present titleholder live

Breadalbanes have long ^.ey Le now divorced-was

in Hampstead, in London. His wife-ttiey

named Corahe. .-ince and Woolton are a .

The Earls of Birkenhead, Lovela» ^,„d.ets. Lord

andsinEleandasye.havenoheus.e«h«ch^^^^^^^^,^,g„.„a^^^^^^^

Sondes, holder of another . . jLin, this “me to Prmoe

for less than a year and now 1ms ““'p"* „bich is especially

Sissy of Salm. Technically theit “ties.

the belted earls

171

THEBELifci^‘“

air while wearing an Uia

ihs Thames, in highly up my trousers at the

Etonian tie. Miml you, the ; |^i„„u„dmyneck,itwastoo

,ime-I wouldn’t have gone do.™ ^ my

hot. But I do ^'rona^

the top Boor. ^

Lord Kintore and hrs wife DeUa of neat

erumbling Keith Hall, ^ “ i„g ,he doorbell can be a

parUand by dte village of 'f ^onlship is there, but .t mus
frustrating experience; you kno bellpush at the hug

be three full minutes after you Bf ' P j Did he hear? Is the brfl

oak door, and still nothmg has h PP “’i'tTrfto

working? Should I ring esam. Ft u.^ahellofaelimb.Gladt

doorereaksopen.’SorryIwassolong.lts

see you at last.’ „d up through >”‘*“'8*

At the top of some sixty steps tto^m Dint smells of

euitains and past ydls of ehildren, is the

other people’s cooking and the disM> Dj apartment m

which the old Earl and Countess sp II hung up m me

manner of memorabilia; ,he Ute Countess on

bathroom, a telegram f">“ *' Q“'“ ,, the blood/ wom“^
centenary (’and one .0 m, momer a « <^^8

She had the nerve to send a “ ?^„ditions terrible for P
everyming she »uld “ ^ ^ “r'L^'S'tlted.’). and

poppedoffiustaltertneparry^ ^Dgafo™^^

a note from me whippcr-m of a comnons-me ong

Keith farnilytogoand^einm^"-- marshals of party

it U said, of the tenn Whip ,.tticd

faithful in me legislative assentblju ^id_ . = se le

■I’m not a great one for ^„all, ‘ «

down, rather out of breath. the bright light fro"* living

room at the very top of me house. ^8"d.e „,„d„w.s, gnmS

parVdands below flooding »n

cver^ tiling a fresh, newly P* you and me is that

■The on,, real dldermec rya.cm thm

background very well- 1 S • -jp with the . he was

all you know you ”'8. ^ time “ D„hcof

Winchester: it happens, yo ,uwiship»- ^

delightfully vague about hisreUuonsh.P

172 THE BELTED EARLS

Montrose? Yes, he’s a second cousin, I think. John Logie Baird—
I’m not quite sure where he fits in, but he must be mixed up with us
somewhere. Lord Burton, up the road a way — I'm not sure if we re
related. I’d have to look it up.’ The filing system was there in the
library; volume after volume of Scottish and English peerage lore,
vast rulings from the Lord Lyon, copies of articles of genealogy and
papers on the Clan Keith, of which Kintorc is the Chief. ‘I know
that Europe is littered with Keiths. One of my antecedents was a
Prussian soldier, with the result that there are at least twenty
members of the Clan Keith in Sweden today. There are scores of
illegitimate Keiths, or descendants, all over the place. It’s quite a
clan to be with.’

Lord Kintore is an engineer — an Etonian who, rather than take
the usual well-travelled path to Christ Church, Sandhurst or the
Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester, to learn politics,
soldiering or how to manage a country estate, chose to go to the
School of Mines, where he learned tunnelling and mine
engineermg. He became a Royal Marine engineer, bad a ‘pretty
boring sort of war’ in Iceland, the Orkneys and 'just into Germany,
tight at the end’ before settling into an occupation that took him
from mine to mme from Kincardineshire to the Rand. He became a

Viscount in 1941, owing to some complicated formula of remainder,

but declined to take his seat in the House of Lords until 'I felt I had
something to talk about.’

He is a classically responsible member of the House— he attends
three days a month, speaks only on subjects about which he lays
claim to special knowledge, and has little regard for the Whips. ‘The
House allows you to preserve some independence of thought. If you
ever do happen to get a three-line whip, which is very rare, all they
want is to ensure your attendance. They don’t seem to mind too
much about your vote. And if they do, well, you can always tell them
to go and do the other thing.’

Kintore travels down from Aberdeen Station once a month—
usually on a Sunday-night sleeper, in which he travels First Class.
‘Well, if every little town-hall clerk can travel First on his expenses
I see no reason why 1 should travel Second when I’m on House of
Lords business.’

When he arrives he goes to his club, the Beefsteak, in Leicester
Square. ‘It’s a pleasant little club. The only qualifications for
membership are that you’ve either got to be a peer who has learned
to read and write, or a journalist who has learned table manners. We

THE BELTED EARLS

174

girls and things. So that doesn’t help. But so long as there are a few
of us who feel that the House of Lords is a worthwhile institution
and who feel that their peerages are a reward that they have got to
pay back over their lifetime by doing something worthwhile, then
maybe we will survive in public esteem, and that’s what matters,
isn’t it?’

Lord Kintore said there was not ‘a single coimtry in the world
that has benefited from Socialism*, and reacted with dismay when
he was told that Sweden bad managed to win the accolade as the
nation with the highest of all standards of living under precisely
such a system; he felt that Zimbabwe was not ready for majority rule
for many a long year yet, and that no other African cotmtry had
achieved any sort of success under black rule. Kenya? ‘Just wait a
few years— it’ll be a shambles.’ Tanzania? ‘That’s a Communist
country now, so we don’t know.’

The views of this kindly old man, polite, slightly shabby,
implacably British, traditional, buried in history and charmed by
simple pleasures, are shared, it should be said in fairness, by
millions. He thinks Britain is in a continuing and accelerating
decline, which he attributes tc the malign influence of the Left; the
workers have too much power, blacks are unprepared to rule in
Africa, Dr Vorster and Mr Smith had the right idea; why do things
have to change so? The Lucan Set held similar views, of course, but
there is a difference in the volume of protest, the form in which the
protests are made, the tenor of the argument, the degree of
tolerance. Lucan and his friends are loud, given to baying their
dislike of the hm poUoi in flashy shopfront bars, are bitter and angry,
bigoted and blinkered. Neither group is privy to much in the way of
facts — for both, the objection to such spectres as ‘Socialism’ is
largely one of emotion, rather than informed thought; but Kintore
ir, at least, prepared to listen, to take his taxicab to the House of
Lords and sit quietly m the wings, listening to his country diminish
all around him, making the odd contribution to the debate where he
can.

While the Lucans of this world do the peerage and dieir class a
monstrous disservice, the Kintores continue to project an image
that is part caricature, part legend, part truth. The British country
gentleman, reticent, responsible, mindful of the sensibilities of
those around him but perpetually dismayed with the decline he
sees. And yet which example is more responsible for the decline,
which of the pair will hasten on the evolution of true egalitarianism?

THE BELTED EARLS

175

Kintore has no doubts; ‘ Some of my colleagues behave rather badly.
They give men like Benn and Foot excellent ammunition for their
attacks. I’m not saying I’m at all perfect — Tm getting on now, and I
don’t do all I could. A lot of people would say I was washed up and
finished. But I can look back and feel fairly proud of what I’ve done.
I feel I have at least tried to live up to what is expected of me. I don’t
think Lucan did.’

‘The thing about Frank Longford is that he’s a very peculiar man,'
said a man who knows him well. ‘He’s much more peculiar than
most people we know.’ Few would question the observation. Lord
Longford looks peculiar and he acts in a peculiar fashion and, by the
standards of his peers, is quite extraordinary. He seeks for the
satisfaction of his persona] crusades — for downtrodden prisoners,
against pornography, for homosexual law reform, for more tolerant
attitudes towards drug addiction— with such frenzied zeal that he is
in constant danger of being thought an ass, a showman— even a
charlatan. ‘Frank Longford is one of the most foolish men in
England^’ wrote one book reviewer, only to be politely slapped
down a few days later by a charming letter from the noble Bail who,
though he may be many other things, is most certainly not a fool,
but is pleasantly tolerant cowards those who chink he is.

The appearance of the man often serves to confirm the
impression that the seventh Earl of Longford is a very strange
individual. He dresses more shoddily than even the most studied
eccentric would need to: his suits are terribly crushed, when he
bothers to weara suit; at homebe strides round In an ancient pair of
riding-trousers, patched and frayed, with a lorn polo-neck jersey
round his thin, slightly stooped shoulders. His hair is invariably
wild, his glasses, which are round and very close to his eyes, seem
filmy with grime; he has baddisb teeth and occasionally dribbles
from the edges of his mouth.

Unattractive he may be, but Einstein and Schweitzer probably
looked much the same in their day. And the fact remains that Frank
Longford is one of the most decent, most sensible, most courageous
and inifJijgenr men in England. He is not well liked: his views are
thought too patrician, too condescending, his interests dismayingly
prurient, his dialectic impure. He ainsistently champions the very
nastiest members of British society — criminals who have wrought
the vilest of crimes and who have been sent to rot in prison for
decades as a consequence. He takes too great an interest in matters

THE BELTED EARLS

176

that British people traditionally feel uncomfortable about
discussing. And yet he often appears just the still small voice we feel
perhaps we should be listening to, even though we might not like to
admit it.

He was bom in 1905, the second son of the fifth Earl; he went to
Eton and Oxford (where he took a distinguished First), was
converted to Socialism, to Roman Catholicism, became a don and
fairly rapidly wrote one of the finest histories of Ireland ever to have
appeared. He married Elixabeth Harman, an astonishingly
handsome woman still, and together they produced a crop of
children who, one feels, may one day parallel the Mitford girls for
dazzle and celebrity. (Thomas Pakenham, who does not use the
courtesy title of Lord Silchester, lives on the old estate in County
Westmeath; Patrick is a bwyct; Michael is a diplomat of coming
distinction. Antonia, a splendid author of historical biography,
married first Hugh Fraser, the distinguished and suitably
aristocratic Conservative MP, then left him for Harold Pinter;
Racbelwrites;JudithgraduaicdfromSomcrville;afDurth daughter
was killed in a motor accident when she was twcnty«thrce.)
Elizabeth Longford is a distinguished biographer, too— certainly
more happily received by the critics than her husband: he writes
splendidly about ideas but when U comes to writing about human
beings, President Kennedy, for example, about whom he wrote in
1976, he gets massacred by the literary pundits.

Paul Johnson, the former editor of the New Siaiesinan and a
shrewd observer of the British upper classes, says that without a
doubt ‘The Pakenhams ar« the most remarkable family in England
today. People say it’s all publicity. It’s not.’

Frank Longford has managed to combine a sparkling political
career with a series of personally directed campaigns for the world's
less fortunate creatures, and at the same time participate in rearing
this quite remarkable family. After his Eton and Oxford careers
were sideswiped by the Second World War— his nervous
breakdown culminated in his serving with ‘Dad’s Army’, the Home
Guard, in Oxford itself— he became personal assistant to Sir
William Beveridge, architect of the Welfare State, the mechanician
of post-war Labour reforms. And by the end of the war, when
Attlee’s Government was put firmly into power, his political career
began to take off; he first came to public notice as a man of unusual
passion and compassion when he was set the task of administering
the British Zone of occupied Germany. Contemporaries recall how
shocked and distressed he was by the condition of the downtrodden,

THE BELTED EARLS ''

defeated, humiliated Gemt^si he

described as saintly to help rdiev abuse, even though

he came in for mote than h.s fatr share of abuse.
he was careful to reserve h« ^ Germans

■good' Germans-the majonty, but Msurc y „f

iho had records of being unduly vtcious m then prosec

Labour was not in government for long; ,,5

backinoppositionidutingallfoe thut“«

was left almost m the wilderness. H mysteries; he

accruing valuable and unforgotten Punbhmmt.

also wrote two books: Comics o/ Cnm moved across

His keen interest in helping ■h'=. “ “J/;, bash ^

the North Sea from Germany: he dies he will best be

his last crusade and the one for which, when he dies, he

'TnT^Tbe became Leader of foe

which, for an Bail of only *'"^‘hout a parliamentary seat,
been created a Baron m 1945 when, . . attendance m the

Attlee gave him tasks to <io 'hat teqmmdj.ten ^
legislature), was not bad going. P years, betimes

foTttmes in the Upper House for for^a h^lf
winning himself the reputation of ?,„rnent’s attempt to have
and eventually participating in **** °^ . ^ ^ove failed and it

the House of Lords savagely Governmenfs

was not much later, in a row . eventually resigned,

education budget, that ^ parting: Frank

Harold Wilson did not shed many tears nearest thing to

Longford, looking back with slight believes he must have

bitterness an ardent Christian Lje Cabinet of the day.

seemed an awful bore to the thrusting, en ^ Christianity;

H=didtendtogo™lcc.»ri..gpeopfoo»morah.y_au
he admits now he must have scenae Sidewick & Jackson,

Today he is a publisher, not in his house

though he is careful to see that his Valera and John

list; Weidenfeld publishes Lon^ora, autobiographies

Kennedy and Jesus Chnst. He as " , ^gyenty-five, but too

already, more than enough for a ° jJhle in its variety and
little for a life that has been quite re ^ sedate phase,

complexity, and still shows no signs y^,hich Lord Long or
Perhaps the most celebrated '^“^""ynauiryintoPomography.
participated was his chairmanship ot tn

THE BELIEU

that British people traditionally feel uncomfortable about
discussing. And yet he often appears just the still small voice « e feel
perhaps we should be listening to, even though we might not like to
admit it.

He was bom in 1905, the second son of the fifth Earl; he went to
Eton and Oxford (where he took a distinguished First), was
converted to Socialism, to Roman Catholicism, became a don and
fairly rapidly wrote one of the finest histories of Ireland ever to have
appeared. He married Elizabeth Harman, an astonishingly
handsome woman still, and together they produced a crop of
children who, one feels, may one day parallel the Milford girls for
dazzle and celebrity. (Thomas Pakenham, who docs not use the
courtesy title of Lord Silchester, lives on the old estate in County
Westmeath; Patrick is a lawyer; Michael is a diplomat of coming
distinction. Antonia, a splendid author of historical biography,
married first Hugh Fraser, the distinguished and suitably
aristocratic Conservative MP, then left him for Harold Pinter;
Rachel writes; Judith graduated from Somerville; a fourth daughter
was killed in a motor accident when she was twenty^three.)
Elizabeth Longford is a distinguished biographer, too— certainly
mote happily received by the critics than her husband: be writes
splendidly about ideas but when it comes to wnting about human
beings, President Kennedy, for example, about whom be wrote in
1976, he gets massacred by the literary pundits.

Paul Johnson, the former editor of the Neu Statestnan and a
shrewd observer of the British upper classes, says that without a
doubt ‘The Pakenhams art the most remarkable family in England
today. People say it’s all publicity. It’s not.’

Frank Longford has managed to combine a sparkling political
career with a series of personally directed campaigns for the world’s
less fortunate creatures, and at the same time participate in rearing
this quite remarkable family. After his Eton and Oxford careers
were sideswiped by the Second World Wax — his nervous
breakdown culminated in his serving with ‘Dad’s Army’, the Home
Guard, in Oxford itself — he became personal assistant to Sir
William Beveridge, architect of the Welfare Sute, the mechanician
of post-war Labour reforms. And by the end of the war, when
Attlee’s Government was put firmly into power, his political career
began to take off; he first came to public notice as a man of unusual
passion and compassion when he was set the task of administering
the British 2^ne of occupied Germany. Contemporaries recall how
shocked and distressed he was by the condition of the downtrodden,

THE BELTED EARLS

179

a particularly impassioned way — the system of civil honours, a
system in which he stands, for hereditary reasons, close to the very
top and in which, for reasons of merit (he was given a Knighthood of
the Garter in 1971 for his services to youth and to prisoners), he
stands at the very summit. He believes there is too much snobbery
in present-day Britain (though he rather lovingly remembers the
peer who once exploded; 'Snobs, snobs — where would I be without
snobs?’) but does not believe the awarding of Orders of the British
Empire, or knighthoods, has much to do with it. Of hereditary
peerages there is, he concedes, some room for believing their
involvement in the system of snobbery, and he is quite glad that
none has been created since 1965. Bur the idea that ambulance
drivers may see one of iheirnumber collect an MBE from the Queen
after fifty years of loyal service— ‘that helps people with thankless
tasks like that to know that, as a body, they are recognized as being
worthy of note, and of the concern of the nation as a whole. I would
not much want to end that system.’ He is nor, however, an ardent
supporter of the monarchy: ‘The hereditary peers help prop up the
Monarch and protect her (or him) from the toils of ordinary life; to
that extent they should be abolished, and their supporting role in
the House of Lords taken from them.’

He admits there are certain advantages to being a peer,
advantages he has been quick to exploit, albeit for the welfare of his
chosen minorities, rather than for himself. ‘Being a member of the
House of Lords is, for a chap Uke me, a bit of an ambiguous advantage.

I think I would have been of more use in the Commons, and in fact I
did Cry several times to give up my title. But Gaicskell, and later
Wilson, preferred that I stay as I was. I think I would have sickened
pretty quickly of the political infighting and the trivia of the
Commons — but one misses some of the cut and thrust here in the
Lords. I have mixed feelings about it.

‘But there are other benefits. A Lord can throwhis weight around
a lot more than a man who doesn’t have a title . When I started taking
an active interest in what was going on in Northern Ireland I found
I could easily get into places that others, even MPs, had some
difficulty with. There was no trouble about getting mto the
internment camps, say, although times have changed. I went back
recently [in 1976] and the police fobbed me off with a visit to the
Crumlin Road prison in the middle of Belfast, and wouldn’t let me
go to the Maze, the old Long Kesh. Maybe the pull is not what it
was. Then the Dukes have this right of access to the Monarch— I

THE BELTED EARLS

178

He became a constant fixture on the front pages of the more
sensational newspapers, watching avidly the most bizarre sexual
extravaganzas in both Soho and the Scandinavian capitals. The
book that resulted was, thanks to its colourful prose style and its
photographs, an instant commercial success: Longford has since
been hard pressed to live down his later title, 'Lord Pom’.

His championing of the less fortunate of prisoners goes on —
men and women involved in the most horrific crimes (notably Myra
Hindley of the Moors Murders) merit his special attention. He is
constantly to be heard lecturing against the evils of long-term
imprisonment, even for the perpetrators of the most heinous deeds:
it does no good, he says, and tries to prove his case by telling the
press he has managed to convert Myra Hindley to Roman
Catholicism and is persuading Brady to read Tolstoy. He visits
them— as well as many other, less celebrated prisoners; perhaps
they may have been flattered by the unusual attentions of the Earl at
first, but by all accounts both they, and the prison staff, are
convinced that all Frank Longford is trying to do is to help.

The first time I met him was in Northern Ireland: I gave him a lift
to the airport for his plane back to London, and he, in return, gave
me one the best stories (the deuils of a conversation he bad recently
had with a commanding general in the Army there) for a long time.
He further returned the compliment by quoting me at the opening
of a Lords debate on Ireland’s ‘Bloody Sunday’. When I saw him
again recently it was first at his sparsely furnished rooms at the
Bloomsbury office of his publishing firm. He was not talking
publishing, but speaking softly into a telephone, about Myra
Hindley and her prison ordeal. ‘If you’ll forgive me for saying
so ... I don't feel I’d better argue with you ... I hope you’ll give
careful consideration to the points I’ve raised, even if you
disagree . . . Never did he raise his voice; the telephone was
placed back on its cradle with careful grace. He was angry at being
turned down, but retained serenity that spoke either of some deep
faith, or of yoga. He talks of the need for ‘good manners’ and ‘a sense
of responsibility’; he, like Kintore, politely deplores the behaviour
of some of his ennobled colleagues. ‘I seem to remember Wayland
Young [Lord Kennet] doing some research on divorce rates among
peers: he found that Dukes were thirty per cent higher than
ordinary people. That must say something, and it doesn’t sound too
healthy to me.’

On the wireless he once took the lectern to defend — though not in

THE BELTED EARLS

When I first met the Earl of Seafield he had just finished doing the

Itban pools, ■Yonneverhno»whe„yonM.belnchy’hem^^^^^^^^

drily, though he added that he always put an X ” “

•No Publicity’. ‘I doubt if it would do my image a lot of good to be
found winninK bis on the football pools!

TordTereldnLdsallth=luekhecauget.Averypriva^^

his middle forties, he currently presides over an '“P''' “
dwindles by the day. like a puddle of water m the heat “f
the turn of the century the Earls of Seafield were reckoned the thud
or fourth biggest landowners in Scotland; 400 square "“ “ of the

bestsportinglandintheGrampianHills.andthebctterag

landontheirnorthernfringes.belongedto,heSeafieldEstat^^^^^^^^

present Earl’s mother, Nina. Countess of S»fie d. ^

while, thousand-acre plot by thousand-acre plot. ®

were dismantled to pay the bills. And now the present Earl » haw^^

to sell again; land, bit by bit; whole estates, like *= Ord Esta« “
Banffshfre, and, in 1976, she ''-"“Wng contents of C„,len Hons
grand, tutreted granite mansion on

Moray Firth. The sale, which, after death duties ‘

had been paid, brought in only about
sagging Seafield finances, was widely critic, zed W *
newspfpersoflnvernessandAberdeen.' Itraisedtempemloca lym
Ui. way that die sale of Menunore Towers, near Lorfom r scd

tempers nationally in .,77. One 's.rem! "rgi^ents

few dozen miles up the motorway from

about its sale would have been similarly on "er^ody s hP»_

Nowadays the S=afieldEst..«^toa^u,,o,o^^^^^^^^

on Speysidc, now crawling with skiers in win
the late summer; and yogxx) in the Moray in gn ’and

of .hose acresarcheldinrmsifordie heir. Viscom.tRei^av«,»
his young brother, the Hon. Alexander Os.lvic-Gr^t, who ^

bomin i966;undcrthcdirecrcontroloft e ar “gadina ‘Scafi'cld,

acres, one house (Old Cullen) and 140 farms- The >'cadmg
Earl of’ in the Aberdeen area telephone ‘”?,“xhrec,

inches long, replete wid. numbers for Fishing Bear Ncrf’e^’Thre
Estates olce, Facto,. Shooting Lodge, md »■> ”<*

mote than a hint of Victorian Scorn grandeur about the addresses
■ Us, this be reguded as wholesale
blame for a regretuble muation

l8o THE BELTED EARLS

suppose that can be useful. More than anything it’s the ability to get
things done and have things done for you when you’re a peer.
People still do take notice vvhen they ask who’s talking and 1 say
“Lord Longford’’. Is that because they’ve heard of me, or is it
because I’m a Lord? I rather suspect it’s because of my title rather
than my name.’

He thinks there should, perhaps, be a ‘Peer of the Year’
competition organized by some newspaper, to try and bring out the
talented aristocrats and raise the general level of public approval of
those in the House of Lords. ‘They tend to be rather retiring, shy of
publicity and thus not as well received as they might be. Look at
what we’ve got— there are literary and artistic peers of considerable
distinction, like Lord Methuen, Lord Esher, Lord Lytton, Lord
Milford. There are fellows of enormous intellectual capacity —
Hailsham, Rothschild, Halsbury. And there are some very dubious
ones— perhaps there should be a wooden spoon given to the one
who performs worst of all. The poorest landowner, the rudest
man— the Duke of [he mentions a name] might have won that award
at one time.’

When Frank Longford added the New Horizon Centre, for drug
addicts, to his New Bridge — for prisoners— many suspected he was
just another of what Americans like to call ‘bleeding hearts’. But as
one of the staff said, admiringly, after Longford had set the Centre
up and handed it over to professionals for their full*time
management: ‘Being a peer and all that— and so good— we thought
he would be resented by the addicts. Surprisingly he’s not. They
look on him as a father figure. He isn’t much like the usual do-
gooder. Unlike the vicar or a probation officer, he has no axe to
grind.’

Lord Longford and Elizabeth Longford represent the flowering
majesty of the peerage in action. Theirs is a combination of
inherited behaviour, ability and attitudes and tastes which, sculpted
by a deep sense of responsibility and influenced by their
Christianity, have produced a family of which the class system can
be rightly proud. Longford would not have been accorded the
acclaim, nor in all probability had the chance to strive for it, had he
been untitled and bent on forging his mission from the basement,
rather than the drawing-room. Rightly used, the benefits of nobility
can reach to impressive heights, and Frank Longford, seventh Earl
and first Baron, is a proven exception to the currently popular rule
that ennoblement is, at its best, a Bad Thing.

i83

THE BELTED EARLS

happily exploit. I can’t understand why the people in
Edinb^gh don’t recognize that instantly. Am I "P

There were 900 guests at his coming-of-age party 9 >

entire village <Le m his wedding a few ‘»2ird ^em in

faith and loyalty which Scotsmen show towards the Laitd seem in
S case to'have evaporated a litde. There is » ^
enthusiasm for the beautiful young Egyptian girl mamed

after his divorce in 197.. but diere is a generous ^dness ov« he
fading fortunes of what were once .he most
domains north of the Border. The Earl shuns all P“b'f ‘J’
emerging to defend himself before his 8™“'’*'”®

alone in hs house by die shell of Cullen, avidly reading of the

Soviet strategies for the domination of the n im ’
occasional angry letters to the Daily

wake the nationup.seanninghis great voumesoTai. Tables

hopeotfmdingrhemuchmeeded loophole, andallte^^^^^

crosses against the footballing fortunes of City ^

Bristol Rovers and Hamilton Academicals, looking for his g
luck.

Perhaps more than any other rank of *e P««f

provided us with a fund of anecdotes. The Marauesses

Lore; the Barons multifarious and all

and Viscoimts were of a station too comp i a well known,

.hough:nieeandsimple.goodand^en^.r.ch.W^^^

ideal for the spinner of yams and for rh because of his

the Earl of Carnarvon-’Porehey’, he was

courtesy title of Lord Porchesrer-who wrote hisauotogaph^

.976. entitled, oddly. No Ergrem How much larger hm life
account of his closing hours with the Army m n ^

‘On a raised and canopied dais the Viceroy.

his guests, including Lord Inchcape, C

were enjoying the thrills of a close- g ^ ^ jast

4,30 p.m., the score, were level and we were P'“« ""acmred

chukka.Inthercmainingfewseconds.abtiefopp

and, wid. a push tamer than a stroke. ' ‘ ^o'eby

towards die £.al. I. caught dre wicker of die goalpost rhen. more by
luck than good management, trickled over e • yj^groy,
■Our team, hot and thirsty, were presented
Fielden was receiving the cup and each o us Excellency

trophy. It was just after I had shaken hands with His Excelie y

lS2 THE BELTED EARLS

and the obvious accessories of Isndownership as they are listed
the telephone book: reading the sad story of the attenuation of tl
Seafield fortunes, and meeting the Bari himself, dispel the illusio
He sat at a desk that was littered with income-tax tables and the
finished copies of the football pools. He is a rangy, nervous man
with an air of self-conscious loneliness about him. His wife and
children were away in London, he explained. Cullen House, half a
mile away down the park, stands empty and forbidding in the
January gloomj the Lodge, mto which he moved in 1977, is ueat and
comfortable, but utterly silent. The Earl went off to make his own
tea, returned with a tray which he placed beside the day’s copies of
the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express. There was an Adelphi
Paper, the journal of the Institute for Strategic Studies, on the
coffee table. He is not a soldier — never has been — ‘but I like to keep
up with the global picture of the Soviet build-up. The British have a
habit of being complacent— not me, though.'

He blames the country’s ills on taxation, which he regards almost
as criminal. ‘The Socialist dogma that is rife in this country is doing
everything it can to knock out people like me. There Is no incentive
fbc anyone in this countty to do anything any more. I’ve thought
about going abroad— if I sold up I’d bea rich man, and I could live
in great style. But frankly there are only two real bastions of
capitalism left I could go to— 'America and Canada. And I have
thought about it a lot.

‘But even then the ux man makes it $0 difficult. I’d have to
change my residence permanently — I couldn’t go on coming back
to see the children or anything like that. You’ve got to show the
Revenue you’ve really chucked this country.

‘And they’re gaining on us all the time. Look at France, and how
well Mr Mitterand did. Communism — it’s creeping all over Europe
and by the time it gets here we’ll be quite content to let it in. It
masquerades in all sorts of disguises in Europe. It’s blatant
imperialism in Africa.’

And so his Lordship went on and on. He had recently joined the
Institute for the Study of Conflict, a brazenly conservative
organization. He is being careful not to damage his credibility by
aligning himself with ‘extreme right-wing bodies’, but he has
p’leciged'tiunsdT to do all he can to combat the Red Menace, as he
actually calls it, in Britain. ‘Look at Scottish devolution — the
Communists would love it if Scotland and England broke op. They
know that unity is strength, and that disunity is something they can

THE BELTED EARLS

185

fmily finances and consolidate his position in a ^

behind for soldiering in the Empire. His trip back to ‘‘“y

in 1923 was a model of the smooth wockinp "f ^ ,

the Establishment can act to help one of its
Civilian rank, that is. Doubtless the coolies would not
banked for an officer of similar military rank to Porchey, but lacking

the rank donated by the fortunes of birth. u

A brief note about Lord Carnarvon’s nickname, Porchey. it
betme customary at the mm of this century to 8:'"=.'’“'^ “
the more celebrated peerages monikers that derived from thei
courtesy titles. Thus Bardie was Lord Tu libardine. he o he
Dukedom of Atholl; Weymie was Lord W'ymouth heir o the
Marquessate of Bath; and Eddie was Lord Ednam, who would
day inherit the Earldom of Dudley.

The Earl of Derby, the ‘uncrowned King of ^ he,' too!

of the greatest landowners in northern Englan

has suffered a savage slump from the days ® . jj his

Ministership and the institution of the horse ra

name. He now sports ‘the largest herd of

outside Africa’ at his grand house m a Liverpo^^^ g^ambling at the

claims to have lost £130,000 in 8 u.„._eofheirsin

Clermont Club. Thete are ,°°,twihood *at the

close blanches of the family. There seems 1. tie ike ihoo
family will recapture its former glories, at least for some lime

The Earl of Suffolk-one of the ubiquitous
emillcd lo wear ihc ‘Flodden ‘"‘8"'“““°“ j"„(.(.ecded to his title
has, despite his youth (he was bom m 1935 h;. daughter

when he was only six), suffered a less than ■‘> 5 ' ‘ 0,d;

Lucinda diedmanursery fire whm she w^eg^^^

the Eatl, who affected long hair in ‘J'' ’ , „,fc and she,

police during disturbances m P”™’ L' ^ ^^.^de selling dresses

havingbeendcclaredabankmpl.wor . „phcr) Heusedto

(the next Countess, Nita Fuglesang, ts a

bcaregular on the London nightclub circuia^ American heiress

as a bob-sleigh champion; his gtmdm ’ ^ g , gjj „uie

hrough, into the family by .he shrewd nm^emenffi

cars, a helicopter and two planes %

‘ The late Call gake hii We m twttle, winning a poiihumou* Geo g

THE BELTED EARLS

184

that a member of the Viceroy’s bodyguard stepped forward. He was
a handsome Sikh, dressed in white and wearing the scarlet Viceregal
sash. He came across to where I was standing and, saluting, said,
“Sahib, a priority telegram from Egypt.” He handed it to me,
saluted again and retreated.

‘Turning to the Viceroy, I asked permission to open the cable.
“Certainly, I hope it’s not bad news about your father.”

‘I tore the envelope open and read the following; “from sir John
MAXWELL CINC EGYPT TO SIR CHARLES MUNRO CINC INDIA URGENT
PLEASE EXPEDITE AN IMMEDIATE PASSAGE FOR LORD PORCHESTER TO
CAIRO WHERE HIS FATHER IS VERY SERIOUSLY ILL.” Typed beneath
the message, which had been redirected from my regimental HQ
were the words: “Three months’ compassionate leave granted”.

‘Lord Reading murmured, “I’m so sorry,” and Lord Inchcape,
standing at his side, immediately made a helpful suggestion: “The
Narkunda sails tomorrow and will be calling at Suez. I know she is
full to the gunwales but I shall instruct her Captain to have an
officer’s cabin made available. I shall also tell him to make
maximum speed, the expenses of which,” he murmured as an aside,
I shall naturally defray, m order that you can get to your father’s
bedside as soon as is humanly possible.”

Then it was the turn of Lord Reading. “I also have a
suggestion.” He turned to one of his ADCs. “I’ve an idea we ought
to put Porchester on my tram and send him down to Bombay
tonight. He will then have sufficient time in the morning without
My fear of missing the sailing.” The ADC agreed, but added:

Perhaps I could suggest that instead we couple your personal
coach to the Punjab Express. It’ll reach Bombay by seven in the
morning.” “Excellent,” said the Viceroy.

‘We reached Aden in record time, having averaged nearly
twenty-ihree knots. The Chairman of P. & O. had arranged for the
Arab coolies to be double-banked so that we coaled in eight hours
instead of about twenty-four. There again. Lord Inchcape defrayed
this considerable expense, which was most generous of him. At
iJuez, a launch came alongside with Sir John Maxwell’s ADC and
soon we were streaking across the harbour to the railway sidings at
which stood Sir John’s private train. . . . '

Porchester was very nearly too late. His father,
me tilth Earl, the man who had discovered, along with Howard
. . ^ secrets of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, died soon after

nis arrival, and the sixth Earl raced home to England to repair the

THE BELTED EARLS

187

Govemmen,. came .0 prominence '’-"^fcoS
Mansfield (no two small dogs to

titleofViscountStormont)forto g Britain. Lord Stormont
be imported, without ^^urtroom humour when he

displayed his ability to exercise • - ‘the small, rat-like

told the assembled that he intend^ tefemng to ie^^l
cteatntes’, not by Miss Mansfield’s “““^^Toog Two’.

Popsicle, but by the ““P'" torn the obsLity of

The Eatl of Buckinghamshire *' . „ ,i,e status

atown-councilgatdenwhereheworkedpuhng^

and dignity of a ’Right trusty and he was. in

Queen; and the Bail of Albemarle, o constanUy

his later years, able to come to th Earl Attlee,

complained about noise— lomtt, P » _ Ministers were

son of the former Prime Mimster (most Pnme^
offered earldoms when they Harold Macmillan was offered

honour, taking the title Earl of Avon, recently, a public

an eatldom, but turned it down), J,” “on storL for

relations official with British Earl of Pembroke, who

Ma>./cir, the ‘girlie’ magazine. S«n»lwly the n
has a staggeringly beautiful hMse an hael, Reynolds, Lely,

near Salisbury ts\St s' s

VanDyck.Watreau,Brueghcl. . collections in the

it is one of the oldest and most c P*

country), has made “ *'>^'-“'.'^’”77 mg elephant herds, selling
Ah, one can hear them saying— keepi ^ ^ . working m

their Velasquez paintings, writing ® fall to pieces—

council gardens, letting *'"^^'”, i^rtheywould be right;

how are the mighty fallen! And to a g whose habits,

there are, it appears, a ‘=®***‘**®^®^ ®il^onsibility, have auophied

or whose fortunes, or whose sense

in recent years. There arc some imp^swc ng
course, giving strength to with its glitter and its

been said that the Dukes and solid standing

swagger, while the Earls honoured position has now been

oftrue nobihty, I suspect that ihatb P^.^ failings. It

withdrawn from them, and la^ly ,„(,ofiheirvastnumbcrs,

muslnowfallrothcBaronsIooffet, „gc- the Earls have

the needed strength to the insunuion »’ P j must be

become bowed by some nobly arthnne condmon. an
said, are no longer what they wxrc.

i86

THE BELTED EARLS

maintained a permanent suite at the Ritz Hotel. The twenty-first
Earl, by contrast, lives in a cottage down the road from his ofRcial
seat, a decaying Jacobean mansion outside Malmesbury, in
Wiltshire. He has had to sell 3,000 of his 10,000 acres and, to protect
his fishing, took the interesting step of building a horizontal barbed
wire fence out into the pool.

Earl Nelson, descendant of the A dmir al’s sister and bearer of one
of his Christian names, Horatio, had never been on a ship until the
crew of HMS Hampshire decided to offer him their hospitality. The
family had previously suffered at the hands of the Government: as a
gift to thank Nelson’s successors for the victory at Trafalgar, Pitt’s
Govenunent awarded them a state pension of £5,000 a year; Attlee
took it away in 1950, and the house, Trafalgar, is now just a pleasant
memory to the present Earl. The State had given £90,000 for the
purchase of the house: with the pension summarily removed, and
without compensation, neither the sixth Earl nor the present holder
of the title, the eighth, could possibly keep the .mansion going. It
was sold to a near neighbour, the Earl of Radnor. So the present
peer is a retired publican, the Countess a part-time barmaid, and
they live in middle-class comfort in a suburb of Swansea.'

Lord Radnor, who has managed to keep his house as well as
Trafalgar in Wiltshire, is an autocrat of the old school: he refuses to
open Longford Castle since, according to one recent holder of the
title, ‘I am told youcancvensmell the people who come round.’ He
thus keeps the doors closedon one of the nation’s most fabulous art
collections — though he did let the public sec his portrait of Juan de
Pareja, by Velasquez, before it was sold for £2,310,000 by
Christie’s, to be hung, to the horror of the British art world, in New
York s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to his houses and
collections in Wiltshire, Jacob Radnor owns a good deal of high-
valued land in Holbom and a lot of the seaside town of Folkestone.
His son and heir is Lord Folkestone, one of six children by his
Lordship’s two marriages.

The late seventh Earl of Mansfield lamented the then burgeoning
crime rate in the country, and was on record as wanting the stocks,
the pillory and the treadmill brought back into general use to curb
the excesses of the criminal classes. His son, the present Lord

ansfield, holder of a mmor post in Mrs Thatcher’s Tory

The peat Admiral Nel$«j’» actual preteat>day descendant {via Emma
Hamil^ ^ughtet Horatia) is another nulitacy heto— Marshal of the Royal Air

THE VISCOUNTS

Vulgarly Mercantile and, in truth, rather suspect

Th, pomlSon who d,o.o o. ,o W.mloo . V..™n>. ■

of some bankrupt linperul General.

Thackeray, Karary

An heir to the peerage of noble

Was invited one year viiUi his u-n,

‘Oh gracious,’ she said, as he pulled the g _

‘I think there’s a butler, and footman as uell.

Their baggage was fnghlfully kind.

While their hostess shook bands and was uign
The lady tried hard to live op to it all
As they strode nonchalantly across the front hall

A Viscountess, on

her visii to the house of

neighbouring Duchess, 19:6

Thenotion .ha, Viscounts are of somewtodub.ous or.

a distihCly inferior atatus haa proved, for U.e
indelible. I. la nor aa rhongh rhey are by any

bencarh rhe r r o men (excluding rhc Irish variery

of Viscount as their proudest possession, are of Earls lie

of lesser pillars of rhe Earablishmenr. ^ ' the Bishops

iust below them, as do the younger sons Aiocesan and

of London, Durham and Winchester and all the other
Suffragan Bishops in order of the seniority of
then there are the various Secretaries of
Defence, Transport and so on-and the “ Jlgu,opeap

lowest rank of all, the Bacons, qP a penniless

Viscount by suggesting he was merely the 0 P dignified

genetal, and for the doggerel writer to 1““' « e

sublimity of a Scottish ducal mansion arc qui ■ „d and

status of a Viscount is far from wotUty of disdain, ignored an

unpopular though it may be. ooDularizers of

Strangely, the title has never been welcomed by popu

the cliche, or the time-honoured ^ith Duke

slang of London. You may well be invi undulv servile

Kumphrey'-toe 3 talone;youmay,rfl^actm^^^^^^^

manner, be contemptuously early

rowbones’. In cards, the acc Cork’ because, in

nmeteenth century been known as In , n^hlpman in the

ihc legend of rhe Ang.o-Ir.sb-hewastbcP»m^^^^^^^^^^^^

country’. And if you were Stout and jol y .i nf vnu that you

Edwardian LondL, i. might have been

were 'quite the Baron George’. But »>> P»r“' " „d to

knowledge of the compilers of modem exico , English

display the word ‘Viscount’. It sits . 0^5.^ with its only

Dictionary, squashed between viscose a

THE VISCOUNTS

192

alternative meaning the obscure, and local, description of a
particular size of Welsh slate. Viscounts rarely form the
centrepieces of popular songs or stories: in peerage terms they have
come to be figures, if not of aaual contempt, then not to be taken
quite seriously.

They are, though, a recently revived branch of high nobility.
While only nine Earls have been created since the Second World
War, the late King and the present Queen have seen fit to make
thirty-six Viscounts: of the present total membership of the
company, more than a hundred have been created during this
century. The most senior English Viscount can trace his title back
to only 1550, three centuries younger than the senior Barons and
Earls and sixty years younger than the Duke of Norfolk’s title. (It
must be conceded that the senior Marquess is the holder of a title
that goes back to only 1551: only six of that rank, though, have been
launched during the twentieth century.)

The term means, literally, a deputy Earl— a ‘vice' Count. John
Selden, the principal historiographer of tiiledom, writes in his
mighty Tttla of Honour that ‘when the great Dukes and Counts in
the ancient times gained to themselves large dominion . . . which
was afterwards transmitted to their heirs, divers of them placed in
certain towns and divisions of their counties, such governors and
delegates under them’, who, they directed, should also allow their
dignities to descend to their heirs. Viscounts had become hereditary
nobles in mainland Europe by the tenth century, and the term was
first given to English sheriffs m the aftermath of the Norman
conquest — but for some reason the dignity never caught on, and
withered to almost immediate extinction. Then in 1440 Henry VI
made John, Lord Beaumont, Viscount Beaumont, setting a style
that was to proceed, in fits and starts, for the next 524 years.
Viscount Beaumont has long since vanished into the yellowing
volumes of The CompUu Peerage: the oldest of the viscounties
existing today is held by a young film director, Jenico Douglas
Dudley Preston, the seventeenth holder of a title. Viscount
Gormanston of Ireland, given by Edward IV in 1478. The oldest
strictly English viscounty is held by Robert Milo Leicester
Devereux, a keen yachtsman who lives m Oxfordshire under a title
that dates back to 1550, that of Viscount Hereford.

Viscounties are not addressed as ‘Entirely beloved’ by the
Monarch, only as 'Well beloved’, though they do retain the
appellations ‘Right trusty’ and ‘Cousin’ — styles which would be

THE VISCOUNTS *93

takenawayfrom them .f ever d.e,werefou.dgu.ltyo^
activities, as some few of all the peerage ”

recent years. They wear perhaps *e most

of rankt no strawberry leaves for these men. sad ^ 7' ,

sixteen stiver-gilt balls raised on snnem ^mts

circlet. The whole dting looks like a 1 “tsTook

of impact of a raindrop on a water stir ace. 7 . of arms

particularly odd when they sit over the

Lme of dte Viscounts have chosen .0 sport.

and Ferrard. one of the most conservattve of all

House of Lords, has his coronet adom^ wtth a

her hair, and below this, among other things, six b

as a couple of stags as supporters. Viscount Ecdes has two device

that look like ice-cream cones, but whtch mm out “ b= J^the^

(symbolizing his tenure at the Mmi^ o uca

Tory Minister for a total of six years), as modem a

black wings. It seems a rule of thumb

peerage title, the more complicated and biza ^

Lord Gormanston has merely three ^rd Hereford has

background, a couple of foxes and a lion, vi it (which

three discs; known in the trade ® ed

Chambers's Dictionary describe as a yjjg most

hound, usually white, now cximct) and a -.<.nectively,aUon,

recenrViscounts.MuirshielandDilhornehav , ^ j ^ ^

an anchor, a sailing ship and two eagl«. gdffi°t,a

magnificent quartered shield replete with » hand, a

Saracen’s head, another talbot, an eagle, a , helmets— the
thistle, a couple of portcullises and ....u flies’. The

whole mess above the motto ‘"Oie eagle does Reginald

holder of the title, Viscount Dilhome, is t e __»duate from
Manningham-Buller, a Third-Class honours graduate^^^.^^
Magdalen College. Oxford, 7:“ d was nicknamed

MP, Attorney General and Lord Chtm^'^ ^ ja^sted,
by the mote radical elements of society, whom he heatti y
Regmald Bullying-Manner. espies

ItisdowninmecompanyofUreVrs^^ th^

the rewards for mercantilism so reluctantly ^ „ther

peerage by an Establishment that had ° and our

vulgar occupation for a true gentleman, bo house, disporting

Marquesses move from country house to co n-jowledge of, or

themselves in the most seemly way, and wi

THE VISCOUNTS

194

interest in, the vulgar world of commerce; and while Earls are
generally of Old English or Scots county stock, or distinguished
heroes, or ex-Prime Ministers put out to grass, among the
Viscounts we sec the grudging national votes of thanks for
ingenuity, risk, brains, fortitude and money. Captains of the
fundamental industries were ennobled in the degree, giving us
today makers of toffee (Viscount Mackintosh of Halifax), ships
(Viscount Runciman of Doxford), beer (Viscount Younger of
Leckie), soap (Viscount Lcverhulme) and of newspapers (Vis-
counts Rothermerc, Kcmsicy, Astor and Camrose). Those who
drove their ships across the oceans of the world were given
viscounties— Viscount Furness for one, founder of Furness Withy,
one of the giants of pre- First World War English trading. The man
who gave Britain the railway booksull, W. H. Smith, became
Viscount Hambleden; great soldiers and great wartime politicians
like Alanbrooke and Allenby, Head and De L’Isle became advanced
to this degree. Field-Marshals from the First World War-
Kitchener, Haig, Ypres— received earldoms for their troubles in
foreign fields, but for reasons best known only to Downing Street
and Buckingham Palace, Field-Marshals from the second conflict
were rewarded only with viscounties. Some of those military
leaders went on to receive promotion for other duties—Alexander
of Tunis was elevated from his humble viscounty into the ranks of
earlhood for his tour as Covemor General of C^ada; Viscount
Mountbatten of Burma became Earl Mountbatten of Burma two
years later, following his Viceregal triumph in India.

But what of Viscount Montgomery of Alamein — why did he
never rise to the exalted levels of his colleagues from the Great War?
Was it that his political views were too extreme, were his habits too
flamboyant, his military successes too controversial? There has
always been a faint air of disappointed surprise about
Montgomery’s title— though Monty, His Noble Lordship, never
displayed any bitterness during the thirty years he lived, from 1946
to 1976, as holder of the degree.

Only three Earls— Huntingdon, Listowel and Bucking-
hamshire — and only two Viscounts — Addison and Samuel —
take the Labour Party’s whip in the House of Lords. No peer of
the rank of Marquess or Duke has any time in the House for any
party other than the Conservatives. Step down a little nearer to the
levels of the common man, though, and the ranks begin to break.
In the Earls, there is only little sign; among the Viscounts, though.

the viscounts

196

and Roxburghe and Linlithgow being good examples of the type.
The next Viscounts are to be found near the cities of Glasgow
(Muirshiel, a former Secretary of State for Scotland) and
Edinburgh (Melville— a one-time MP for Edinburgh and First
Lord of the Admiralty at the beginning of the nineteenth century).
On the coast near Aberdeen lie the ancient Viscounty of Arbuthnott
and the rather more modem (1902) Colville of Culross. Lord
Thurso, who is one of the five Liberals in the House of Lords,
makes his home at the very lip of Caithness; Viscount Dunrossil
joins the Earl Granville as the owner of a house on the sea-swept,
gale-tom island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Lord
Dunrossil, who has a town house as befits a member of the Scottish
gentry, would cost the taxpayer most of all if he chose to live in Dun
Rossail, his house on North Uist, and commute each week to the
Palace of Westminster; thankfully he has a senior position at the
Foreign Office, which means that his visits to Scotland can be only
sporadic.

There are Viscounts in Ireland, North and South, and one. Lord
St Vincent, in Jersey, in the Channel Islands. Viscount Gort lives
on the Isle of Man. And there are the usual crop of expatriates;
Hardinge, in Canada; Bolingbroke and St John, sadly for lovers of
living British history, now in Australia; Bridport close to his
Mediterranean landholdings in Sicily; Viscotmi Samuel is in
Jerusalem, where he has lived more or less permanently since the
Palestine War; Viscount Maugham in Spain; Viscount Lambert in
Switzerland, after an eleven-year chairmanship of the Devon and
Exeter Savings Bank; Lord Soulbury, whose brother was an
Ambassador in Washington, in Sn Lanka. Viscount Malvern, John
Huggins, who was the son of the first Viscount, ennobled for his two
decades as Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia and his three years
as Premier of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, lived
where he was brought up, in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in the company of
Dukes and Marquesses and Earls who had once come out to carry
their share of the white man’s burden and remain to display their
distaste for the way matters arc proceeding back in the Old
Country. Lord Malvern died there, shortly before his country’s
name reverted to its tiibal ancestry as Zimbabwe.

The mercantile zeal which so proudly raises its head in this
degree of the peerage is noticeable primarily because it is so
manifestly absent in the higher degrees of ennoblement. It takes a
poor second place, though, to the political zeal for which viscounties

THE VISCOUNTS

197

have largely been given this century. The Conservatives, in
particular, directed droves of political heavyweights into the rank —
Lords Uliswater, Ward of Witley, Waverley, Ingleby, Leathers,
Marchwood, Margesson, Eccles, Amory, Blakenham, Boyd of
Merton, Chaplin and Chilston. All these and more have strong
formal links with the Conservative Party, and were made Viscount
for their political prowess alone. Colonial service ranks as a splendid
reason for ennoblement to this degree — providing, of course, the
colony was large enough to warrant so senior a promotion. Colonial
servants from the more mundane conquests of British imperial
excursions usually won only baronies or, worse still, baronetcies
(the hereditary knighthoods which, since they were often
purchased, quite openly, fora mere £10,000 apiece, have little or no
standing and conjure up little or no awe).

One office for which a viscounty once seemed a certamty, until the
rules of the peerage game were changed in 1964 and the political
situation in the country deteriorated, was that of Prime Minister of
Norrheni Ireland. The first Premier, Sir James Craig, was made
Viscount Craigavoni the third, Sir Basil Brooke, was made
Viscount Brookeborough. (The second did not last long enough to
merit a peerage.) All subsequent Premiers, Terence O'Neill, Sir
James Chichescer'Clark and Brian Faulkner, won life peerages for
their later attempts to keep order: in earlier tunes those who had
constructed the traditional, unsavoury hegemony of the Protestant
majority, and who did so much to contribute towards the horrors
chat prevail in Ireland today, won herediury viscounties, and their
heirs live on today.

Of the two, Craigavon is now quite separated from the Troubles
which his grandfather helped, though perhaps unwillingly, to
mitiate. He is a young man, bom in 1944, and sporting the engaging
name of Janriej his sisters have the names Janitha Stormont (the
latter being the name of the Northern Ireland Parliament building)
and Jacaranda. All that links him with the unhappy history of the
Six Counties is his coat of arms — a member of the Ulster Special
Constabulary supportingon one side, a member of the Royal Ulster
Rifles on the other.

Viscount Brookeborough, son of the third Prime Minister, is, by
contrast, far from being a shrinking violet in contemporary
Northern Irish politics. As plain John Brooke — though he
sometunes used the prefix ‘Hon.’ — he was a Stormont MP for four
years, and was elected to the abortive Assembly and Convention, as

THE VISCOUNTS

198

a Unionist Party of Northern Ireland delegate, until it collapsed in
discordant shambles. Now that power in the provincial politics is
vested in a London-appointed Secretary of State, and there is in
consequence no local assembly, Brooke borough has little enough to
do. He lives in a splendid old Georgian mansion in the so-called
‘Valley of the Field-Marshals’ in County Fermanagh — the region
has produced a quite extraordinary number of senior Army officers,
Alanbrooke and Alexander of Txmis among them. His official seat,
Colebrooke, is a mile or so up the road, presently empty. The first
Viscount’s second wife, whom he married only two years before he
died, lived in the mansion for a while, until it became too costly:
now it glowers over the rainswept hills and bogs of this
conspicuously impoverished part of Northern Ireland, empty and
forbidding, like so many other of the Irish houses that decay farther
south. Ashbrooke, where the Brookeboroughs now live (the word
‘Brooke’ which appears so often, is originally just a place-name
from some Ulster stream. When the family shield was devised the
artists decided on including a ‘Brock’, or a badger, as recondite pun
on the word ‘Brooke’. The practice is known as ‘canting heraldry’,
and is the sort of in-joke that keeps the heralds content in their
curious task), is a perfect gem of an Irish country house. All horses
and mud and dogs and deep chintz armchairs and gigantic fireplaces
filled with glowing logs, an Aga in the kitchen, Wellington boots,
huge meals of game birds and thick puddings, large bottles of
whisky (Scotch, not Irish) and constant talk of the suitability of
other country families for entertainment and invitation.

John Brooke has a licence, issued by the Royal Ulster
Constabulary, for firearms: it has some thirty pages, and lists a
collection of weapons which any IRA functionary would be proud
to lay his hands on. Most are shotguns: activity in the house revolves
around the twin sports of horsemanship and hunting, and the guns,
either by Purdey or Boss, stand erect and shiny among the boots and
the Barbours in the gun-room. There is often a soldier staying at the
house in civilian clothes, as a guest — to cope with some of the
shooting. Last time I was at Ashbrooke there was a Gordon
Highlander with a month off from his regiment, there to shoot the
stags that roamed the Brookeborough hills. It was from him that I
learned the precise meaning of the verb ‘to gralloch’ a deer. ‘Put
simply, old boy,’ the Highlander said, ‘it means to take the
clockwork out.’

Rosemary Brookeborough, who writes sheets upon sheets of

THE VISCOUNTS

199

doggerel about shooting, fishing and riding, is something of a
renowned expert with horses, and runs a costly, but justly famous
riding school. Invariably there is a batch of girls either over from
Wiltshire or Sussex, or up from Sligo or Westmeath, leammg the
complexities of long-reming, or jumping or dressage. The girls all
look much the same; red cheeks and plump, muscular legs,
headscarves and well-rounded County accents — even the girls from
Ireland. The men are handsome, clean-shaven and short-haired;
the talk is of other friends, memories of shows or Events or of fishes
that one got up on the Tweed or the Spey or in sea lochs in
Sutherland. The Brookeboroughs, hugely pleasant people with
infectious energies and, considering the political situation,
considerable courage, are a perfect country family, ever cheerful,
faintly bewildered by the unrest, constantly referring to how things
once were in what is undoubtedly a beautiful country of which they
are obviously deeply fond.

Few of the Viscounts are landowners, to any great degree. That
does not mean they lack money. The richest of all— possibly the
richest peer of the realm— is Viscount Cowdray, who manages an
industrial empire from the seventeenth fioor of London’s first
skyscraper, the Millbank Tower. It is an empire that has brought
him land— some 20,000 acres in the past two decades— placing him
uniquely as one of the very few peers to acquire land, rather than be
forced to allow it to drain away to help meet the inexorable demands
of the taxman. Of the peers listed in the Earl of Derby’s ‘New
Domesday Book’ in 1874, virtually all have less landnowthan they
did at the time of that survey. Of three who did not appear in that
old list but who now own substantial estates, two are Viscounts:
Leverhulme, the soap merchant, who has 90,000 acres of Britain
under his belt; and Viscount Cowdray, the banker and oil
millionaire, has 20,000, mostly in Sussex, with some additional
acres in Aberdeenshire. The third is an Earl, the Earl of Iveagh, of
Guinness fame, who has 24,000 acres in Norfolk.

Viscount Cowdray, one of Winston Churchill’s cousins, is one of
the most private and thus, because of his riches, one of the most
legendary figures in Britain today. Cowdray is the man behind
I..azards, the great merchant bankers which, together with Morgan
Grenfell and Hambros and Samuels, provide the green grease that
tries to keep the wheels of Britain’s investments running smoothly.
His personal fortune came from Weetmaa Pearson, his grandfather,

200

THE VISCOUNTS

the founder of the *Mex’ that was merged with Shell to become
‘Shell- Mex’. In the Millbank Tower, Cowdray sits at the centre of a
gigantic web of property companies and trusts— S. Pearson,
Whitehall Securities and the Cowdray Trust among the flagships.
There is the vast Westminster Press group of regional newspapers
and, to cap it all, the Financial Times. Cowdray has, as a
consequence of the last war, only one arm: he is able, nevertheless, to
describe his hobbies as hunting, polo, shooting and Ashing;
principally polo, of which sport he is almost an eponymous hero.
His is a success story that shows no sign of ending. There is every
indication that his son and heir, the Hon. Michael Pearson, will
keep up the acquisitive energies of his incredible father: the boy
celebrated his twenty-flrst birthday by becoming head of a
syndicate that bought 4,400 acres of prime Gloucestershire
countryside for a flgure said to approach a million pounds.

If Lord Cowdray represents the apex of the modem mercantile
viscounty, and if Brookeborough typifles the genteel Tory
politician rewarded for services to Unionism with the title, what of
the ‘old’ Viscounts? There are few enough of these— just a half a
dozen from the eighteenth century, only four from days before that.

The Viscount of Arbuthnott, a Scotsman with a pleasantly
elegant house at Inverbervie, near Aberdeen, is a distinguished
sample of an antique Highland family, and he wears his viscounty
no more proudly than he sports the name Arbuthnott. He displays
an interesting point about the Scottish attitude to titles, when
compared with the attitude south of the Border. In Scotland, what
matters is your name: if you are a MacNab, then all MacNabs are
grand, and grander than all Frasers and all MacDonalds and most
certainly all Campbells. Your leader is your clan chief— in your case
a man whose title is simply The MacNab, and you look to him as a
spokesman for the interest of your family and your family name.
The MacNab is not a peer; the head of the Clan Arbuthnott is, as it
happens, a peer, and a Viscount at that. The head of the Clan
Murray is the Duke of Atholi, the head of the Clan Bruce is the Earl
of Elgin. To Arbuthnotts and Murrays and Bruces worldwide, the
leadership that these men exert, as indeed they do, comes from their
position ui the clan, not their position in some ‘Sassenach’ class
system. English class, it can be neatly summarized, is stratified
horizontally, with a series of layers placing Dukes above
Marquesses and Viscounts above Barons and solicitors above
dustmen. In Scotland all Murrays, whether the Duke of Atholl or

THE VISCOUNTS

201

Mr Murray the dustman, can hold their heads equally high:
stratification in Scotland is, it could be said, vertical. And the
arrangement is no bad thing. There is less snobbery in the Scottish
Highlands than in any other part of the British Isles. There may be
fear of the Laird, or expressions of awe at the antics of the squire up
from Wiltshire for his shooting; there may be resentment at having
to pay exorbitant rents to a landowner who is never seen. But in
Scotland the forelock tugging, if it happens at all, is done with a curl
of the Up and a finger to the nose: sycophancy towards the peerage,
as it can exist in Sussex or Yorkshire, is a virtual unknown.

The Lord of Arbuihnott is small and neat, very precise, very
kind — and fascinated, both privately and professionally, in land. He
is land agent for the Nature Conservancy in Scotland, Chairman of
the Red Deer Commission and Chairman of the Scottish
Landowners Federation. He took a degree in estate management at
Cambridge, served with the Navy in the war, went back to
Cambridge to take an MA and is now one of the country’s most
respected surveyors and specialists in land-management policies.
He bristles at overuse of the word ‘feudalism’: he believes
landownership represents a sharing of responsibilities— the owner
for the tenant, the tenant for the land— with much mutual respect
and trust and benefit for all concerned. He is bitterly critical of the
mismanagement of the larger estates in Scotland, but equally
critical of what he regards as the unfair tactics of radicals in
attempting to portray all landowners in Scotland as villains.

His house, which he has now decided, rather reluctantly, to open,
is run with spare elegance. Mealsare taken in a huge kitchen, beside
a shiny blue enamel Aga. Rose petals, floating in cut-glass dishes,
impart a fragrance in every room. The whisky before dinner is
Famous Grouse, and after is Glcnmorangie. The vegetables all
come from the Arbuthnott Home Farm, a mile or so down the
Bervie Water valley. Lord Arbuthnott’s estate wall is many miles
long and noticeably one of the best maintained for a hundred miles:
it is details like this that mark him out as a considerable success in
holding down an ancient title with the proper application of
intelligence and discipline and regard for both the past and the
future. Nothing is being sold that matters; nothing is being bought
that alters the characteroftheland or the house. Wtih bis two large
dogs, his elegant wife, his son, the blaster of Arbuthnott, and his
daughter, with his responsibilities for land and deer and forestry
and the preservation of animal and plant life throughout Scotland,

202

THE VISCOUNTS

Arbuthnott is a man of private comfort and public duty, and he
manages to blend the two functions with expertise and flair. Like
Buccleuch and Anglesey and Longford in the ranks above him,
Arbuthnott sets a standard of excellence that helps keep the
nobility’s head safely above water. He plays a subtle and considered
counterpoint to the Viscounts less mindful of their charge, and
more aware of their station.

The Viscounts have their Angers well enough in the pie of state.
Land is not as important to their survival as it is to the Dukes,
though one could never go so far as to suggest that for Viscounts to
survive they do not need it. Banking, politics, beer, soap, chocolate
and ships: from these rather fundamental productions and services
of Britain’s heyday sprang the Viscounts. But they arc hardly
contemporary aspects of mercantilism, not any more: nor is the
viscounty a contemporary peerage. It seems, from this vantage
point, merely a vote of national thanks for the principals of the
country’s better times. Contemporary peers, as numerous as the
talents they represent, are to be found one farther step below, down
in the trenches of titledom, with the humble holders of the baronies.
From their level, even the Viscounts seem rather grand.

THE BARONS

The Broad Base of the Pyramid

My Lords, what, in fa«, ate we supposed to wherit? It it some
specie] (bility or talent which enables us to funenon as
legislators? No. What we inherit Is wealth and privilege based
on wealth— a principle which cuu right across every
conception of democracy. Today this chamber also consists of
representatives of the more recently acquired wealth, such at
bukers, steel magnates, newspaper proprietors and in*
duacrialists of all sorts. It represents, in fact, the most
formidable concentration of wealth ....

I>}rd Milford, Ipd3— a speech s«ce
circulated by the ^mmuaist Party

S», I have for years been intrigued by the ability of a long line of
lack Ruiseli-type terriers to indicate the presence of a grey
squirrel ^ofeet above by barking up the relevant tree. Can your
readers beat the experienceofthisjanuaiywhcn father, son and
one such terrier killed i6 squirrels within one and a half
hours . . . ?

Lord Remnant, in a letter to The Fitld,
ipT7

The Co.e.boum= Anns finp^ac«“nrdu^^^

looking Coiswold “ ,A jjjjreadandpintsofgoodlocal

lampshades, thick sandwich swings outside,

beer. The arms, newly P*f bflhe name of Elwes-

are those of the local landown g ^ mansion in the

<«-o columns in Burk,, La^i

°Seis,howev=noneo.hcr«^
not the squire and thus woman in the pub, who

better known than • jabrador and a little boy,

bustled around see Mr Philipps, are you?’ she

mentioned him first. You '« h, was a Lord. And

asked. ‘He’s a grand man. cither. Fact is, I’m not sure

you’d never think he was a owful pity he went the way he

he really is a Communist— but i

did.’ .„«iral of most expressed whenever the

The woman’s feelings are yp second Baron Milford, of

name of Sir Wogan P ‘ W * ^ he is Britain’s only

Llanstephan, Co. ^^unist, in faa, to sit in cither of

Communist peer— the oniy something of a

the Houses of ParUamen ^ trundled

celebrity, to be dug from tn eccentricities of Olde

out to prove something or Qj^ununists look upon Milford as
England. Those people w o dissemination

an elegant sort of potuls of the Establishment. Those

of their views wiAm .j^hmeni look upon their acceptance of
people who are of the tolerance and the excellent

Lord Milford as an ex^^^^ ^ho know Milford as a

functioning of Britis charming gentleman, and that you

neighbour all say thal he .s a “uu

THE BARONS

206

would never know by his behaviour that he associated with ‘those
terrible people’, as one Gloucestershire woman said. And those who
are neither neighbours nor fnends. Communists nor Establishment
diehards, look upon his Lordship as a bit of a ‘character’, not really a
Red at all, just a pleasant country gentleman with a rather well-
worn gimmick.

It was a foggy day in the Cotswolds when I first went to see him.
To get from the Colesboume Arms I had to double back through
the village along lanes sunk deep into the meadows, up a bumpy,
wet farm toad, past tumbledown walls of limestone and up to a five-
barred gate. Beyond loomed Butler’s Farm, large and evidently
pleasantly modernized from a seventeenth-century legacy to the
standards of contemporary wealth. Out of the gloom heaved a huge
removal lorry; from its cavernous interior trooped a small gang of
men, each carrying a cardboard case filled with bottles of wine,
Lord Milford, the Communist peer, wandered out from his front
door, took a brief look at the mountain of wine accumulating in a
distant room of the farm and wavedahand of welcome. ‘Sorry about
the removal van,’ he said. ‘Having a few friends in over Christmas
and I thought I ought to get some booze in for us all.’

If Mr Marx might have arched an eyebrow or two at seeing the
removal van, he would have been struck reasonably dumb by the
appearance of his best-known British Party Member’s living-
quarters. No humble garret filled with the reminders of proletariat
asceticism here: instead, Urge, airy rooms crammed with paintings
and books, rate vases and jewellery, bottles of fine whisky and
sherry, furniture straight from the pages of Ideal Home and carpets
thick and shaggy to the feet. Magnetic toys nodded back and forth to
each other, coloured glass figures twirling in the windows twinkled
when the dim morning sun peered through the mist. His first act,
after running off to the kitchen to pour coffee into a cup the size of a
billy can, was to proffer a copy of his famous maiden speech of 4 July
1963 — a speech which the Communist Party now distributes as part
of its recruiting literature under the headline: ‘Abolish the House of
Lords'. It is regarded still as a splendid piece of writing, and a
thoughtful conuibution to a debate on Lords reform that resulted
in the decision to permit peers to disclaim their titles for life. The
speech with which a new peer chooses to launch himself on his
fellow peers is supposed, by uadition, to be blandly non-
contentious— a tradition that Milford sternly bucked. Lord Attlee,
however— the former Labour Prime Minister— rather devastated

THE BARONS

House. That is the advantage of hcteditaiy ^ ^,ij,g„anwith

LotdMilfotdwasbomin

a gait like a brat. „f ihj title; his father, Sir

corduroys. He is the second h related to two previous

Laurence Richard Philipps, e -yoh infertility or other

BaronsMilfordwhohadboth.^^d;>;j““f^^f„^^ „,i„et. Sir

genealogical carelessness to pcrmi „,_,anKctwccnthewars,a

Laurence, himself a distinguished usin ^ paraplegic

shipowner and a soft-drinks maker, pr,iiegeofWales,scemed
hospital and a Governor of rhe Unwerstty M 8= of w ^

dteLal person on whom King George should bestow

barony: Philipps accepted the honour eagerly. »'*
daughter of a Somerset parson, >8'''“- idea. By the

But the eldest son, Wogan, was preaching

time his father had accepted the title » colleagues of the

revolution with all the ardour of so jj officials and left-

prewar days who went on to become tra Magdalen

wmg politicians. With Ideal convert: his brief

College, Oxford, he may not have seemed of England did

sojouminoneofhisfather’sofficesrn en Shute’s Ruined

the trick, however. Like the character ^ industrial town

Cifyi— an industrialist who, findmg mm effected by what he
in Depression days, was instantly and deeply ^c«
saw— the young Wogan Philipps *®^ t.,:evcd able to exist. He

TynesidcandWearsidethathehadne office in Newcastle; he

was working then for Runciman’s jjiejf march. He

saw the coalminers, locked out and ’ jgg 5 ^ to hold his

complained to his father, but was to , Geordies

tongue. He vowed he would do all he cou ^ neophyte,

from their wretchedness; and, fired wi a ^ against the

went off to join his other new p ^nean society in those

present symbol ofall that was wrong wi p-p-de as an ambulance

days. Franco. He joined the Intcmati^a ^ before

driver and fought the good fight P*!^:jj^inensechagnnofhis

beingbadlywoundedandsenthomc. and remains a member

father he then joined the Communist ® ^ ,T,ica still evident in his

tothisday,thememoriesof Jarrowan '^j,„fireolace larger than

alk,c,e„itithapp.nsto be conducted besideafiicplu

THE BARONS

209

efficient units, ate attractive to *e heel of the

sense the crushing of the neck o estates should,

amgant landowner. On nationalized and broken

he says, be taken over by the sutc ^ cooperative basis.

re^stnSt^rrsUdhethete^^^^^^^^^^
the Lotds on the side of fatnt

DukcofNorfolktookupthccudg ,.^^_.,.rvative Government s

in 1980 and managed to defeat the , Colesboume

policy towards them); he interests in this sphere ate

three times a week to ensure that hi

protected. He is still rather saddene Socialist

join any of the Lords Commmees, an Brockway and

peers with respectably pastel views, » backrooms of

Stchie-Calder, to present his irsull finnly in

Westminster. He realizes, though, d** every fibre of his

the gtip of the Tory patty.
body: the only realistic way out of that situa

abolition. . . - in his farmhouse

So is he really a Communist? Sitting comforts,

surrounded by an extraordinary , disgorging its

watching the removal van pull away e p . „ ^hc villagers

ingredients for a few Bacchanalian evening , vvrong in the

talk of him as a fellow countryman who went jj^j.onsidcrable

headbut nicely so, lisicningtohisaccounis o joining m

finances, it does become a little difficult sincerity of a

the lusty singing of The ■‘’■'"““"““Jiv'dcsidc shipbuilder. The
miner from County Durham or a y seems at first

biblical aphorism about camels and eyes ^ muted by the

sight to apply. And yet there IS little dou ’ ^^gan PhilipP*

passage of fifty comfortable years, inc _ - ^ic final days

experienced m Tyneside m the t 930 *»°^ ‘ h-inw the surface,
before the Second World War, siiU rather than

Whether that makes him le^umately a doubt- All one

limply a member of the Comroumst Party, i „.tcf view* m the
a say is that he docs, and with toud ^hade from ex cn

■ ;c of a significantly dilfercnt po

House that :

210

THE BARONS

those of the very few fiery members of the Labour Party there. And
it is perfectly true that only an institution like the peerage, with its
regard for birth, and its total disdain for the opinion of electors, or
officials, or the Monarch, or even the Establishment itself, can
throw up a man laying claim to such views and propel him into the
legislature. In any case, the peerage can quite probably take comfort
in the realization that genetics take care of such aberrance in its ow
way: Lord Milford’s eldest son Hugo, who will inherit as third
Baron before very much longer, is a member of Lloyds, a stalwart in
the British National Insurance Society, a member of Boodle’s Club,
an Etonian with a Cambridge degree, now married to the daughter
of Lord Sherfield, and living in London. There seems little
likelihood that the next Lord Milford will be other than a trenchant
supporter of the status quo, just like his grandfather, his uncle and
his cousin.

The mstitution of the baronage, of which Lord Milford is one of the
more celebratedly eccentric members, is the rock*hard foundation
of the peerage system. It is huge— 438 men and women who are able
to call themselves, as their principal title, Baron, Lord (in Scotland)
or, in the case of a very few women, ‘Baroness in their own right’. It
is quite extraordinarily variegated. Here we have a collection of
Britons— and an Indian, the third Baron Sinha, of Raipur (his
address, $0 distinguished a gentleman is he, is Lord Sinha Road,
Calcutta)— with no guarantee of land or riches, ‘good breeding’ or
brains, united only by their membership of the House of Lords and
their title. (And it should be noted that not even this is a truly
unifying denominator of the degree. There are thirty-six Irish
Barons who have the very worst deal eimoblement can hand out —
not only does their Irishness deny tbema seat in the House, they can
never disclaim their status. Truly strangers in a strange land.)

The word Baron means ‘man’. A Baron of the old Duke of
Normandy was in principle the Man who was responsible for five
knights’ fees — he was, as it were, the commander of a squadron of
five tanks whose duties were to protect the people and the Duke’s
properties. In the twelfth century a Barony, therefore, was an
administrative position involving the organization of knights and
the collection of fees and taxes from them and from those who lived
on their lands as tenants. When the English Parliament was
evolving seven centuries ago many of these Barons were summoned
to lake their part in the writing of the laws — so it is reasonably

THE BARONS

accurate to say that wUhrLredto title

pern for the last 700 yaais^ Tho Govomment held out

was created in i965> though Mx future. At present

the possibility that more may be crea Buckingham Palace:

only new life peers axe still Upper

men and women of distmction gtv duration of their

Chamber and all the dignity of peerage *= f "“j;,

lives. (Their children, though, en|oy the us P

‘Honourable* for the rest of ./.eir lives, so m a sense
awarded to the first generation bestows sue well.)

class-ridden society offers for the seew ^ yaddsofthe

There has been much regret .f. .How long

Establishment at the possible ending of ' -j^facc to

for a Lord, how long?* asked the editor of Burke’s P«f«« to
an edition reprinted in I 97 S- l^'^ok, he note ® ^ d,e

printed in a year ‘that coincides with the ten „ :.g the

last creation of an hereditary honour in Britain. that decade

end of such honours have been delivered occ^s'^nally m t c

and one wondered at the time whether they were no p

is easy to forget, amidst the flood of life X

hereditary titles only used to come iri a steady trie e.
does seem, however, that the fountain has drie ^P melancholy
Margadale and Sit Graeme Finlay, Bt., are to hav .g-tions.*
distinction of being the holders of the last here »tai^ under

Of the hereditary Batons who were lucky cnoug ,FU_„.becn

the wire in advance of Lord Margadale. more than half have bee
created during the twentieth century. No matter •
society can be said to have w/iincssed a revolution ^
since the war no fewer than 125 men have been ° . j

their children and their children’s children will ..iesht-

they are too tired or too infertile so to do. Sixteen o
ecn Barons whose titles were announced in 1945» ’

continue today — cither the original owners of the tit es

Looking at that year is instructive of the ^^P® °f
the wake of wartime; on X 2 February, Arthur Hazlcrigg,

Lord Lieutenant of Leicestershire and member of c
Commiuec that looked into the inierrunent regulation, 1 »

made Lord Hazlcrigg; on 2 July, Sir Douglas Uackmg, To^
and former Tory Party Cbaitman, was made Lord Ha^ng,
da)-s Utcr Harold Balfour, Tory MP for the Isle of Thancl

210

THB BARONS

those of the very few fiery members of the Labour Party there. And
it is perfectly true that only an institution like the peerage, with its
regard for birth, and its total disdain for the opinion of electors, or
officials, or the Monarch, or even the Establishment itself, can
throw up a man laying claim to such views and propel him into the
legislature. In any case, the peerage can quite probably take comfort
in the realization that genetics take care of such aberrance in its own
way: Lord Milford’s eldest son Hugo, who will inherit as third
Baron before very much longer, is a member of Lloyds, a stalwart in
the British National Insurance Society, a member of Boodle's Club,
an Etonian with a Cambridge degree, now married to the daughter
of Lord Sherfield, and living in London. There seems little
likelihood that the next Lord Milford will be ocher than a trenchant
supporter of the status quo, iust like his grandfather, his uncle and
his cousin.

The institution of the baronage, of which Lord Milford is one of the
more eelebratedly eccentric members, is the rock-hard foundation
of the peerage system. It is huge— 43S men and women who are able
to call themselves, as their principal title, Baron, Lord (in Scotland)
or, m the case of a very few women, ‘Baroness in their own right*. It
is quite exuaordinatily variegated. Here we have a collection of
Britons— and an Indian, the third Baron Sinba, of Raipur (his
address, so distinguished a gentleman is he, is Lord Sinha Road,
Calcutta)— with no guarantee of land or riches, ‘good breeding' or
brains, united only by their membership of the House of Lords and
their title. (And it should be noted that not even this is a truly
unifying denominator of the degree. There are thirty-six Irish
Barons who have the very worst deal ennoblement can hand out—
not only does their Irishnessdeny them ascat in the House, they can
never disclaim their status. Truly strangers in a strange land.)

The word Baron means ‘man*. A Baron of the old Duke of
Normandy was in prmciple the Man who was responsible for five
knights’ fees — he was, as it were, the commander of a squadron of
five tanks whose duties were to protect the people and the Duke’s
properties. In the twelfth century a Barony, therefore, was an
administrative position involving the organization of knights and
the collection of fees and taxes from them and from those who lived
on their lands as tenants. When the English Parliament was
evolving seven centuries ago many of these Barons were summoned
to lake their part in the writing of the laws — so it is reasonably

212

THE BARONS

latterly Undersecretary for Air, and just about to end his marriage
with the daughter of an extinct baronetcy, became Lord Balfour of
Inchrye. (So named to distinguish him from the Earl of Balfour, the
former Prime Minister, and Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who was
given that title in 1607 on his appointment as Ambassador to the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany.) Five days on and Ficld^Marshal Sir
Philip Cherwodc was given the title Lord Chetwode; on Bastille
Day Sir James Sandford, Treasurer of the King’s Household, won
his baronyj and Edward Grigg. MP for a Manchester suburb and
husband of Lord Islington’s daughter, was given the title Lord
Altrincham on J August — a title which his son John proudly
disclaimed eighteen years later on.*

A change in government, from Churchill to Attlee, intervened.
However, peerage creation was not to stop: Sir Charles Lyle, head
of the huge Tate & Lyle sugar refiners won the title of Lord Lyle of
Westboume, with a coat of arms showing a chicken sitting on a
couple of sugar canes. Later on that year, in September, Sir George
Bioadbridge, Tory MP for the City of London and sometime
Master of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners, became Lord
Broadbridge, and Mr William Davison, Tory Member for
Kensington, took the title of Baron Broughshane. Then a ioumalist
and, to surprise us all, a devout disciple of the Labour Pkrty,
William Henderson, was given the title Lord Henderson, of
Westgate, Newcastle upon Tyne. Admiral Edward Evans, the
distinguished Polar explorer, second-in-command of Scott’s fateful
journey to the South Pole, and during wartime Minister for Aircraft
Production, became Lord Mountevans, with a brace of penguitis as
his heraldic supporters. Mr Alexander Lindsay, Master of Balliol
and a distinguished Scots academic and author, became Lord
Lindsay of Birker; William Picrcy, the economist who was Attlee’s
personal assistant during the war, became Lord Picrcy; Robert
Morrison, the Minister of Supply, became Lord Morrison; Robert
Chorley, another wartime Labour Minister, became Lord Chotley;
Mr George Muff, Labour MP for Hull and a man who had been
employed as a textile mill worker when he was only a boy of ten,
justly won elevation and rightly changed his name to Lord
Calverley of Bradford. And to round offa year of noble excess and

' The blit Lord Altrincham had a distinguished career: he was the Rt. Hoa. Sir
Edward Gngg, KCMG, KCVO, DSO, MC, t*C, Cominander-m-Chief Kenya,
Minister Resident m the Middle Bast, Financial Secretary to the War Office and an
MP for twenty-one years.

the barons 2^3

• C Mr Robert Palmer, fonner Co-op cashier and

SXt onhe I’ntemational Co-operative Alliance, became the

first Baron Rusholme. . today? Lord Altrincham is no

emiiely Grieg's brother

more, though it is enur y Lyle

Authortytotakeupt^ti 1

otwestboumedied ^6^ R^^holmc died without an heir,
for good. The hrs ^ Their Lordships Balfour of

terminating that title s • members of the

Inehrye and less experts might rare to

originally ennobled gio P . cheiwode, Chotley, Sandfotd,
ate Labour men. Lord pietcy and Morrison ate now into

Broughshane.Lmdsayof Birker.«

the second barony. Ha g . Cmss for his exploits in

shite Yeomanry who chetwode lives quietly in Wiltsbite;

luly. lives in Lciceste^hire. m^mitaineer. an Alpinisti

the second Lord Chorl v; then ordained a

Sandfordhadadisiinguts number of distinguished posts

priest, after pmughshane is a wealthy barrister,

connected with s<^ial ' j,. Lindsay of Birker is Professor

now retired and living m jJ^^^^dnnal Service at the American
Emeritus at the School o piercy, who went to Eton and sent

University in Washington, and who firmly denotes

his children to Shrewsbury Lords, not a Labour peer at all,

T-j.^.ndcnt in me m® —

his chiinrcn w o.^^v .. Lords, not a t-acour peer at all,

himself as an Morrison was until his retirement an

lives quietly in Staffotdsh . ^^^^pany and lives in Suffolk. He,
executive with the Meta

too, does not take a party of 1945 Barons, four are

Finally, from that ong distinguished recipient by a

separated from the iit«c baronies, even though little

generation- four of passed since the ennoblemcnu were

more than three * 7“ j Lord Hacking, a barrister and retired
announced. There ® nf the Association of Lancastrians in
sailor, former ..j Lord Broadbridge, who was at

London; there « ^^rinc’s,Oxford.%shcrehetookanMSc.,

Hurstpicrpoint an . ^phe ilurd Lord M^tevans, Rugby

and now lives worker the BrinshTounu Authority

andTnnity,O>^0^“’ Authority m London, enticing

m Sweden, and ^ „ finger, the third Lord Calvcrlcy,

ns, tors wiib a boro m »946. numed a gul called

visitors widi a no y ^ ,

Charles Rodney

THE BARONS

214

Barbara Brown and lives in 3 suburb of Bradford, where he works as
an ordinary, beat>pounding policeman.

It all presents a curious picture of the eiTccts of ennoblement.
Those who carry a title as a consequence of their birth arc in not one
single case as distinguished in any field as was the first holder of the
title; in every single ease they are either as comfortably settled as
was the first holder or are considerably more settled than was that
first holder. More of the present Barons went to public schools and
to the ancient universities than did those created first; the numbers
who live in remote and pleasant spots in the country are far greater
than those who still inhabit the more commonplace suburbs and
inner cities. In short, the eles-ation to the peerage has brought the
group firmly within the palace gates of the Establishment, yet
appears to have done Uute to increase their usefulness, as a group, to
the society that honoured their forebears. Small wonder that most
peers, of recent and of ancient creation, arc reluctant to give up what
privileges they have: for while the right to be hanged with a silken
cord (not many are in a position to claim this particular privilege:
the last was the fourth Earl Ferrers, in } 760. He, 'in a paroxysm of
rage killed Mr Johnson, his land*steward, and was executed at
Tyburn', according to Dtbrtit. No peer, save he commit either
treason or arson in a naval dockyard, can be hanged these days, of
course, since for all but these offences, capital punishment is no
more), to eschew jury rooms and to be free from the threat of arrest
may not mean very much today, the ability to enhance enormously
one’s standing in society, one’s position in the world, one’s fortunes
at the bank and one’s ambitions for the children is manifestly not to
be sniffed at. To become a Baron, even in 1945, is no bad thing,
either for the Lord of first creation or, save perhaps for Mr Muff of
Bradford, for the Lords who follow him down towards eternity.

Because the bulk of the baronage is of twentieth-century origin,
because massive fortunes and mighty landholdings are not so
common in this baseboard of ennoblement as among, say, the
Dukes or the Earls, so the geographical distribution of the degree is
startlingly different. There are a great number of Barons living in
London — somewhere close to too, or a quarter of the total of
hereditary holders. There are legions of Their Lordships living in
the Home County suburbs— Surrey, for example, is stiff with
Barons, who fan out along the Southern Region railway tracks like
so many stockbrokers, whidi, of course, many of them are. They
stretch up and away into Norfolk and Suffolk, and cluster in the

the barons

2X5

ciuc, of Oxford arrd Tc

Principals of Colleges or ar jjaroos follow ihe road from

stately workings of the UnwcBt ^ Co„^,old hideaways like

?;*rr;”d:.hcrcorcc>.of>«^

Deer to ihe shore, sou* of ^ Vf ales-almost rhe only

They ate scattered liberally . glimpse of ermine

branehofthepeeraBethal6.ves^^._P^'^^^^^^jp,^^^^

and coroneted majesty. (..hire and Flintshire, Builth Wells,

Criecieth and Harleeh, penbiBtehtre „ tadetr^^^

Llandrindod Wells md Usk. ^ die Wear and the Teep

grime: three live on Tynesidpfi ^d jigbt circle

many based around Manchwi . ^ich so many of them

Birmingham, watching over the ci y f Lorf, on

drew their ptcsl.ge, their “pdinbutgh, others clustered on

the outskirts of both 9'f 8?.* Hdh « '''' a

the southern flanks of the of Islay, Colonsay ^

Inverness and Aberdeen, ?“** ^ * „ ,“and-seotes settled dom
Man. There are plenty to b' ^ i,ous countrysrfe of the

in Dublin and Cork, ten « leas' “ * ^ , jdands, five m

northern Six Counties. •"«« 'hree in Australia, three tn

Canada, two in Spain, two B^l “ ^ g^^^i Africa, three ua the
Switxerland, three in

United States and one ead. ^ring f„,hest from the

France. The man with ‘'’'‘‘““ pjVilliers, a New Zealander,

fomirofhisdignityisthetbndBaronU

grandson of the num ennoWed ^ diough of the

Krvices as Chief Justice »' ""rWynberg, in the Province
United Kingdom, is from ..j ha^ with his colleagues of

of Te Ope of Good Hope. The holde' hB ^

hkera^,aperfectrighttocomeandhdp.n

'.‘a io riiles away a»«ss the^ ^gford nearly half a century

sojourned since taking hndegre

as might be expected after
The baronial e'cations of ■«! government, hW

both a protracted generally ‘“„ho

political. Wat b'roes ^^y^^dAlexanderofTunls,

Montgomery of Alame ,

THE BARONS

214

Barbara Brown and lives in a suburb of Bradford, where he works as
an ordinary, beat-pounding policeqian.

It all presents a curious picture of the effects of ennoblement.
Those who carry a title as a consequence of their birth are in not one
single case as distinguished in any field as was the first holder of the
titlej in every single case they are either as comfortably settled as
was the first holder or are considerably more settled than was that
first holder. More of the present Barons went to public schools and
to the ancient universities than did those created first; the numbers
who live in remore and pleasant spots in the country are far greater
than those who still inhabit the more commonplace suburbs and
inner cities. In short, the elevation to the peerage has brought the
group firmly within the palace gates of the Establishment, yet
appears to have done little to mcrease their usefulness, as a group, to
the society that honoured their forebears. Small wonder that most
peers, of recent and of ancient creation, are reluctant to giveup what
privileges they have; for while the tight to be hanged with a silken
cord (not many ate in a position to claim this particular privilege:
the last was the fourth Earl Ferrers, in 2760. He, ‘in a paroxysm of
rage killed Mr Johnson, his land-steward, and was executed at
Tybum’, according to Debrett. No peer, save he commit either
treason or arson in a naval dockyard, can be hanged these days, of
course, since for all but these offences, capital punishment is no
mote), to eschew jury rooms and to be free from the threat of arrest
may not mean very much today, the ability to enhance enormously
one’s standing in society, one’s position in the world, one’s fortunes
at the bank and one’s ambitions for the children is manifestly not to
be sniffed at. To become a Baron, even in 2945, is no bad thing,
either for the Lord of first creation or, save perhaps for Mr Muff of
Bradford, for the Lords who follow him down towards eternity.

Because the bulk of the baronage is of twentieth-century origin,
because massive fortunes and mighty landholdings are not so
common in this baseboard of ennoblement as among, say, the
Dukes or the Earls, so the geographical distribution of the degree is
startlingly different. There ate a great number of Barons living in
London — somewhere close to 100, or a quarter of the total of
hereditary holders. There are legions of Their Lordships living in
the Home County suburbs — Surrey, for example, is stiff with
Barons, who fan out along the Southern Region railway tracks like
so many stockbrokers, which, of course, many of them are. They
stretch up and away into Norfolk and Suffolk, and cluster in the

217

THE BARONS

p.Mshed recently. Th„e a.

(Marks and Spencer have a . There is a potter peer

thoughthelattertitlebec^ee^M^97 ^

(Wedgwood), a locksmi* ^ -GEC’-George Edward

powder (Lord Berwick). ^ . i,* r’nmnlete Peerage — became

Lkayne, .he editor of the "“"„pie and remote Roy
Lord Cullen of Ashbourne; and U>e ^ ^ ,ne

Thomson, owner of more J „ge as a junior version of a

British Museum, was hauled P themselves

press Baron. Other >''"®P‘‘P“™“V,mrose and Kemsley. There

viscount.es, like Lords manapd to

is no ready explanation f „as a Canadian and given to

capture only a barony. Roy s the reason was no more

eating in Covent Garden cafo P atpptte from

than that. His son Kenneth, clearly unimpressed by his

his mansion in the Toronto smtus. He asks

title and unconcerned by Jus reUii and affects

everyone to call him «dhef . . are mentioned,
bewilderment when the byway Barons the trappings are

Down in this humble and robes with

exceedingly slim. have eight strawberry leaves

those of the Duke, say: Their !“ pafnamentary robe with

on a gold circlet tor their gnaded heads, a

four bats of miniver and gold 1 =“ j.,y„ balls, and can wear

Baron has but a silver-gilt coronet Duchess attending a

arobewirhiusrrwobarsoftur^d^e^ ,,^^„i„chesof

Coronation has a rrain two yards long „„,„e

ermine. A Baroness has a tram ^ of diifcrcncc easily

borders that are only two inches wide e.

spotted by the experts which ,ne very origins of die

The baronage appears to enco P ^ gritain and the first

hereditary principle of |;amematy system. The first

stirrings of the represenrauve „ „c have s.en-

Barons-the word 9““ htemlly King-tbo senior

were those who held land as dir^ resistance to the

functionaries of monarchu^ f 5„p on the long

Monarch's demands led to Magna ound the person of

road of consrirmion; later shop' rha. evolve*

Simon dc Montfott to Lot Lords. In the very early

eventually, into the "^„PCCessor to a Baron would be

stagesrhetewasno guarantee rharthesuc

THE BARONS

2l6

all received viscounties (though Alexander was later promoted a
degree after being Governor General of Canada) — and it was left to
the Royal Air Force to collect a number of wartime baronies, in the
persons of Lords Tedder, Dowding and Brabazon of Tara. (The
RAF did receive one special viscounty in the person of Lord Portal
of Hungerford, the former Marshal of the Royal Air Force. Portal
had no son, so the peerage was, in special recognition of his services
in aerial warfare, made descendable to his daughter, but as a barony.
Lady Portal lives on still, a living memorial to the exploits of her
heroic father.) Generally, baronies have not been so dominated by
purely political consideration as the degrees above, and the
baronage, to a much greater extent than the viscounty, is heavily
concerned with success in trade, in science and, to a very limited
degree, in letters. (It is, perhaps, a rather sad fact that the peerage is
almost exclusively a philistine preserve: until the life peerages came
along in 1958, permitting regal recognition of musicians, actors,
men of letters, painters and sculptors, virtually no peer, apart from
Tennyson, was thus rewarded for his artistic endeavour. John
Locke's cousin Peter King, was given a barony— like Lockehe was a
Fellow of the Royal Society, though his honour was awarded for
being made Lord Chancellor. Lord Napier and Ettrick is regarded
as a feather in the cap of many mathematicians, despite the peerage
having been confirmed in 1627 on the son of the famous Napier who
invented the logarithms that still bear his name.)

Trade dominates the twentieth-century creations: there are
Barons whose titles stem from their works with industrial giants like
Unilever, Shell and British Petroleum. Lord Lyle, as we have seen,
stemmed from shipping and sugar cane; Lord Rootes from motor
cars; Lords Dulvenon (of Wills) and Sinclair of Cleeve (British-
American), won their spurs for selling cigarettes — an award which
many might now sec as rather less than appropriate, in view of the
dangers of smoking proven since Their Lordships’ awards. None
the less, Dulvertons and Sinclairs will go on to help fashion the
nation’s laws. There are Barons who were bankers — Baring,
Swaythling, Rothschild, Catto; there is ‘the Beerage’ — as the
collection of peers made rich by beer and porter is affectionately
known. The families of Grant and Hennessy, now ennobled as the
Barons Strathspey and Windtesbam, had nothing directly to do
with the makmg of whisky or cognac, as is often supposed. ‘It is
rather like the Czechs, who persist in thinking the Duke of Portland
makes cement,’ said one of Scotland's Heralds in a commentary

THB BARONS

217

published recently. There are Barona from the great British shops
(Marks and Spencer have a Lord Marks and had a Lord Sietf—
though the latter title became extinct in 1972). There is a potter peer
(Wedgwood), a locksmith Z^rd (Chubb) and a Baron of baking
powder (Lord Berwick). The son of ‘GEC’ — George Edward
Cokayne, the editor of the redoubtable Complete Peerage — became
Lord Cullen of Ashbourne; and the portly, myopic and remote Roy
Thomson, owner of more newspapers than are taken daily by the
British Museum, was hauled into the peerage as a junior version of a
press Baron. Other newspapermen eventually won themselves
viscounties, like Lords Rothermere, Camrose and KemsJey. There
is no ready explanation for Lord Thomson having managed to
capture only a barony. Roy Thomson was a Canadian and given to
eating in Covent Garden cafes— perhaps the reason was no more
than that. His son Kenneth, who runs the huge family empire from
his mansion in the Toronto suburbs, is clearly unimpressed by his
title and unconcerned by his relatively junior status. He asks
everyone to call him either ‘Ken' or ‘Mister’, and affects
bewilderment when the byways of titledom are mentioneii.

Down in this humble company of Barons the trappings arc
exceedingly slim. Compare the baronial coronet and robes with
those of the Duke, say: Their Graces have eight strawberry leaves
on a gold circlet for their grizzled heads, a Parliamentary robe with
four bars of miniver and gold lace woven halfway around. The mere
Baron has but a silver-gilt coronet with six silver balls, and can wear
a robe with just two bars of fur and gold lace. A Duchess attending a
Coronation has a train two yards long and edged with five inches of
ermine. A Baroness has a train just ihree feet long with ermine
borders that arc only two inches wide— the kind of difference easily
spotted by the experts which only true snobs in the field become.

The baronage appears to encompass both the very ongins of the
hereditary principle of legislative activity in Britain and the first
stirrings of the represenmive Parliamentary system. The first
Barons— the word quite literally means ’man’, as we have seen—
thoss who heW JUud as direct irnanis of ihe King— the senior
functionaries of monarchical feudalism. Their resistance to the
Monarch’s demands led to Magna Cam, the first step on the long
road of consniution; later ilrcy gathered around the person of
Simon dc Nionifort to form the early ‘talking shop* that evolved,
eventually, into the present-day House of Lords. In the very early
stages there was no guarantee that the successor to a Baron would be

2i8 the barons

summoned to the Council or the Parliament, but by the time of
Edward III in the mid-fourteenth century, the right of heirs to
perform the same duties as their predecessors had become firmly
established: the hereditary peerage was bom. Peerages that date
from before the days of Edward III are still proudly recognized by
their holders, but through the thirteenth century and the first few
years of the fourteenth, their holding of an actual peerage, in the
modem sense, rather than in the sense of the membership of a class,
was rather doubtful.

We are straying into waters that go beyond the scope of this
account of the hereditary peerage today, but it is worth remarking
on three supposed subdivisions of the peerage that run beneath the
five-way warp and woof of the nobility — the divisions into English,
Irish, Scottish peers; peers of Great Britain and peers of the United
Kingdom. These further three subdivisions relate to whether the
peerage is held by turit, a direct summons by the Monarch to attend
the Parliament; by Letters Parent, which institutionalized the writ
and ensured successors of the right to attend Parliament; or by
tenure. There are very few of the baronies by writ remaining,
though those that do exist can, like Scottish titles, pass through
males or females— the ‘heirs general’ rather than the heirs male. By
far and away the bulk of the peers were created by Letters Patent-
impressive sealed documents usually either kept as the most
hallowed of treasures in the most secure rooms in the castles, or left
with the archivists of the House of Lords for safe keeping. And
though many Americans may be disappointed, it is now taken as
settled law in England that there are no such things as peerages by
tenure— there is great confusion between peerages of Parliament,
and pre-Parliamentary baronies by tenure, often leading would-be
fortune hunters and titleholders to find great disappointment at the
end of their, frequently, transatlantic quests.

One final word on the origins of the words ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’.
Both have their origins not in sex, but in, of all things, bread-
making. A ‘lord’ was, in Old English, the ‘hlaford’— ‘loaf-warder’;
the ‘lady’ was, in the same tongue, ‘hlafdige’ or ‘loaf-kneader’. The
early Barons and their ladies were, as the feudal chiefs of the King’s
regions, suppliers of bread to their sub-tenants, and the name stuck.
As we have seen the terms apply to all the peers (in informal
language) except for the Dukes. Only in communications from the
Sovereign and from the House of Lords are the suppliers of bread
called by their ancient title of ’ man *. The Monarch regards a Baron

220

THE BARONS

So she has changed her name to Luella Maxwell, and does her best
to forget her inheritance.

Mrs Maxwell has as distinguished a crop of ancestors as it is
possible to have. Woven in and around the 700 years of her barony
are celebrated names like the Dukes of Leinster, Buckingham and
Richmond; and the Earls of Rutland, Shannon, Dartrey, Antrim
and Exeter. Ancestors were variously men who led divisions into
battle at Crecy, or were noted in the seventeenth century for their
‘profligacy and wit', or were nineteenth-century Lieutenant
Governors of the Tower of London. The first Baron married an
heiress to the Lordship of Belvoir, the second tried to sit on the
throne of Scotland, the third married well again, winning the co-
heiress of a Kentish barony, the fourth went to Crecy. The fifth
married well, the sixth went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and died
at Paphos, the seventh became Lord Treasurer of England and, true
to the form of the alternate Barons, married into the peerage, in his
case the daughter of Lord Arundel. The eighth served under the
Duke of Clarence in France, where he was killed, the ninth married
a daughter of the Earl of Warwick, the tenth married the sister of the
Earl of Worcester but managed to get himself beheaded in 1464.

The eleventh Baron de Ros, still sixteen baronies and 500 years
from Gina Maxwell’s accession, managed to win back the title his
father lost on the execution block, but was never summoned to
Parliament; his successor suffered the same ignominy but, in the
habit of the shrewd dc Ros males, married not just well, but
brilliantly well — to a widow of the Duke of Exeter and relation of
King Edward IV. The thirteenth Baron managed to win the title
Earl of Rutland and a knighthood of the Garter, the fourteenth was
an Admiral of the Fleet, the fifteenth was a Cambridge MA who
died without a son and thus lost the earldom, which trailed off to his
brother and his children. He did have a daughter, who became
sixteenth Baroness, her son died without children and the de Ros
family found themselves united once again with the Rutlands. This
son was an argumentative fellow by all accounts and managed to get
a new barony created, the barony of Ros of Hamlake, but carelessly
died without a son and so lost the title for all time just a few years
after he had had it created.

The old title, de Ros, went charging happily on through his
daughter Katherine, who married a Duke of Buckingham and so
allowed her ancient ennoblement to gather dust while she went
around, not unnaturally, callmg herself a Duchess. Her son, the

221

THE BARONS

second Duke was thus

however, died aged sixty ^ abeyance. The title was

more than a century, the utl rharlotte Boyle, wife of the

eventually terminated in favour of one Ch g at ,he

first Duke of Leinster, who became twenty nr
beginning of the nineteenth . ^e dosing days of

From then the >“'' yi^atfan eta until the twenty-

Georgian England and . having had a son Peter, who

sixth Baroness, Una Mary, ^ daughters, Gcorgiana, who

diedinthewarin .940.Hehadhadmo toght^^^^^
was bom in 1933 and Rosemary, but even the hazy

died in 1936. there was dictate that the Barony

peerage laws of Baronies created by ^l^an to his

shall devolve upon the oldest “>"•'* d his offspring. So

descendants-rather than the contentedly m

Charles was denied the title, divided between Gina and
Bournemouth! the barony ““ “ “ tventy-.hree and nineteen
Rosemary who, when Una died, were

respectively. j.„,,e was placed in abeyance for two

The barony, as the rules dicute. P^^^^^ll^j as her

years, until the Queen, wu af one of the girls.

agent, terminated the '",'^onthsafietQrandmothetdirf.

■Thewhole affair cameupafewm evening and

Gina Maxwell recalls. 'We ““"““d very much-there was no
decided that neither of os mat-just a vague feeling that

land and no money or litical interest it would be letting

although neither of us had Though I suppose

history down a bit if we a ^ ^^ars down the line,

someone „„„,d havejucked it^“^as,bychance,Ross:U^^^^^^

‘Anyway, Rosemary Cher s“ Arthur Ross, m 1904) “d i

ma^cTa Northern Irel»d &^,„ao, drake the,ill=- w-

talkedabout it audit wasd^ide ^aason. J' to

the older girl, but Tok group of females tiiking the title i

agreeing to relmqu

222

THE BARONS

that. I was the Baroncss> for what it was worth. Rosemary and I
never argued about it — it was all done most amicablyj and all it
means is that she lives peacefully in Wiltshire without any fuss,
while every so often reporters come down here and ask what on
earth a Baroness is doing mucking out the pigs or something.’

Lady de Ros radiates civilized ordinariness. There is no fuss at all
to her mode of existence. There is little money, a pleasant coastline
and harbour at Strangford, Co. Down, which came into the family
when Una married Mr Ross; and there arc the foundations and
walls of a new country house that is being built with painstaking
care to replace the ruins of a house that Irish Republicans blew up
and burned in the 1920s. Her Ladyship went to a good girls’ school
in England, and took a National Diploma in Dairying in 195S1
after she married David Maxwell and when she realized there was a
farm to look after. She has never been inside the House of Lords,
save to see the Lord Chancellor in 1958, and feels she would be
foolish to try and make a speech about anything. '1 would only put
my foot in my mouth. I don’t know enough about fanning to
become an expert on that, and I certainly would never try to speak
about Northern Ireland.’ Both she and her husband are concerned
at the possibility of the IRA trying to eradicate them as examples of
ancient English privilege, though the house has no defences and
neither bothers much about taking precautions.

There are certain disadvanuges attendant with the title: she
dislikes the publicity, if only because it increases the family’s vul-
nerability at a troublesome time; her land, like that of many titled
families, is held in trust and $0 is not mortgageable when extra funds
are needed; there are relics to keep (like the watcr-bouget, one of a
pair of leather bottles used for carrying water, that was hshed out of
the sea by a Scotsman, and now has to be kept, at some expense, at
the local bank). There is the responsibility for the land — her
ownership of two magnificent beaches at Ballyhoman and Killard
Point endows her with more responsibilities, but few more
privileges, than the person who owns a large garden at the back of
his house. ‘The obligations of nobility are, in our case, far greater
than the perks.’

And what she dislikes most of all is the snobbery. ‘I was at a party
recently where very few people knew either David or me. There
were a lot of rather grand Unionist types there — garden party
people who did Good Works and so forth. I was introduced to one
of the women as plain Mrs Maxwell, and she couldn’t have cared

^^4 THE BARONS

the writ of summons of the 49 Henry III, under which Lord de Ros
IS p aced in the House of Lords, could not create a peerage, he is
entitled to be placed as the Premier Baron of England.’ There are
not many years separating the titles: Lady de Ros claims hers back
to 1264, Lord Mowbray to 1283. From this perspective, the
v^ishmg pomt permits both to share the honours-though in fact
ow ray, whose family did, as he said, pay the official baronial
omage to the Queen at her Coronation and who is the holder of a
number of antique titles, such as Chief Butler of England, can lay
claim to many more of the perks of premiership than Her Ladyship
over m Strangford.

^ genial, hail-fellow-well-met politician, a
ebullient drinking partner. He has but one eye-
anH * 1.°* '''bile he was a Grenadier during the war—

be taken '''' '‘”*"arks of the House of Loids, w

accoutrpm t ? square crumpets as an essential

Catholic ° the dear old place. His family are Roman
of NorSTk association with the Dufces

eonmntnf' “ incorporated, alonj with the

plicltedcoLr I" in the entraotdinarily com-

S tolon H ! '’h*' P«n- (I> has six quarters; those of
Thesuot"!"'"’*’ S'srave, Talbot »d Plantasenet.

crest u

Smutl FferS T o"/,’ “"*■ Ws motto is, in

which would b ^’ ‘ Z' u‘ '"•S' “f'- H' has a badge too,

budersTd ™”S worn by his footmen,

pnmSv“ gS^Lrr'" " “ “ "

no^'co'um^e^tlts^ “nwhrays-two

and fishine coimtrv c® ^ sizeable chunk of shooting

Deramore. His telenhnn u daughter of Lord

exchange of Foinavon- soured Scotland is listed under the

horse of the s^rnliie Tb "" ^ '

already lucky, by a cheque

bec^l. during M™ThaK”'^''’°“''“' Mowbray

so-eallei lirds m wS„ “= “f » number of

sounds akin to the " Majesty. The term, though it

Bedchamber. Lmliti r " ““ ‘he Women of the

rr..snot8,ve„,oapceroaespcciallyi„.i„a.= te,mswilh

THE BARONS

4= Monarch; it ia a formal name fh'c

creature serving at any one time, th y Bedchamber to

when Queen Victoria first allowed ^ s„g,„t to the

shake off a most unseemly and unbecoming „5

outside world that their usl^wct

actually members of the Royal Hoi>“>'«'^ ““ They

die Queen at various fairly low-level f«™=' f b,ak,

shuttle about from Westminster to official greeting but

meeting various foreigners who arc ^ Lo,d Mowbray

unwordiy of a. ruly Royal Presence a, He^row.^^

grinned a wicked 2'“'“® ®J, f „j.yoat Wail; those he recalls at

memorable personages dutinghis four y Marcos of the

short notice were the King «' N”rpmmi!rorTrinidad, plus
Philippines, ihc Shah of Persia an forgot, but who had

one o^er fellow whose name and j„gs wid. the

come from 'Abyssinia', Tdc'»« ^X,S”he can U
Queen on the spot-lust so ^ dity are suitable to act as her

eye on her Waiting Lords to make sure iney j Wailing

represenutiveatporrsofentry.Ontop^alimah^^^^^ ^

act as spokesmen for various environment and

House— .Mowbray spoke on . Government in the or-

housing— and arc on as Whips or^^ ^

ganiiing of debates and divisions. AJ v,hich a few of the

—money which Mowbray might a Conservauve

life peers could well use. At rhe time of writing,

Government in power, the six politi —ctrictlv Royal functions

the Permanent Lords in Wailing, wi cases cross-benchers,

to perform, are courtiers and thus m cood example of a

without any specific party is the present Lord

nominally apolitical Permanent Lo Oucen Eluabcih.

Chartetis, die fomier Privaie Sc<;"“ry »

.Mowbray isaskillcddefenderofhnsanri

Lords display ‘far more r«P^**“';>’ ‘ here’. The peerage

would expect— there’s a lot of hard b^yofmcnandss'omen

\s as not above criticism, ‘but frankly tt is j,* He doubts that

that are 99 pcf cent good, and only t ^ . f jjie peers to bring
Socialists will manage to sur up enough disUkc

2Z6

THE BARONS

about the demise of the system. Everyone, he claims, is looking out
for ways of bettering himself: ‘What better a goal to seek than a
peerage, the highest honour a nation can bestow?' He then
proceeded to take me on a tout of fais friends in the Lords bar,
ending with Mandy Pitt, the pretty daughter of Lord Pitt, the black
peer from Grenada who had been Chairman of the Greater London
Council and a distinguished doctor. Lord Mowbray is a great fan of
Mandy Pitt, and acted towards her in a manner that was affably
lascivious and full on bonhomie. With hU roguish eye patch and his
whisky glass, his outrageous flirtations and his roaring laughter,
Lord Mowbray seems far distant from the graviias one might
associate with the holder of the premier barony but one. It is rather
akin to the discovery that the Marquess of Cholmondeley, the
Hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England, collects toy
soldiers. Something which, Lord Mowbray pointed out, the noble
Marquess does with extraordinary zeal. 'One of the finest
collections in EnglaAdI’

At the other end of the spectrum, 700 years removed from the
date of creation of Lady de Kos's title, is John Granville Morrison,
the first Baron Margadale, who was given the title by a grateful
Conservative Prime Minister (via the Queen, of course) in 1565.
The announcement was madeonNcw Year’s Day, without any sure
indication that, saving Royalty and their possible self-ennoblement
some time in the future. Lord Margadale was at risk of being the
very last hereditary peer to be created in the United Kingdom — and
thus the last to be etuiobled and given legislative powers and
guaranteed ennoblement for those dest^oding from him in the male
line, in all the world. He is a man who takes the distinction lightly,
though he looks very much the part of the English peer, and lives
the life of a Lord to the very hilt.

The MacBrayne's ferryboat that runs from West LochTarbert to
Port Ellen on Islay, in the Hebrides, is rarely crowded in the winter.
One Sunday in a recent mid-January the little steamship chugged
away from the Tatbcrt pier with a footing-party of half a dozen
from Carlislci a wild Canadian gentleman wearing a cowboy hat and
two bandoliers, who had fiown over from Calgary for the simple
purpose of shooting geese; and a finely chiselled, tweedy pair from
Wiltshire w ho turned out to have tfaename Hcywood-I-onsdale and
be related to Lord RoUo. They, too, were going for the shooting —
indeed, everyone on the boat bad some interest in the sport on Islay,

THE BARONS 227

virtually all of which belongs, as does most of Islay itself, to the first
Baron Margadale,

The Heywood-Lonsdales were, in fact, going over to stay with
His Lordship. They were near neighbours of his in Wiltshire, and
he invites them for the shooting every winter once be has managed
toget himself and his retinue up there. They were planning to spend
a week— Colonel Hcywood-Lonsdalc to shoot, his wife, the sister of
Lord Rollo, to paint watercolours of the plant life and perhaps pick
up the odd gun. T^eir presence on the steamer turned out to be
invaluable — not least because they corrected the pronunciation of
Margadale (it is Aftrgadzlc) and managed to win for me a dinner
invitation from a peer generally regarded as one of the most private
of men.

Conversation during the three-hour run across the sea and past
the Island of Gi^a (owned by Sir John Horltck, maker of one of
Britain’s best-known bedtime drinks) turned to the usual topics of
the county aristocracy— the difficulties of getting nannies, the
outrageous wages for which servants ask these days, the fact that
Colonel Heywood'Lonsdaie had managed single-handedly to
penuade an entire German regiment to surrender, and that bis wife
would do her bird-watching through binoculars that the gallant
Colonel had taken from a dead German soldier.

The Canadian approached at this point to tell of his ambition to
shoot the geese on Islay. ’You do know that Lord Margadale
proteceshis geese, don’t you?' asked the Honourable Mrs He)’Wood-
Lonsdalc. ‘Oh yeah?’ said the man, obviously deeply disappointed
by the intelligence. ‘Well, I guess I’ll iust have to shoot woodcock or
something. Damned ptty, chough.'

‘lx>rd Margadale’, Mrs Heywood-Lonsdale continued after
the interruption, ‘is an absolute dear. And his wife, too— j'ou know
she is a Kambledon?’ 1 bimked. 'You know— W. H. Smith, the
newsagent. Piles of money made out of bookstalls. Well, that’s the
family he married into. All absolute dears.*

We looked at a chart of the Hebridean waters through uhlch we
were churning; hlrs Heywood-Lonsdale pointed out the tiny island
of Korth Uist, in the chain ofthe Outer Hebrides. It wasov^ned by
Lord Granville, she uid. Calleraisb House, a dot on the green
island, was the family seat. The Queen and Prince Philip had stayed
there recently— just pulled JJnjaamo alongside the quay and
walked up to the house, the Granvilles being 'rather down-to-eanh
people, you know*.

226 THE BARONS

about the demise of the system. Everyone, he claims, is looking out
for ways of bettering himself: ‘What better a goal to seek than a
peerage, the highest honour a nation can bestow?’ He then
proceeded to take me on a tour of his friends in the Lords bar,
ending with Mandy Pitt, the pretty daughter of Lord Pitt, the black
peer from Grenada who had been Chairman of the Greater London
Council and a distinguished doctor. Lord Mowbray is a great fan of
Mandy Pitt, and acted towards her in a manner that was affably
lascivious and full on bonhomie. With his roguish eye patch and his
whisky glass, his outrageous flirtations and his roaring laughter,
Lord Mowbray seems far distant from the gravnas one might
associate with the holder of the premier barony but one. It is rather
akin to the discovery that the Marquess of Cholmondeley, the
Hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England, collects toy
soldiers. Something which. Lord Mowbray pointed out, the noble
Marquess does with extraordinary zeal. ‘One of the finest
collections in England!'

At the other end of the spectrum, 700 years removed from the
date of creation of Lady de Ros’s title, is John Granville Morrison,
the first Baron Margadale, who was given the title by a grateful
Conservative Prime Minister (via the Queen, of course) in 1965.
The announcement was made on New Year’s Day, without any sure
indication that, saving Royalty and their possible self-ennoblement
some time in the future, Lord Margadale was at risk of being the
very last hereditary peer to be created in the United Kingdom — and
thus the last to be ennobled and given legislative powers and
guaranteed ennoblement for those descending from him in the male
line, in all the world. He is a man who takes the distinction lightly,
though he looks very much the part of the English peer, and lives
the life of a Lord to the very hilt.

The MacBrayne’s ferryboat that tuns from West Loch T arbert to
Port Ellen on Islay, in the Hebrides, is rarely crowded in the winter.
One Sunday in a recent mid-January the little steamship chugged
away from the Tarbert pier with a shooting-party of half a dozen
from Carlisle; a wild Canadian gentleman wearing a cowboy hat and
two bandoliers, who had flown over from Calgary for the simple,
purpose of shooting geese; and a finely chiselled, tweedy pair from
Wiltshire who turned out to have the name Heywood- Lonsdale and
be related to Lord Rollo. They, too, were going for the shooting —
indeed, everyone on the boat had some interest in the sport on Islay,

THE BARONS

227

virtually all of which belongs, as does most of Islay itself, to the first
Baron Margadale.

The Heywood-Lonsdales were, in fact, going over to slay with
His Lordship. They were near neighbours of his in Wiltshire, and
he invites them for the shooting every winter once he has managed
to get himself and his retinue up there. They were planning to spend
a week — Colonel Heywood-Lonsdalc to shoot, his wife, the sister of
Lord Rollo, to paint watercolours of the plant life and perhaps pick
up the odd gun. Their presence on the steamer turned out to be
invaluable — not least because they corrected the pronunciation of
Margadale (it is Afrrgadale) and managed to win for me a dinner
invitation from a peer generally regarded as one of the most private
of men.

Conversatiotx during the three-hour run across the sea and past
the Island of Gigha (owned by Sir John Horlick, maker of one of
Britain’s best'known bedtime drinks) turned to the usual topics of
the county aristocracy-'the difficulties of getting nannies, the
outrageous wages for which servants ask these days, the fact that
Colonel Heywood-Lonsdale bad managed single-handedly to
persuade an entire German regimentto surrender, and that his wife
would do her bird-watching through binoculars that the gallant
Colonel had taken from a dead German soldier.

The Canadian approached at this point to tell of his ambition to
shoot the geese on Islay. ’You do know that Lord Margadale
protects his geese, don’t you?’ asked the Honourable Mrs Heywood-
Lonsdale. 'Oh yeah?' said the man, obviously deeply disappointed
by the intelligence. ‘Well, X guess I’ll just have to shoot woodcock or
something. Damned pity, though.’

‘Lord Margadale’, Mrs Heywood-LxmsdaJe continued after
the interruption, ‘js an absolute dear. And his wife, too — you know
she is a Hambledon?’ I blinked. ‘You know — W. H. Smith, the
newsagent. Piles of money made out of bookstalls. Well, that’s the
family he married into. All absolute dears.’

We looked at a chan of the Hebridean waters through which we
were churning: Mrs Heywood-Lonsdale pointed out the tiny island
of North Uisi, in the chain of the Outer Hebrides. It was owned by
Lord Granville, she said. Caltemish House, a dot on the green
island, was the family seat. The Queen and Prince Philip had stayed
there recently — ;ust pulled Britannia alongside the quay and
walked up to ^e house, the Granvilles being ‘rather down-to-eanh
people, you know’.

228

THE BARONS

And so the conversation meandered on. Since the Heywood-
Lonsdalc’s eldest son had gone skiing with the young Duke of
Roxburghe the year before, they knew something of Floors Castle.
‘Super place. Very grand. Lots of staff— simply heaps of butlers and
things. Makes us look pretty small with our daily woman.’ On the
social stratihcation of Perthshire: ‘It’s stuffed with peers. You go
to the Penh Ball and you’ll trip over them, there are so many. You
really have to watch your manners there — it’s not so bad in
Inverness, it’s quite a lot more relaxed. But Perthshire can be a bit
sticky.’ She hates snobbery: speaking of a mutual acquaintance, she
said that he was, ‘in my view, one of the worst snobs around. I
simply cannot sit at the same table as him. The only thing he wants
to know about you is who you are the daughter of and who your
father's grandmother was, and if the answer’s not right he won’t talk
to you.' She loves grand living: ‘My husband went to dinner once
recently where there were footmen in white gloves, the whole thing.
And they were using the gold diimer plates— the hostess said she
preferred to use the gold ones because they didn’t need any
polishing. You just washed them up in Lux and then stacked them
away, just like china.’ (This tale turned out to be apocryphal, but
none the less illustrative.) On the employment of daughters of the
gentry: 'Our eldest girl is secretary to the owner of the General
Trading Company. Such a nice shop and used by the nicest people
too.* On motor cars: ‘We always use Rovers. They’re just as comfy
as Rolls-Royces, only rather cheaper.’

Such was the scene-setting for a visit to Lord Margadale, the last
man to slip under the portcullis before the realities of egalitarianism
halted, at least temporarily, the creation of any further members of
this very special class. It seemed perfectly appropriate, and Lord
Margadale, host that evening to the Heywood-Lonsdales, Lord
Muirshiel and one or two other octogenarian Scots Lairds and a
wealthy metropolitan stockbroker, did nothing to lower the tone of
the day.

He is a gigantic man, six foot six of solid bone and muscle, and
very deaf. A friend says he can outstalk most people of his own age
on the hill. He won bis peerage from a grateful Sir Alec Douglas-
Home who, with the then Tory MP John Morrison, had been
defeated in the polls that put the new Socialist Government into
power m October 1964. For the previous twenty-two years he had
been Conservative Member for Salisbury, and retained his formal
links With the region in which he lives for most of the year by being

THE BARONS

229

Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant in the onmiy. He is also a Wiltshire
magistrate and, during those periods when he is in residence on
Islay, magistrate for the county of Argyll. He is the only peer to have
a whisky created especially for him:^ when he came of age, in 1927,
the distilleries which his family owned on Islay came up with a
subtly flavoured delight known as Islay Mist, which still sells well.
At the coming-of-age party in Islay House, Margadale remembers:
‘The estate workers drank thiny-sbc dozen bottles of the stuff. I
remember the men were left outside overnight and lay there stiff as
boards and totally insensible until their wives came and collected
them in the morning.’ Margadale’s distilleries produce one special
whisky now for the private use of the family — a malt called
Bunnabhein, which is nearly as peaty as the better-known
Laphroaig of Islay and not quite as sweet as the popular Bowmore.
It is a slightly cloudy drink, but no one complains at Islay House,
since the Excise men permit His Lordship to have a nine-and-a-
half'gallon cask of the stuff duty-free every year.

Islay House has 365 windows, one for every day of the year, ‘and I
am told it is possible to And one for a Leap Year too’, said Lady
Margadale, a white-haired and friendly old lady who happily
entertains the great shooting parties for which the mansion was
built. Stags’ heads line every room— Margadale complains sadly
that the antlers are not as good on Islay as they once were, hut is able
to point to a magnifleent specimen that was taken only three years
before, showing that ‘all is not quite lost’. He likes to take visitors
out walking in the grounds at night, to hear the sky-fllling din of ten
thousand barnacle geese calking to each other in the sanctuary at the
end of the river. Back in the house vast log fires bum in each of the
dozens of rooms used each evening — the dining-room, the
drawing-room, the various smdies and bedrooms and guest rooms.
To keep the fires burning is evidently one of the more formidable
imdertakings for the staff who serve at Islay House.

‘And it is a rather small staff these days,’ sighed Lady Margadale.
‘They really are just too expensive. In fact we have to keep most of
the house shut up all the time, otherwise the heating bill would be
unthinkably big.’ The family usually make the trip from Wiltshire
to Islay about twice a year now: until a couple of decades ago the
journey was a major undertaking. Staff came two days ahead to

' Other peers, such as the Duke nf Argyll, have had private whiskies nude for
them, but none m so large a quaattcy — (mv they ssy, of tuch good quality— as that
distilled in Islay for Lord Margadale’s coming-of-age,

THE BARONS

231

Lords for years. The young peerj at one time an expert writer on
drugs for London's alternative press, is of Eton, Cambridge and
Keele Universities, was a Government Whip and prime mover in
the Lords of much of the Labour Government's industrial
legislation. He was made an Under-Secretary for Northern Ireland
in late 1976 and projected himself ably in the embattled province as
a man considerably keener and more dedicated than many of his
fellow politicians. He is almost the yoimgest politician in either
house— another indication, as Lord Attlee remarked of Lord
Milford’s Communism, of the democratic benefits of the Upper
House. Not only does the hereditary system bring the only
represenution for the Marxists: it also permits the only real
representation of youth.

Variety continues: there are intellectually gifted peers, like Lord
Rothschild, one time head of the Downing Street ‘Think Tank'j
there are playboy Barons aplenty (Lord Moynihan, described as a
‘bongo-playing liberal’ is only forty-five, but has managed to
acquire three wives so far, one English, one Arabic and one
Filipino)] there are irrepressible publicity-seeking Barons like Lord
Montagu of Beaulieu, who maintains his lead among the most
popular stately-home owners by diversifying in the most zealous
manner. His last project was to sell his own. Hampshire-grown
wine— a very pleasant German-style white wine that can chase off a
Blue Nun any day of the week. Lord O’Neill, who runs a steam
railway in the grounds of his Shane’s Castle, in Northern Ireland,
can trace his ancestry back to a King of Tara who lived in ad 360]
he is married to a granddaughter of the seventh Duke of Buccleuch
and has a passion for model railw-ays.

The Barons are the sine qua non of the two great gossip columnists
of the daily newspapers, Nigel Dempster and 'William Hickey’, and
of their pale imitation in the Sundays, Lady Olga Maitland— a
woman who, as daughter of the present Earl of Lauderdale, should
know what she is talking about. Scarcely a day goes by without
reference to some mayfly figure who would provide little interest to
most readers but for the title appended to his, or her name. And
there is ‘Jennifer’ of Harptr’s and Queen magazine— a plump, late-
middle-aged dowager named Betty Kenward, who writes about,
nay lists, the herds of socially significant Barons and Baronesses
with all the fascinating literary qualities of the Belgravia telephone
book. It is easy to sneer at the strivings of the British gossip
columnists, but Olga Maitland and Nigel Dempster merely reflect

THE BARONS

230

prepare the house: the family followed by train to Glasgow, by ferry
to Greenock and again by ferry to Tarbcrt; by motor bus across the
narrows of Bute to West Loch Tarbert and thence by ferry again to
Port Ellen, where a fleet of cars from Islay House would be waiting.
‘It used to take two full days to get up here,’ said Lady Margadalc.
‘Now we just fly up from Heathrow to the aerodrome on the islandj
it takes a couple of hours if there is no fog and we make the
connection at Glasgow.*

Margadale’s interests are those of many of his friends in the
Wiltshire squirearchy — horses, hunting, gentleman farming. He
was once one of the Tory Party’s pre-eminent ‘Mr Fix-its’—
Chairman of the 1922 Committee and a power to reckon with in
local politics. He has three sons, of whom the two yoimger are
Conservative MPs (one for Devizes, the other for Chester) and his
heir the High Sheriff of Wiltshire. His daughter, Mary Morrison,
has been a Woman of the Bedchamber to the Queen since i960, and
was given a Companionship of the Victorian Order as a personal
note of gratitude by Her Majesty. All things considered, the
Morrison family have done very well for themselves.

In the company of 438 there is, as would be expected, a bewildering
variety of sorts and conditions. Lady de Ros and Lord Margadale
present as great a contrast as do Lords Milford and Mowbray, and
all manner of degrees of poverty, politics and principles can be
found among the nobel Barons. Lord Saye and Sele, who lives in a
huge moated castle outside Banbury (and who is quoted as saying
that the hereditary principle was ‘ideal’ for the House of Lords
because every other method of selection suffered ‘by virtue of
relying on someone's opinion’), is not at all well off: he has to allow
all sorts of people to use the castle, and quite recently agreed, for a
fee, to allow a breakfast-cereal company to dress men up in the guise
of monks and have them do a cornflake commercial in his
undercroft— a kind of crypt.

There are author Barons — Lords Egremont and Kilbracken; and
a racing-car Baron — Lord Heskethj diplomat Barons — Lords
Harlech and Sherfield; and whiz-kid baby Barons who attract the
ever-open eye ofihe popular press. Lord Melchett, bom in 1948 to
a family steeped in the more majestic branches of British industry —
Imperial Chemical Industries, the International Nickel Company
and the British Steel Corporation— is one such: he was still
impressing his contemporaries in 1977 as the brightest star in the

THE IRISH PEERAGE

Alone in the Wilderness

‘Who Shalt 1 say catted?'

Lord Ounsaojr’s hucler, supposedly to Che
Black and Tans, as they left alter sacking
Ounsany Castle, Co. Meaih

THE BARONS

232

the constant fascination of the average Briton for the rare and costly
figures of the nobility. The only difference between the American
and the British scene is that in America the aristocracy of which the
columnists write — the Hollywood nobility — is actually attainable
by the little girl in deepest Iowa and the budding star in Muncie,
Indiana. The aristocracy of Britain — and, more especially, the
hereditary nobility of Britain — is in a class that is for ever out of
reach of the common herd, except by virtue of an unlikely marriage.
Perhaps that is why the British columnists have developed the
industry of gossip to the heights of possible perfection — because
they are for ever writing out a fantasy, of life in a world that must
remain, and indeed tries desperately to remain, exclusive and
inaccessible.

The Barons, then, feed the multitudes with the occasional
tantalizing glimpses of nobility. Dukes and Marquesses, Earls and
Viscounts are, with certain singular exceptions, remote and lofty, of
a kind with the Monarch and much mote private. The Barons are
the point of contact between nobility and normality— and provide a
contact which is strong enough to prove a constant fascination and
temptation to those on the other side, but which is too weak ever to
provide a bridge. The chasm that stands between barony and
banality yawns wide and deep, and now, since 1965, is quite
unbridgeable— unless a Tory government decides on creating more
hereditary titles, of course. But even then, the bridge would be a
frail one, a structure few would ever succeed in crossing.

To have been given an Irish ptctage ^d ^Ir^^^

i, Use ennobling equivalent mivctle, of an

praise. Few, however, have '° “ p. ,^obled his banker, Mr
Irish peerage for verj long: a yat ^ t c

Smith, as Lord Carrmgion “bim another degree to a

through the Horse Guards, he p which most holders

barony of Great Britain, "^tsts^ i, a„ Uiih

of an Irish title happily tad AentMlve including a

Duke— Abercoml but he tas United Ktngdoml

marquessale of the same naine, inas ij,e best knowii-

thcre are many Irish Earls— Longf millstone of Irishncssl

who have other titles lacking the Sheffield and

there are thirry-seven Irish besides. Only a

Henniker, who own -respcciable Bn , , ,,ish Utlc-

very few keep the questionable dtstmeuon of a s^ ^

and they, as one recent editor of Burke r I <r
unblessed and 'in the wilderness . dillercnt from a man

Amanwhobasan Irish peerageon y . . 5 coi)and, Great

or a woman who can sport a coronet and rob«-

Britain or the United Kmgdom. H y untutored Uhc a

but be ha, no use for them. He may "'^^bt to sit m the

part of the ruling Establishment-hut be^sM^^

House of Lords. He d^cn^ds of dctnocracy-hc

remain aloof from the undign hroiher and sister peers are

votes to an ordinary election, while . ^^jifan Irish peer

tcsiriaed, along with ^fvj^^.oeedhamdcadcd when, m

happens not to w ant his title, a* Eiildora of Kilmorey,

t977.hc was supposed to su«ted t of

then that is very bard luck. .Mam ^ ^ ja not bcnclit

uV 1963 Act. discUun their uUesfor We I ^

from the Uw Rrchard Needham can protest as

THE IRISH PEERAGE

236

but in the eyes of the House of Lords, which denies him
membership, he is now the sixth Earl of Kilmorey, and shall remain
thus until his passing, when asevcnth Earl shall arise from his ashes.
(But Irish peers can belong to the House of Commons, unlike other
peers, who are specifically excluded. And Richard Needham, sixth
Earl of Kilmorey, has made full use of the perquisite: he was elected
MP in the 1979 General Election, and sits happily in the House next
to the ‘other place’, as the Commons refers to the Lords, which has
denied him membership.)'

All things considered, to be an Irish peer is to be an extremely odd
animal — you arc neither fish, flesh nor good red herring, not noble
enough to help make the laws of the land that ennobled you, not
ignoble enough to be able to shake off the obligations of titlcdom.
You fall untidily into some noble no^man’s-land and, not
surprisingly, you are often eccentric, mad, or extremely obscure.

The dilemma of the Irish nobility stems from the fact that the
Republic of Ireland is no longer formally associated with the Crown
from which the honours spring. Before 1921, when the Irish Free
State declared its independence from the United Kingdom (and the
United Kingdom shrank back from being ‘of Great Britain and
Ireland’ to 'of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ only), Irish
peers enjoyed rights similar to the peers of Scotland. Neither group
was composed of quite full-dress members of the House of Lords.
The Scottish nobles met whenever necessary to elect some of their
own to a committee of sixteen to represent them in the House;
whenever a General Election was held, sixteen ‘representative
peers were elected to sit in the House of Lords until the next
election. But unlike the peerage of Scotland (which was necessarily
created while Scotland was entirely separate and independent from
England, before the 1707 Act of Union), peerages of Ireland were
often granted to Englishmen who had no connection with Ireland
whatsoever— they were given Irish peerages in much the same way
as others were awarded baronetcies, so they had the honour and
dignity of a title, but did not clutter up the House of Lords.

This group, who were nor measarily Irish at all, nor necessarily
m any way connected with Ireland by the ownership of land or by
marriage or sentiment, were allowed to elect twenty-eight
representatives for life m the House of Lords.

eumple of m Inih peer ukmg hi, Conunww privilege*

THE IRISH PEERAGE

238

peerage falls into abeyance, claims are made to the Committee for
Privileges; while most of the perks enjoyed by the mainland
nobility — the freedom from civil arrest in Britain and the
exemption from British jury service among them — can be enjoyed

by the Irish peer. But he isnot excluded from voting for Parliament,

nor from sitting there. Indeed, Earl Winterton was an MP for forty-
seven years, and Father of the House, no less, despite his Irish title.
When he retired from the Lower House he was given a United
Kingdom title, but two degrees lower (the Barony of Tumour) to
entitle him to sit on the benches, rather than merely the Throne
steps of the Lords.

The Roll of the Lords Spiritual and T’empora/, published each year
by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, currently lists 1,075 men and
women who are technically officially recognized as of the peerage. It
curtly omits the Irishmen — seventy-one men who have become, in
many senses, the pariahs of the peerage system, left stranded by the
hasty separation of Ireland and her former Monarch. The seventy-
one— twenty-one Earls, fifteen Viscounts and thirty-five Batons—
do their best to keep up the standards demanded by their rank.

The names are redolent of the West Britons: Bandon, Carbery,
Doneraile, Dunboyne, Gott, Inchiquin (who is recognized by the
Chief Herald of Ireland by the magnificent appellation of The
O’Brien ofThomond, headofthe DalgCais who gave several High
Kings to the rain-washed Ireland), Musketry, Portarlington and
Rathdonnell. Critics of the phrase ‘West Briton’ warn that ‘proud
Inchiquin may not let the insult rest. The hereditary banshee of the
Dal gCais, the terrible Aibhinn, may come to haunt you.’ For the
sake of neatness, the unintended slur must stand. Their titles are, by
and large, respectably ancient: the premier peer of Ireland, Lord
Kingsale, sports a barony that was first given in — well, a year
‘shrouded in the mists of antiquity’. The Irish are great yam-
spinners, of course, and so the sober acolytes of the House of Lords
have not always believed the Kingsale claim that the sixth Baron
was already sitting in his castle as far back as 1309! There arc
suggestions that the barony was created in 1223 or even earlier,
which make the titles of dc Rosand Sutherland seem mere babies by
companson. Certainly the present Kingsale (descended from the
cousin of the Lord Kingsale who, it will be recalled, claimed his
ri^t to remain hatted before William III) suggests he is either the
ffiirtieth or the thirty-fifth in line, which sounds extremely
impressive. The registers record the Baron’s birth as having been

241

THE IRISH PEERAGE

And the point of origin of the Troubles, alleged

so many of his noble ” hJ “ v "ds all discussion

complexities of the politics by commanding a unit of

decorously.HisAtmytraininghestillm V ^jfonn, but

the Ulster Defence Regiment: he sports car, visiting

drives around the winding boi er ^ ^bout the

senior officers of brother reS'™”'* His Lordship we

night’s activity. Once wfitle ® Mess of a Guards

stopped for a few whiskeys at 'ho O® We drank

regiment in a small P°'i“ ““ ^m^tihL we rose late next day
deeply until past one m the ■b^' ^ of gunfire that

back at the Castle the of the border towards the

had been blaring from the FrM States, Guardsmens

same police station . j, u possible to be insulated

whiskey. We had not heat connections,

from the miseries of ’a„_given his already repotted

So what does Lord Caledon . . j He takes his white Land-

comment that nothing urgent awaits ,0 the

Rover aiound the park, down to the little village

plantmgofnew 8K>''«Pf estate office and to put a

he mostly owns to see his sMteta the

peifimctory signature on one or trustees, to

aeroplane to London in Heitfordshire. And fro”

discuss the income “ Sj^„„eo (his ‘motoring eat he rail

time to time he gets mto his Alfa Ro^ ^ „ifc and dnves

it. withdelieious Victor.^ en.Whsto,^_^_^^ Btookebotou^s^

across to Ashbrooke to dme „ „ann sitting-rooms in

Most evenings he stays m one - „,.ches po

the Castle, reading books ataiitdKr.^ ^ ^ med

dramas on the televtsion. y**" that ate dlunimme^

^ThS secs no social P^'SIstmw

sucking away at theit oldpipo- outside the fictional

rfaeUtouchi„^a^»“-%u.d,e,espeetofeounltymen

romance, anyway). There IS

THE IRISH PEERAGE

240

with Irish connections’ as a newspaper put it) have consistently
taken little interest in easing the strains of political life in their
country, at a time when all their good offices could possibly be put to
use, has made them a ready target for respectful criticism. Why, the
Belfast Telegraph wondered in two articles in January I977» did not
Northern Ireland have greater representation in the House of
Lords? Was it right that so few of the titled nobility with links to
Ireland should so consistently ignore its fate? Was there not, as
Lord Massereene and Ferrardhadarguedin 1961, after Kilmorey s
death ended the Irish representation in the Lords, a case for
allowing the Irishmen back in, if only to redress the balance for a
Northern Ireland that was ill served by the politicians who
generally championed its cause at Westminster. ‘The Irish situation
in the Lords is one of the most compelling reasons for abolition of
the Upper House,’ a noted Northern Ireland lawyer, Brian Garrett,
has said. ‘The Irish peerage is an historical mess and a political
slum.’

It remains one of the classic ironies of the modem Irish scene that
the village where the present Troubles began, Caledon, County
Tyrone, still sports an Irish Earl who, save for a bomb that wrecked
his library, has managed to keep his family and possessions nicely
aloof from the whole unpleasant affair. Denis Caledon is one of the
most courteous countrymen it is possible to meet, a large man with
engineer’s hands and a soldierly manner, with an upper lip that juts
over his lower and gives the faintest impression of the legendary
receding chin of the true British aristocrat. He is for ever tinkering
with the farm machinery that trundles over the more distant reaches
of his 1,700 acres that abut directly on to the Free State border. He
was an oilfield mechanic when he realized he would inherit the title.
T am sorry to say I lost interest in staying in Arabia right there and
then. I knew I would come back to Caledon, where I spent the
butterfly-net stages of my life. There seemed little point in going on
mucking around in the oilfields.’

So he came back to Ireland and waited for his elderly uncle to
die not, it should be stressed out of greed or ambition, but simply
because he felt drawn back home when he knew that eventual
succession would force a return anyway. ‘There is a fundamental
feeling of belonging here. It is primeval instinct, such as lions and
deer have. They will always go back to the point of origin. This is
my point of origin.’

243

THE IRISH PEERAGE

• • .K^TPA asolcndidsetofinilialsformen

IrishPeers Association— the IPA, P gfui battle in the

of such beery reputation-fough have seats in the

House of Lords, to be told that no, th y

Upper House and Aa, “one, ^

themselves was on the steps to the promoted to

Onemigh,have.hought*atDunboyne,whowaU^^

judgeship would retire gracefully chairmanship of

slip serenely benea* A= foam. But ® encourage-

Viscount Mountgarret and with c _ . the Association

ment of no less a memorialist than ] Rhine for a war that

flourishes, preparing, like the Army on the Rhme.

may never come. ft .^rds will be reformed in such a

‘Perhaps one day the House of existing peers,

way as to admit elections from i should we be

said one member of the IPA- n ’ already; surely it is

exluded? We’ve been dealt a ''*^,^ . ,he Irish Viscounts and

unfair to deny us one mote chance. reform to come, their

Earls and theit exalted honed, their expectation of

briefs composed, their .._._i5h^ by all the suggestions that

a joyous return to the fold un i ^ different affair indeed.

Lords reform, if it ever ^ hhe Bandon [the fifth EyI] ,

•To deny us access and Antrim [who has died

who’s our best expert on m ".^^-j,onal Trust, can never come

since the conversation], head we’ll continue

and give the benefits of th«r P m.

hammering away, ever so genUy,^^ club. Rather

•In the meantime we are ® , p|e are members. It s only a

irregular.of course. ^^.dfun. Dinners

couple of pounds a year.^d the^ «rrace « the

usually at that terribly hoi

House of Lords in 1976, during that did wi ted m

ItUhpcctsdidn’tcomcit^ u *„=. 5 -

the sun. It was have looked a Imle patheuc.

perspiring in the hca .

,s dut many

,o add to the list is — — -a
. Imh pen “ ey'Sj^d «

ibH^tive use of the ««>*<»

considewuon.’

THE IRISH PEERAGE

242

for a fellow countryman, whose interests arc the birds and the deer
and the sheepj in the contouring of the hills and the planting of the
next generation’s forests are their interests too. ‘Do you realize
those firs we are putting down today’, the Earl asked as we gazed
over at a group of men digging holes in a sodden-looking field, ‘will
be tall and beautiful long after these troubles arc over? There is
continuity out here in the countryside of a kind that transcends
mere politics. It transcends people’s lives, too. So many will be
killed here, and yet the trees will go on growing, thanks to what we
are doing now. They will be beautiful, they will be good for the
economy, and they will be here long after I’ve gone, however I go.’

That is more than can be said, though, for the Irish peerage as a
group of seventy-one. Two titles— the Viscounty of Templeton and
the Barony of Teignmouth— totter on the verge of extinction, after
nearly two centuries of existence. The Caledons are well provided
with an heir, the Viscount Alexander: but the Earl is probably well
aware that, unlike the trees he is busy planting, his peerage is not a
permanent fact of life; one day it will vanish into the mists for ever.
In the case of the Irish peers it is perhaps sad that so little worthy
has emerged from among their number— little in the way of true
talent, or wisdom, or foresight, or art, or politics, or even fortune.* * * ****
Lord Caledon’s trees provide a splendid memorial— how much
better some tangible contribution from others of the troupe towards
the betterment of life in their beleaguered little island. That they
have proved so comparatively bereft of corporate beneficence is
perhaps the price one pays for damning them so harshly with the
faint praise of such a miserable ennoblement.

Small in number and in stature they may be, but the Irish peers
are a vociferous bunch. Back in 1966 a sprightly barrister. Lord
Dunboyne, decided to help form a lobbying organization to wage
war on the imfaimess meted out, as he believed, to those with titles
recognized as beyond the iurisdiction of the British Crown. The

* Some worthies hive emerged fran their ranks, of course. The Iron Duke of
wellmgton, the son of the Irish Earl of Monungtoo, made somethmg of a mark in the

Usi century, so did Field-Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis, son of the Irish Earl of

Oledon. Lord Dunsany was a celebrated poet and author. Lord Curzon, Viceroy of

**** peers created. Ait Chief Marshal the Earl of Bandon,

GBE, CB.CVO, DSO, who died in 1979, was one of Britain’s most remarkable war
heroes. And, as noted above. Lord Palmerston, Foreign Secretary and Prune
Mmister under Queen Viaotu, was an Irish peer who never sat in the Lords m all his

THE FOUNDATION OF
LORDLY EXISTENCE

The resjileni squire . cared for Ibevilbgeoa his estair, built
the parish hall, presented the playing helds. contributed largely
to the upkeep of the church, expected to be, and was consulted
before any major improvements were put ui hand by the vicar
or any other local persons downwards. In rural districts his

guiding hand was everywhcie apparent

James Lecs-Mitoe, m Burke's Landed
Ctniry, 1 8th edition, 1965

When one of Gladstone's daughters, staying at Drumlanng
Caitle, a Buccleuch estate in Dumfriesshire, asked the fifth
Duke ‘Where ate the park walls^’ he replied by pointing to the
discanf mountains.

From Maty Gladstone, Dtariei and
Letters

For sale: Ane Georgian-styte mansion m complete seclusion.
Formerly a home of the second Earl of Iveagh 27 bedrooms, 9
bathrooms, 6 reception rooms, domestic offices. Oil-hred
central beating. Swimming pool Coach house convened to six
stalf flats.

Advettisefnent m Tht Fiefd, 1976

I n spite of evasion, deliberately induced confusion, obfuscation, an
obsession with secrecy, a bewildering selection of estimates of
wildly varying authority and leliability and a fairly total lack of co-
operation from the owners, it is just about possible to arrive at a
rule-of-thumb figure for the amount of land that belongs to
members of the hereditary peerage in the United Kingdom. It is
something like four million acres.

There is no suggestion at all that the figure is meant to display the
kind of accuracy needed for a detailed polemic on the future of
landownership; the estimate that the peers own or control this area
of the surface of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is
sufficient only for making the most general points arising from the
central and ancient thesis relating to the uniquely successful
survival of the British peerage. That thesis asserts that the principal
reason the British peerage has managed to keep extinction at bay for
so long is because of a combination of the principle of
primogeniture, skilful compromise, and the ownership of land. The
British peerage, unlike so many of its counterparts in other comers
of the world, is firmly wedded to and deeply rooted in the fields and
forests, the meadows and machair of these islands' precious land; so
long as that situation is permitted to obtain, so long will the peers
continue to enjoy their peculiar standing in the nation.

The figure of four million acres, dubious in itself, will mean even
less to those for whom an acre is a measure difficult to imagine.
English countrymen have a roarvcljous way with acreages; they
drive their l.and-Rovers past fields scudded with grazing cattle,
allow their eyes lazily to tour the hedges that surround it and will
pronounce, with practised ease, ‘Damned good twenty acres, that!’
with no difficulty at all. The word itself is ancient and in early times
signified a size of a piece of land that depended on all kinds of
variables. It could be a piece of land that was sown with a cerrain

248 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
amount of seed; then again it could be land that had taken a certain
number of men and beasts a certain time to till. Irish acres and
English acres were not the same in the seventeenth century; and
even as this is being written, area measures are in the process of
being changed in England to the hectare, which, in spite of being
anagrammatically the acre, is actually ten thousand square metres, a
measurement relating to a specific, unchanging, scientifically
worked-out unit. But at one time an acre was the size of a parcel of
land which the average yoke of oxen could plough in a day; it later
became institutionalized as thirty-two furrows, each a furlong in
length. Edward 1 put the force of law behind a measure of forty
poles long by forty poles broad, and this it remains today — 4,840
square yards or, as any English countryman will tell you, a square,
seventy yards by seventy yards. So long as you think of an acre in
terms of length of the sideof asquare you won’t, they say, go wrong.

Even then, the four million squares, each seventy yards by
seventy yards, which fall under the control of the hereditary
membw of the House of Lords are not easy to envisage. Put simply,
it more or less equates to the Principality of Wales from the south
coast to a line drawn between Harlech and Oswestry. The Scottish
Highlands north and west of the Caledonian Canal make up about
the same acreage as is owned and controlled by the peers. All
Northern Ireland and a good chunk of County Donegal would be
needed to fill the required amount. Or in England, the great bulge of
East Anglia, with the finger of Cornwall and the heel of Kent
thrown in for good measure, would indicate the size of the
landholding. Only an American would regard the estate as puny:
four million acres is roughly equivalent to the ownership of all of
Cormccticut and Rhode Island, and four Texas farms the size of the
King Ranch would prove equal, in terms of area, to the entire
landholding of every Duke and Marquess, Earl, Viscount and
Baron from Muckle Rugga to the Seven Stones. Looked at from the
viewpoint of a Texan, the landholding is laughably small; from the
perspective of a hill farm outside Selkirk or a leasehold terrace
house in Belgravia the territoriality of the British peer is a power at
once immense and intimidating, giving unequal distribution of
power and wealth, but endowing the countryside with much of its
unspoiled beauty, and rural society with much of its peaceful
subility.

Whether the situation that allows such relatively vast
ownership — ownership of a third of Britain by a mere i ,500 families

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

249

if the other, non-noble landowners are counted — is an arrangement
either to be applauded or to be penniiled lo continue has provided
material for debate for centuries. The only difference now is that a
system of taxation has for the first time been recently introduced
which seeks without doubt to diminish savagely the wholesale
ownership of large tracts of land. ‘Two generations more, I give it,’
says a despondent Duke of Devonshire. ‘Unless matters change
soon, we will see, not just the splitting up of the large estates into
smaller ones, hut the total extinction of any sizeable landholdings
whatsoever. The day of the big estate — even of the fairly big
estate — is nearly over. I only hope they think they know what they
are doing.’ By the end of the century, the Duke, and most other
landed nobles besides, believes Britain will be fortunate to sport any
estates larger than 300 acres. ‘This time,’ conluded an article in the
Spectator m 1977, ‘the fox’s earth is properly blocked at all its exits.'

Blocking the earth, if in fact that is what has been done, has been
frustrated through the years by a simple lack of information on the
central point—what land do the landowners own? It is all very well
to say that the Duke of Devonshire owns Barrow-in-Furness or
Lord Calthorpe much of southern Birmingham, that Lord Seafield
has control over most of the Speyside Hills or that Lord Margadale
owns much of the western I slay l^ide Loch Indaal. But what about
some precise figures, some maps, some aerial photographs or some
tent roll books? The answers to such queries are invariably vague, if
not wholly negative.

Surprisingly, Central Government has no real idea — or is
unwilling to say — who owns what when it comes to the surfaces of
the nation. The Treasury, the Land Registry of the Department of
the Environment and the Department of Agriculture all have a
collection of official statistics, but they regard the information as
being held in trust, and in confidence. And not even Members of
Parliament manage to find their way through the maze. Jim Sillars,
the Labour Member for South Ayrshire, made a valiant attempt
(which largely paid off, though through unofficial channels) to
compile a set of statistics relating to landowncrship in Scotland. He
wrots:

'No one is willing to provide an accurate estimate of how much
land is held by private owners, because the Establishment has made
sure that no modem register of land ownership exists and has
successfully resisted all pressure to create such a register.

250 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

‘When I served on the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs
which dealt with land use (the House of Commons Session 1971/72)
I found it impossible to get the facts of land ownership in private
hands. Up against muddle and vagueness it was possible only to
extract the odd piece of information such as that the Countess of
Seaficld held 2 16,000 acres. Lord Lovat 200,000 acres and the Duke
of Buccleuch 500,000 acres and Sir Alec Douglas-Home 60,000
acres. These figures were the product of private digging. . . . ’ (Mr
Sillars was wrong about Lovat, who made all his land — far less than
200,000 acres— over to his four sons.)

Private digging has its attendant risks, of course: in the last fifteen
years there have been three, and maybe more, ‘authoritative’
estimates of the holdings of the Duke of Buccleuch: Sillars says half
a million acres; Roy Perrott, in TheArittocrats, says 220,000; and the
Weekend Telegraph, in its issue of 2 December 1966, quoted a figure
of 336,000 acres. My own researches suggest that the Duke owns
around 256,000 acres. There are maps at Bowhill, one of the Duke’s
principal houses, which bear out this last figure.

A writer for the Spectaior ran up against an elegant smokescreen
from aristocratic territorialists when he was compiling a 1977 version
of the Domesday Book for his journal. The only way to win the neces-
sary information, he concluded, was to ask the owners in person:

‘This was usually attempted on the telephone and naturally
entailed difficulties. Often, the landowner was out shooting; once he
unfortunately turned out to be dead; and once be was drunk. One
landowner could not decide whether he owned 10,000 or 100,000
acres: "1 do find it so difficult to r em e m ber what an acre looks like
when I drive across the estate.” The younger ones tended to be
fairly candid, the older ones suspicious. When reminded that the
Spectator was a Tory paper, one replied: “Ah, but we lost them a
long time ago.” There were those, too, who sheltered behind half-
truths: they would say that they did not own any land at all when in
fact their estates were owned by trusts of which they, or their
families, were the sole beneficiaries.’

The Spectator’% aim, on this occasion, was to provide a reasonably
accurate summary of the landholdings of the nation’s giant estate
owners. It had been noted that in 1873 the Earl of Derby, angered
by what he termed ‘the wildest and most reckless exaggerations’
about landowners and their power, decided to compile a ‘New
Domesday Book’ of estate ownership that would, he prophesied,
display that land was held much more widely than was suggested.

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 251

and that it was nonsense to suggest that only a few men owned the
greater proportion of the land in Great Britain. The noble Earl in
fact had to eat crow: he found, much to his embarrassment, that
only 7,000 people held title to a mighty 75 per cent of the land
surface of England, Wales and Scotland. The mere fact that he was
able to compile the survey is interesting in itself; in the nineteenth
century (indeed, up until just after the First World War) local
valuation rolls prepared for the levying of rates on agricultural land
gave all the necessary information. Today, rates are not levied on
farmland, there are no valuation rolls, and no budding Lord Derbys
eager to defend their peers’ ownership of the countryside by
publishing the facts.

Three years later, in 1876, the Spectator prepared its own survey
of the 700 largest landowners — those who controlled more than

5.000 acres each. It found more or less the same display of immense
territorial holdings that Derby had discovered and, defending its
own (the Tones had not been ‘lost’ in those halcyon days), the
journal commented that only by conhscation or deliberately
punitive taxation could the landholdings be substantially dim*
inished. It also made a remark that was not to become prophecy
until almost exactly a century was over: the system could be altered,
it said, with a shudder of aristocratic distaste, ‘by an tmpSt
progressi/upon land— that, by a breach of the national faith, which
commands that taxation shall have revenue, not the pillage of class,
for its first end. And it could be altered by an abolition of the
freedom of bequest which would completely revolutionize the
condition, not only of English society, but of every family within it.’
That impot progressi/ which mandates the ‘pillage of a class' is with
us now, in the shape of the Capital Transfer Tax. More than any other
single aspect of Socialist legislation since the Second World War,
the imposition of CTT is seen by the landowners as the sounding of
their death-knell: as we shall see, the levy is the machinery which
has managed to block the fox’s earths at all possible exits.

In its survey of 1976, set to parallel the 1876 list of the 700 largest
landowners, the Spectator discovered, as has every other
investigator since the 1920s, that landholdings are falling
substantially. True, Lord Levethuime, awarded a viscounty in
1922 for making soap so successfully, outis more land now than his
family did in 1876— he owned nothing to speak of then, but controls

90.000 acres today; the Earl of Iveagh, made a peer in 1919 for
making good Guinness, owns 24,000 acres of good Norfolk

landholding

(in acres)

E. Iveagh

254

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

farmland; and Lord Cowdray, of polo and banking fame, owns
20,000 acres. But they are exceptions. New promotions to
aristocracy rarely come with large landholdings these days: either
they have owned land for centuries, or they are landless now.

It should be noted, of course, that the peerage is far from having a
monopoly of large landholdings: Burke’t Landed Gentry contains
the names of some 2,000 men and women who have owned 300 acres
or more for scores of generations. The ‘gentry’ regard themselves as
infinitely more patrician than the ‘mere nobility’: they have land and
money, in many cases a prescriptive right to be known by some truly
ancient title, and not one awarded out of monarchical gratitude for
the cavortings of a mistress — names like the Knight of Glin or the
twenty-third Dymoke of Scrivclsby mean immensely more on the
secret tablets of snobbism than a simple barony or an Irish earldom.
That this account is restricted to the titled landowners should not
disguise the fact that they are not alone: it simply happens that peers
occupy most of the top positions in the rankings of aristocratic
territorialists.

The new Spectator survey, in coriunon with surveys in a ntmiber
of recent books, displays then the general atrophying of the private
landowner. Its figures are included on pp. 252-3 with other, older
sets of statistics compiled by among others Roy Perroti (The
Aristocrats), Douglas Sutherland (The Landotoners) and John
McEwan in his paper ‘Highland Landlordism’ in The Red Paper on
Scotland. The general picture is of disintegration; the wild
variations in the figures bear out the difficulties of establishing the
truth with any precision.

The evidence may be suggestive of kaubasis, but it also betokens
the stability of the landed Establishment. Only Lord Ilchestcr
seems to have permitted his holdings to wither completely, and that
was due to the unfortunate lack of heirs that afflicts some titled
families from time to time. The seventh Earl was one of those rare
creatures who, in the inimitable abbreviated style of Burke’s,
‘d.s.p.m.s.’— ‘de«ss« t sintproJe mascula superstite' — or died without
surviving male children. Both his children died, one after an
accident, the other in Cyprus, in 1938, while making war against
Eoka— it was left to a distant cousin to inherit the land. Thus while
the title and the acreages have been forced to part company, a
rebtion of the Earl’s is still a force to be reckoned with as a
landowner — she has some 15,000 acres in Dorset and South
Yorkshire, half of what the fifth Earl had in 1876.

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

255

Of the remainder, all still have some landholdings and remain
within the major league. The lands of the Duke of Sutherland now
belong to the Countess; the holdings of the Duke of St Albans, once
a big landowner, were turned into liquid assets and paintings; but
generally speaking the higher echelons of nobility remain staunchly
praedial. As we have seen, 1,500 families, a great many of them
titled, still own one-third of Great Britain. Such land as has been

lost by the grandees has not been assiduously redistributed among
the commonalty. Far from it. The major beneficiaries of the
reduction of noble landholdings are the various offices of the state—
the Forestry Commission, the Crown, the Church and the National
Trust. Large financial institutions own great tracts; one piece of
land sold in Sussex in the past decade west to the Post Office
Superannuation Fund, to be salted away in case of a rainy day The

small farmer has benefited to ^me extent, of course: thcMinistry of
Agriculture shows that while m 1876 about nine-tenths of farm land
was leased to tenant farmers, a century Utet only onc-third was
let— the rest was owned.

Not all the gtound they h worth a great deal-. £anm eited on
the hills of Scotland and Wales make vet, poor returns, and there is
little to be won in e.th^er rent ot farm income from ten Aousand
acres of windswept heather, however pren, jj ^ ww,
Seafields and the Atholls, then, with doten. „t
Scottish upland under their Wts, raeuioi count their fonunes in
millions of pounds unless-like ihe late Counie,, of Seafield— they
see to it that their holdings are dyeloped a,.
saw her precious plots of Sp^idc worked fo, Uw ,kii„^i,fc|“
with the result that she profited by ummagimn, .u^%"
and. till death duties and other creumsumce. dt,^ " "S
away, was a very wealthy woman mdeed. “>e fimus

Most of the land owned by Bntam’s pe„,

rich farm country, worm _a sutomna,^.^^

' tenant fanru-

luniiy, .-.a ^

a considerable income fronj

bringing in a coiisiu«»-be... ... ..uuj

Currently.thepricofanaereormspemblya^i,,^---

to be about £6oo-meanmg that the Duke ot Dev^J- STild
his trustees ever dispose of the 56.000 acres ovc,
absolute control, would profi. .0 the r-c of £3
Jime 1965, when Uird Cowdtay s heir, Midun
. .00 acres ot prime meadowland in Glouce,t,„
somewhere in the region of a million pound,

Zre own £roo w, acre. In die mid-sevendc. ,

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 257
improvements to the estates and general maintenance. No Duke is
able to affect a grand style by virtue of his income from his farms: for
that he has to rely on his income from investments and such
business ventures as are indulged in by his estates company, or by
his other associations.

Nevertheless the gulf between a landowner and his tenant is a
.„ectacularly deep one, albeit their lelationship is largely
^ b' tic The owner, though his troubles may be vast, still
MS to live in assured and pleasant style. His tenant, though
rnsseted from cradle to grave by the benevolence of the
of the ‘big house’ on the hill, invariably finds life a good deal
difficult than one would supPose.

John and Janet Robinson arc in their fifties— a quiet, stolid couple
hnse faces both constantly exposed to the chafing winds whistling
A moors, are lined with purple veinlets, earning them the

^Z^on 7 ‘roey-cheei:ei’. They live in an ugly r,„arc farm
building, half a mile from the village of Beeley, nnt of three
S.lhvahite villages owned in them entirety by Ae Duke of
S *^r*ite They have been with the Chatswotth Estates since

• ^ ten years or so. And then- Well, there’s no hard-and-

Sst^ c butwl'llprobablybeofteredacottageinontofutevuiag^
ludwe'uiveouttherestof our lives there, paymg,ustalittle,e„,..

tta Lbinson, son of a policeman m a nearby tc,„, „

JolmK he knew that, with a mere £,00 in hi.

warned “ y „vet hope to own his ovra land j ^

savings h' „ „„t a small tann: he was evenSa^'

’ff cd one high up on the short-grass hills aba,. yi„a
offered one, nig ^ ^ ^ gc

twenty-four house and a cowshed for 1,5^^ f

gave him a four- his £300 on a single cow { i.-

Ltle. John four weaner Pto, ,!'?**

him £45). ’“^5 From that beginning he built

and fifty day-old His farms got larger and^u, ' V*°

be frank, he ^ steeper; his herds bigger and biggj A®’"’

rents got steeper ^ st w ^ave tor hi,g“:

„akesacomtor.aW^\^ ■» ture, his

livestock and ^ a couple of thousand

everything, he „ uye and no means i?®

would have hited tiller of another rauf, a

livelihood savc ^^Pds.Thcydisplaya -

Nov that either he or wswu ”«itain stoic

258 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
acceptance of living their lives wedded to the estate. ‘Ownership
brings with it responsibility, doesn’t it?’ John Robinson said. ‘I
know the estate will take care of me. The people up at the House are
not out to ruin me or anything like that. It’s for the good of both of
us — the Duke and me — that this system is preserved. I trust them to
be fair to me, and I go on farming well and making as much as 1 can,
and paying my rent on time.’

Little by little the tract for which the Robinsons are responsible
has grown — ten acres here when a nearby smallholder died, fifty
acres there up on the hill when the estate office decided to
‘rationalize’ the Beeley holdings, another patch and some more
buildings when a neighbour retired. There were problems in restor-
ing some of the dilapidated buildings — the Robinsons complain-
ed that too much of the burden was being placed upon them, and
that the estate was doing too little. The reply came that the Duke
had consented to build a new farm for the family and consolidate
the package of land into a discreet 220 acres, which the Robinsons
could farm with efficiency and profit for the rest of their years.

The structure which the Chatsworth Estates erected was built
with more of an eye to cost than to aesthetics— which, in view of the
painstaking attitude of every one of the ten previous Dukes towards
the great houses, the parks and the gardens, seems rather odd. The
new building, set back from the valley road, looks like a Monopoly
house, finished in a dull sandy brown. It is constructed in an
apalhngly tnaxz fashion: no matter that Derbyshire houses are
traditionally stout and hearty structures of massive stones and slate
and seasoned woods; no matter that Chatsworth, though a gloomy
mansion from the outside, has been finished with cate and attention
worthy of a watchmaker. No matter that the Devonshires have, over
the centuries, kept a weather eye on the development of the
surrounding countryside to ensure, by their benevolent use of
influence, that it remains pleasing 10 the eye. Here it was principally
money that counted; the house, which resembles a box made of
wood, fibreglass and concrete, faced with a thin shell of artificial
stone, clashes rudely with the older structures nearby. ‘Her Grace
came down to look at it when they were starting to build,’ said John
Robinson. ‘We told her that the way it was planned, it would get
neither the morning nor the afternoon sun. So she had a word with
the agent and the whole house was turned around a bit so we get the
morning sun in the bedrooms and the evening sun in the kitchen.
She was very gracious about that.*

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 259

The family moved in during the spring of 1970. They were
paying around £2,000 for their right to farm the Duke's land— their
livestock and milk sales btought in about £7,000 a year. After all the
outgoings they were left with rather less than the average faaory
worker ‘except that I’m doing what I like, and it’s a good, healthy
life. I like the Duke’s people at the estate office, and, though we
don’t see much of His Grace, he seems a very niee chap. Very kind,
although a bit standoffish.’ Early in 1977 Mr Robinson had a lener
from the agent: tent was having to rise to £3,600— an 80 per cent
increase. ‘I just don’t know how we’ll pay the difference.
Everything else is going up— all the chemicals we use here have
doubled and tripled in cost. All we can do is hope for a rise in the
milk price, otherwise we will suffer a bit. But I suppose everyone
is suffering these days.’

Very occasionally the two worlds of Duke and tenant collide, ever
so gently. The last time was in 1965, when the Robinsons were
invited up to Chatsworth for the commg of "ge of the Duke’s eldest
son and heir, the Matquess of Hattmpon. The Robinsons still keep
the engraved invitation, and an recall every detail of the evening.
•It was so lovely,’ said Janet Robmson, looking into fl,e ‘
’They had the house floodlit, and there was a great buffet laid out oti

tableLn the lawns. There were servantsmlivety.anjaterood.™

wonderful. Late in the evenmg there were fuewotka that they say
could be heard and seen away over ffie hills. There must have bSi
two thousand people at the party-tradespeople, doetot,, all
Ofcoursetheyhadheldano*erpartythen,ghtbef„,e, ’rt
for the high-ups. Harold Macmillan was there, I think,
might even have been someone m the Royal Ramil,. B„, „f
we couldn’t go to that.

There is still some residual irritation at the euem^ Iju- ,v,,
.reived at the Robinson farm a few weeks before the u "

SSe the bigger the present you were supposed , Mid “ *'

DuKe, me es ^ A„vway, the Robmsons did n ^

/ ^Lweekstataithepage-longlettert^JWbute, and

which the HOC^ him a ‘beautiful wrisiwatch-.-fv^^^Bencros^

26 o the foundation of lordly existence
it, though, among the few other family treasures, including the
invitation to the party, and Mrs Robinson’s invitation to a summer
garden party at Buckingham Palace, which she won for her sterling
service to the Women’s Institute.

The relationship between Duke and tenant is, though economically
intimate, socially remote. The difference between their styles of life
is vast. The respect held by one for the other is deep; in the Duke’s
case Mr Robinson is regarded as a faithful member of a happy band;
in Mt Robinson’s case His Grace is always regarded as someone
before whom one makes a slight bow of the head, addresses by title
and invariably fears. To the outsider the ties that bind the pair
appear outdated-

Inhisceilidhplay The Cheviot, tht Stag and the Black, Black Oil,
which John McGrath wrote for his 7:84 Theatre Company (so
named because ‘7 percent of the nation own 84 per cent of its
wealth’) to perform in Scottish towns and villages in r 974 » a
particularly bitter sketch denounces the English landowrter in the
Highlands, his Move’ of the ‘quaintness’ of the Scotsman and his
utter joy at returning, year after year, to kill the stag on the heather
hills and fish the trout from the swift rivers. The sketch has all the
malice that can be summoned by a Swnsman who, in those early
straining days of nationalistic fervour, sees himself as having been
mercilessly exploited by such English landowners as ’Lady
Phosphate of Runcorn— she’s very big in chemicals, you know’ who
own the lands, and the people, of the remoter glens of the
Highlands.

But though we think you’re quaint, don’t foiget to pay your rent]

And if you should want your land, we’ll cut off your grasping
hand!

You had better learn your place, you’re a low and servjlc race.

We’ve cleared the straths, we’ve cleared the paths,

We’ve cleared the glens, we’ve cleared the Bens,

And we can do it once again.

We’ve got the brass, we’ve got the class,

We’ve got the law, we need no more:

'We’II show you we’re the ruling class!

Not entirely fair, maybe, but it illustrates by exaggeration.

In all the large estates, the agent (or in Scotland, the factor) stands

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

261

firmly between owner and tenant, insulating the one from the other
and perpetuating and institutionalizing the rural caste system that
keeps owner and tenant on two very separate social planes. Tlie
agent, a man of many parts indeed, can best be looked upon as the
lubricant of the rural class system: it is he who deifies the landowner
in the eyes of the tenant (‘You should have proper respect for His
Grace, you know,’ he will advise a recalcitrant tenant) and who
keeps the workers and the tenant farmers in a proper ducal
perspective — it was quite probably an agent who first brought the
phrase ‘the natives are restless’ back from the Colonics and applied
it in the Home Counties.

Derrick Penrose, agent for the Chatsworth Estates, stands astride
the different worlds represented by the Big House and the
Robinson farm. He is educated and highly intelligent, part
businessman, part lawyer, parr social worker — a management man
who would fit in well in die boardroom of a medium-sized
provincial manufacturing concern with somewhat Victorian
attitudes. He is the Duke of Devonshire’s representative at the
occasional meetings in the Grosvenor Office m London~roectings
which, as the then Lord Grosvenor, now the sixth Duke of
Westminster, admits, ‘aim to improve the image of landowners,
both rural and urban'. Penrose is not terribly forthcoming about the
rationale, though he accepts, with the new young Duke, that
landowners are ‘going through a bad time at the moment. The
taxation system is horrendous; the Socialists are against us and are
managing to whip up sentiment against us; we have to do something
to keep our end up.’ The group of discreet businessmen-agenis
from the twenty-five biggest estates assemble to discuss how best to
proceed against the tide of public opinion. *We make it known that
we are available for consultation by academics, civil servants,
politicians and so on, to give our point of view. We are not so much a
lobbying group as a self-help organization, giving each other advice
on tax problems, whether or not to open up our houses, how to
combat the prevalence of envy among the general public — that sort
of thing. It is all very informal, but we hope in the long term it will
prove effective.’

Penrose is not as certain as some of the landowners themselves
that the Labour Party, which instituted the dreaded Capital Transfer
Tax, is solidly against the large estates. ‘One or two party members
are rabidly against us, but J detect a deeper feeling that responsibly
and benevolently run estates are still going to be all right. The civil

262 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
servants we have talked to seem convinced of the benefits of
continuity of ownership, and they are aware that in nearly all cases
actual ownership is by trusts or estate companies — not by wealthy
individuals. It is rather more difficult for them to rail against an
efficient estate company running the affairs of a large tract of land
and a few villages. Socialists find that easier to take than to see a
gigantically wealthy Duke running his farmers into the ground to
make a profit so that he can buy more port, or something. That is
something we have managed to convey to the civil service, and I
think the view is accepted. There is great national affection for the
preservation of the estate, if not the preservation of the owner of the
estate.’

He points with some pride at the manner in which the
Chatsworth Estates Company has looked after its workers— the
swimming-pool behind his offices teems with children who have
been driven for miles from the villages all around. ‘We didn’t have
to build it. It cost well into sue figures for us. It just seemed right
that the children round here should have something that they would
get if they lived in a city. The only difference is that we built It,
rather than the local council.’ There were other benefits for the
Duke’s workers: the club, in the same old coaching inn that now
houses Penrose’s offices, has bars and billiard rooms; there is a golf
course and a bowling green, a cricket pitch and a football ground-
all provided by the Duke. ‘The council announced it would close
down the school at Beeley quite recently, so we built an extra
classroom on to the school we own at Pilsley and arranged for a bus
to lake the children there. We thought it was important to keep the
children at school on the estate — it breaks up the community if they
have to go over into the big towns away from the estate. We look
upon our job, in a way, as maintaining a community, as well as
making money. It would never do ifihe people were allowed to drift
off.’

Most of Devonshire’s land is let for farming, though extra profits
are creamed off by the sensible working of the sporting possibilities
offered by high moorland and wood. Sporting lets arc arranged —
supra-ienancies that overlie the farming lets and which bring
businessmen over that,

are specially reared at various parts of the acreage. The man who has
the farm tenancy is allowed, under l^islation of the i88os, to shoot
ground game and vermin’, like rabbits and hares: the man who has
the sporting tenancy has the right to dispose of the rest. A

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 263
gamekeeper, employed by the sporting tenant, looks after the
individual rights of the two the position is regarded as one of

the plum jobs on an estate. One letter a week comes into the estate
offices asking for the job; since the Duke has only six permanently
installed within the ring fence of his Derbyshire lands, Penrose has
to turn down nearly every application.

So far we have looked only at the rural landowner. Urban holdings
have, in many cases, made the principal fortunes of the more astute
members of nobility and have added the glitter and opportunity to
the stability and continuity offered by the ownership of acreages in
the coimtry. The pre-eminent urban landowner is, as we have
noted, the Duke of Westminster who, by virtue of the lucky
marriage of Sir Thomas Grosvenor to die twelve-year-old heiress,
Mary Davies, in 1677, collected a parcel of land in what was to
become Central London, and which proved of inestimable value.

The story is well enough known: bow the grandson of that union,
Richard Grosvenor, drained the land near the newly built
Buckingham House and constructed an elegant London suburb,
Belgravia; how Pimlico and Mayfair were developed, how Pimlico
was later sold in the 1950s to provide fimds for further purchases,
how Grosvenor Square was redeveloped and how the American
Government fought in vain to win the freehold of the prime site in
that square for their handsome flagship embassy. The 300 acres in
X^ondon— 200 in Belgravia, 100 in Mayfair—have been justly called
the jewel in the coronet of the Grosvenor family. Efforts over the
past several decades by a shrewdly managed Grosvenor Estate
office have ensured that the exquisite architectural character of the
most agreeable parts of West One and South-West Three has been
rigorously defended and maintained. Though controversies
develop with monotonous regularity to place the Grosvenor
managers at the centre of new storms, it cannot be denied that it has
been largely through the influence of their sensible and far-sighted
policies that the charaCTcr of such gems as Belgrave Square and
Eaton Square has been maintained, while squares in the more
remote cozneTs of the metropolis have become, in many cases,
cluttered with uninspiring sht^s and glass monoliths of little
architectural merit. So vast are the London holdings of the Dukes of
Westminster that mistakes do occur from time to time; generally,
though, the family’s beneficial influents on London as a visual asset
cannot be doubled.

264 the foundation OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
There have been detailed studies completed in recent years of the
influence of the great landed aristocrats on the cities they owned,
both in political and physical terms. To delve too deeply into the
historical aspects of nobility’s influence on urban character would
be to depart from the terms of reference of this book: two examples,
none the less, are provided by the work of a Cambridge social
historian, David Cannadine, tvho has studied in great detail the
influence of the Calthorpe family upon the development of
Birmingham, and the Dukes of Devonshire upon the jewel of the
Cavendish crown, the elegant seaside resort of Eastbourne. The
conclusion to which Cannadine comes runs counter to one accepted
historical canon; that, as Asa Briggs once wrote, the influence of the
'protected estate’ (i.e. an enclosed region, owned by a large
landowner of power and wealth) in a provincial city was ‘strategic ,
presenting a formidable ‘conservative interest’ that dominated the
development of the city as a whole, no matter what the political
tendencies of the city inhabitants. Cannadine found, from bis
studies of Birmingham and Eastbourne, that the conservative
influence of the titled landowners— who were actually leaders of the
Liberal Party of the day, so the use of the word ’conservative’ here is
not meant strictly in its political sense'— was only formidable when
the inhabitants beneath them were themselves set In the
conservative mould. The influence of the Lords Calthorpe, who
developed the pleasant suburb of Edgbaston, upon the stoutly
mercantile and radical folk of Birmingham, was not, he concluded,
as formidable as most historians had assumed. In Birmingham,
while the Calthorpes’ financial imerest was gigantic, their
‘conservative interest’ was small— had they lived in the city
permanently (the present Baron Calthorpe lists his address as a
ship, the Fantome deMer, off the Channel Islands) they might have
had more political interest: as it was, Birmingham never turned
itself into a Calthorpe company town.

’ To underline the point that the Calthorpes and the Devonshires can hardly have
exerted politically conservative influeitces on the towns under their control, it is
worth noting that the third Lord Calthorpe (1787-1850) was 'a Whig for many
years*, the fourth Lord (his brother, 1790-1858) was a Whig MP and a
Palmerstonian Liberal m the Lords, and the fifth Ixird Calthorpe (1826-93) *

Liberal MP from 1859 to 186S

Similarly, the sixth Duke of Devanshire(i79o-tB58) was a prominent Whig, the
seventh Duke (1808-91) was a Liberal MP from 1829 to 1834, the eighth Duke
(1833-1908) was better known as •the Silent Lord Hartington’ and was an imporunt
Liberal Cabinet Minister, Leader of the Liberal Opposition and three tunes refused
to be Liberal Prime Minister.

266 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE

essentially of the long-term kind reserved for families who can be
certain that their riches and their status will continue for century
after century: just as the Duke of Buccleuch argues in favour of
permitting agricultural land to be retained privately because of the
benefits of long-term planning to the countryside’s aspect, so the
Dukes of Devonshire can say that their long-term financial interests
act for the long-term benefit of the population in their urban
property. ‘Long-term benefits’ is a phrase that crops up again and
again when hereditary nobles discuss the advantages of the existing
system.

The elements which contributed to the development of
Eastbourne as one of England’s most pleasing seaside towns were,
Cannadine wrote, ‘the reflected glory of ducal ownership; the
careful supervision by ducal employees of plarming, zoning and
development; the massive provision from ducal coffers of money for
amenities and the infrastructure; and the extensive control by a
ducal oligarchy of the town thus created’. Little has changed over
the years: the social tone of Eastbourne has remained steadfastly
h&ughty, the provision of the kind of pleasure domes that would
appeal to 'the cloth caps’ as one writer noted, was left to nearby
resorts like Brighton and Bognor Regis. When the tenth Duke died
in 1950 ‘there were wreaths and flowers from no fewer than ten
Eastbourne volunury societies . . . ’ A vast industrial scheme was
started in 1973, on 'he orders of the present Duke, and Eastbourne
saw no reason to doubt the ‘spokesman* for the family when he said:
‘The Duke has taken a personal interest in the scheme. He is not so
much interested in maximum profits as he is in the high standards
that have always been maintained as the guiding principle of the
Chatsworth Settlement.’ The fact is, however, that revenues from
the Eastbourne properties more than help to offset the £100,000
loss which Chatsworth House sustains each year. Without
Eastbourne, as without John Robinson and his colleague tenant
farmers, the Dukedom of Devonshire and the grand houses in
which those sporting the title languish, would founder in double-
quick time.

The picture, in siunmary, b of a nobility still firmly based on
landholding, both in the city and in the country. City properties
provide the wherewithal that permits the noble life in the country to
be maintained — and thus it is in the continuing interest of the owner
to maintain the excellence of his urban property so as to extract as

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 267

.nuch revenue from it as possible. Developers in central London
Place their faith in the revenue possibilities neither of huge office
blocks nor of great battery-farm aparrments: to construct such
monsters might profit them in the short term but, smce they won d
reduce the attraction of the inner city as a dwelling site, would

ultimately have theeffectofloweringvalue. Thus thepresentDuke

of Westminster, the sixth, has absolutely no intenuon of mming
Eaton Square into a paradise for bankem or faceless thousands from
the muM-national corporations: people will always wan, ,0 hve in
elegant houses, he feels certain, md thus for the eventual good
fortune of. let us say, the tenth Duke, elegant houses will stay there
and plans for office blocks will be quietly set aside. Similarly with

EastLurnemditsh^^^^^

XoT= hot"-.

wtd be rapidly enriched and the Chatsworth accounts speed, y
wouiQ oe > construction crews moved in

brought “^tout is comfortably enough oft to

tomorrow. Bu P ^i„,,tag of some long-distant heir who

rsrty"krffi:^and=hdd.se^

term benefit’ he seeks.

confronts them all, and which threatens to
f the lone-tertn planning of the present landed nobility, is
confound the ■“'S P a„d rich Britons ate any

,axa,ion.Not.,tsh„uMb said^^^^^^^^^^

more averse to mid-,970s have, as die Sp,aa,^

in the tax pillage of a class tor its first end',

imagmed in 1876, "O j ,pp„ts a monstrous development.
That Lord Rosebery’s Chancellor of the

When Sir 5,ip„od enemy of the House of Lords, rose

Exchequer and an imp inlioduce his famous ‘death

in the Commons " ^Pj„gthemventionofataxthathadasits

duty budget he ^g „f the efficiency of raising

intention merely ffie 1 ;,^„tlhe House he abhorred. The tax

not the ruination of the OT ^ P

he announced was m b cumbersome armada „r

into immediate account duty which had raised

prohare duty. -‘“'-“^ShmuntUfficn.The

revenue from thepassag ^^^^,^,n„,odayseeu„q„i

stobel=v.=d. on ffi, ^ „p„h between Ok

from a minimum of

270 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
aristocratic entrepreneurs who have succeeded, and succeeded
brilliantly, in these harshly egalitarian times.

Much of their success is due to expert planning; much also to
tough bargaining. There was a fourteen»ycar fight, for instance,
over the death duties assessed against Gerald, the fourth Duke, who
died in 1967. It was reckoned that the Estates should pay between
ten and fifteen million pounds duty on his worth: the Grosvenor
family claimed, though, that despite his death taking place in 1967,
he actually succumbed after a twenty-five-year lapse to his war
wounds — wounds he gallantly collected while serving in Europe
with the Ninth Lancers. With several million pounds at stake, the
trustees could afford to pay the very best lawyers in the land to meet
the ever-inquiring minds of the Revenue— and the trustees won.

The legislative loopholes which made estate duties the ‘optional
tax’, derided by zealous Socialists (and there have been in-
numerable stories of men dying a month before the seven years
were up, and being kept pickled in bed by their heirs, and the
doctors bribed with a few thousand to keep their mouths shut and
sign the death certificate with a more appropriate date), eventually
led to the famous 1975 Finance Act, the Act that replaced the
eighty-year writ of estate duty with the tax that well and truly blocks
all the exits— the Capital Transfer Tax.

This tax is a Socialist’s dream, aimed quite plainly, not just at the
raising of revenue, but at the positive redistribution of the national
wealth. (Discussions on an even more swingeing form of
redistributive taxation, a wealth tax, continue. Recent attempts to
prepare the legislation have been continually frustrated, but there is
little doubt that a Socialist Government armed with a respectable
Parliamentary majority, would introduce a wealth tax beside which
the present horrors of the CTT would seem to the victims mere
pinpricks.)

The basis of CTT, which in its application and taken with its
varying exemptions sounds massively complicated, is actually very
simple: it places tax not only on property when it is handed over at
death, it also prevents the avoidance of taxation by the simple
measure of handing over the money some years before death, by
levying duty — albeit at a lower rate than at death — on any gifts
made during a person’s lifetime. Thus if the Duke of Buccleuch
decided to settle a million pounds on his eldest son, the Earl of
Dalkeith, when the latter reached his twenty-fifth birthday on
Valentme’s Day 1979, he would have been heavily taxed on his

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 271

gif-no less .hnn £700.000 che^xt

Chancellor and placed mthc _ounds the Duke

.on to have benefited to the tune
would have had to have made his gift one of

powerful disincentive, one might loopholes-

There are, of course. " ^ ,0 find. There is

though the latter arc small and cx^mgy his

certain relief for farmland, hand y Montagu of

son; there is relief (thanks to the public has

Beaulieu) for the owners of stately political parties, to

ready access; there is relief, too, for gt ^ and the British

listed heritage bodies like the made to

Museum; and works of art can be r profit. Generally,

institutions that do not conduct a us ^ jhc Duke of

though, the effect is fit bndholdings will

Devonshire does not believe his “ of course, the rates are

survive more than two 8'"'™“°“ ^ Government might have

reduced substantially, as a Conservati c

been expected to attempt to do. . fi |„atd nobility ate.

Tax lawyers, accountants and Mlicitois

not uimatutally. having a field day, * The kind of

best to proceed with the „ worth a cool seven

advice that might be given to a no ^

millions came in one gloomy lawye deleterious effect that

■When we last spoke I ^,'J ‘onetsateleftasdtey

CapitalTiansferTaxwillhayeontheEsuleif m ^,35 aptetty
ate. But dten I was naive enough to assume by „ut

good chance that the Government mig f consider a

friends, to alter the CTT rules to nd us of what we
monstrous inequity. .. . to study the new 197^

•I regret to say, now 1 have had a *anc
Finance Act. that the new law .s no P ^iffened them in

easing the rules as I had exited, ^^^d of this I have been

some crucial respects since * j loophole might ^

waiting to sec if some previously uios-ing before the

found. But not so. Hence my jncan paying out a

deadline of l April, I977. o’® th« m

preny vast sum to the taxman: by acting q ^j^^fyturc.
safeguard the Trusts and the other CTT bill is very

‘As you will no doubt have notice , ,-jjjiy cripphng

nearly one million pounds, which would be totally

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 269

needed by the noble classes. Forty-nine direct heirs to peerages
were killed in the Great War, prompting further huge sales. The
First World War was instrumental in the demolition of almost as
much property at home as overseas, asgreat houses were savaged in
their dozens afterwards to pay the accounts of the previous decade.

The upheaval initiated by Harcourt’s invention was soon to be
calmed: all manner of complex devices were constructed to alleviate
the burden of death duties, the rates for which rose relentlessly as
the Government’s need for revenue became ever more pressing. It
would be tedious to list ail the many finzneial boil-holes devised to
accommodate the noble rich: the estates company, an invention of
the 1920S, was one such. The various types of trusts — blind,
discretionary, and soon; the so-called ‘spendthrift settlements’ that
actually urged some heirs to spend all they could before Chancellors
could get their hands on the lucre; and the practice of avoiding duty
by the simple device of giving everything dutiable to the heir seven
years before death— all these managed to lighten the burden, and,
for a while, the tidal wave of sales receded. Agricultural land values,
which had sunk during the 1920*, started to rise again; rents were
increased; the revenues from meat and milk started up once more.
The financial outlook for the landed few began, slowly and steadily,
to improve. By the end of the 1940s investment in land was running
at a decent rate once more: some newly ennobled gentlemen of
substance— like Lord Rootes— were able to buy up tracts of
Scotland and to consider they bad done something shrewd.

But rich men do not have a monopoly in good fortune — and some
very rich men have had to pay staggeringly high bills forestate duty.
When the second Duke of Westminster died, for example, the bills
sent in by the Inland Revenue amounted to some twenty million
pounds. An entire sub-department of the Revenue had to be
established to deal with the massive financial empire His Grace left
for his inheritors. He took precautions, before be died, against ibis
kind of a financial disaster happening again: in his will he divided
the family fortunes into a iwenty-part trust fund, limiting the
amount of wealth that could be held by any one person and thus be
vulnerable to taxation. It was one of the measures that has helped
the Grosvenor Estates in their present unparalleled fortunes. With
investments in land and property from Hawaii to South Africa,
immense landholdings in the British Isles and, as we have seen, the
most valuable privately controlled block of property in London, the
Grosvenor family are the senior members of a very small band of

270 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
aristocratic entrepreneurs who have succeeded, and succeeded
brilliantly, in these harshly egalitarian times.

Much of their success is due to expert planning; much also to
tough bargaining. There was a fourteen-year fight, for instanw,
over the death duties assessed against Gerald, the fourth Duke, who
died in 1967. It was reckoned that the Estates should pay between
ten and fifteen million pounds duty on his worth: the Grosvenor
family claimed, though, that despite his death taking place in 19 7»
he actually succumbed after a twenty-five-year lapse to his war
wounds— wounds he gallantly collected while sers'ing in Europe
with the Ninth Lancers. With several million pounds at stake, the
trustees could afford to pay the very best lawyers in the land to meet
the ever-inquiring minds of the Revenue — and the trustees won.

The legislative loopholes which made estate duties the 'optional
tax’, derided by xealous Socialists (and there have been in-
numerable stories of men dying a month before the seven years
were up, and being kept pickled in bed by their heirs, and the
doctors bribed with a few thousand to keep their mouths shut and
sign the death certifiatc with a more appropriate date), eventually
led to the famous 1975 Finance Act, the Act that replaced the
eighty-year writ of estate duty with the tax that well and truly blocks
all the exits—the Capital Transfer Tax.

This tax is a Socialist's dream, aimed quite plainly, not just at the
raising of revenue, but at the positive redistribution of the national
wealth. (Discussions on an even more swingeing form of
redistributive taxation, a wealth tax, continue. Recent attempts to
prepare the legislation have been continually frustrated, but there is
little doubt that a Socialist Government armed with a respectable
Parliamentary maiority, would introduce a wealth tax beside which
the present horrors of the CTT would seem to the victims mere
pinpricks.)

The basis of CTT, which in its application and taken with its
varying exemptions sounds massively complicated, is actually very
simple: it places lax not only on property when it is handed over at
death, it also prevents the avoidance of taxation by the simple
measure of handing over the money some years before death, by
levying duty— albeit at a lower rate than at death— on any gifts
made during a person’s lifetime. Thus if the Duke of Bucclcuch
decided to settle a million pounds on his eldest son, the Earl of
Dalkeith, when the latter reached his twenty-fifth birthday on
Valentine’s Day 1979, he would have been heavily taxed on his

THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE 27I

though the latter are simH ami ^ , ® ,Hi„g farmer to his

certain relief for farmland, hand y Montagu of

son; there is relief (thanks to dte

Beaulieu) for the owners of stately hom« political parties, to

ready access; there is relief, too, for gi i..„ ^nd the British

listed heritage bodies like the . jf ate made to

Museum; and works of art can be ti^ nrofit Generally,

institutions that do not condu« a ^”„Le 5

though, the effect is numbi g- , „-,f» his landholdings will
Devonshire does not believe bis |. „,e „tcs are

survive more than two 8'“'”“°“““ i’ „„„,nt might have
redueed substantially, as a Conservative Government mign

been eapeeted to «“"’PV°^H„lkitots to the landed nobility ate,

Tax lawyers, aeeountants and solicitors to I

not unnaturally, having a field day, a wealth The kind of

best to proceed ®”m“rno^eman r.* a cool seven

advice that might be given to ^ ^ l^^T^

millions came in one gloomy lawyer s c ,ha,

•When we last spoke I “'’'rt *'Jrna^
CapitalTransfer Tax will have ontheEstateifm^^^^^^^^^^
ate. But then I was naive enough to assum jjtd, by our

good chance that the Government mig consider a

friends, to alter the CTT rules to rid us of what we

monstrous inequity. ... .h„ce to study the new I97d

•I regret to say. now I have So far from

Finance ACT, that the new law is actually stiffened them in

casing the rules as I had expected, i diis I have been

some crucial respects. . . . since I ^ loophole might be

waiting to see if some previously „ ^ng before the

found. But not so. Hence my * . j jq ^can paying out a

deadline of . April, .977. even ' oTickTy we will at least

pretty vast sum to the taxman: by actmg q kly
safeguard the Trusts and the other

•As you will no doubt have ®','aiTy crippling. . . .’

nearly one million pounds, which would be totally cripp

272 THE FOUNDATIOK OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
[A Strange choice of phrase: it would actually leave some
£600,000,000 behind, a sum which many of those who s oted for
the Finance Bill would be quite content to have m their pockets.J
♦. . . at present 1 know of no way in which we can avoid it. ... but 1
think we can delay having to pay it for a while. . . .’

The letter then continues with a list of the choices open to His
Lordship, and concludes: *. . . meanwhile, I have warned the other
Trustees that we may have to raise £150,000 for CTT later this ) car
(it will be payable in October 1977). and they arc shaping their
savings and investment arrangements accordingly.’ . . ,

A list appended with the letter shows the costs that lie ahead lor
the nobleman: some £990,000 to be paid to the R^'enuc if he
transferred the Trust as he had planned; a periodic charge of
£300,000, payable every decade; a reduced rate if the terms of t e
Trust are changed before 1980. In any case the hapless peer who
had to read advice like that one spring day in 1977 had to grapple
with the knowledge that, no matter what steps he took short of
leaving the country, the Labour Government had passed a law that
was destined to take away at least an eighth of his fortune every
decade, and could ‘cripple’ him long before his children are in a
position to accede to his title. One cannot wonder at the anger,
bitterness and frustration expressed by virtually every really
wealthy member of the House of Lords, or avoid speculating what
debate might have taken place had the Upper House been able to
frustrate the progress of financial legislation; instead, Their
Lordships, under the rules of parliamcniary procedure that govern
them, could only gnash their gums and wail soundlessly at the tax
that seeks to pillage their class and sack their surviving castles.

The first effects of CTT upon the landed estates have not yet been
noticed. The stately workings of the taxing machines have ensured
that the legacy of the old estate duty remains with us for some time.
An example of the effects of estate duty on collections of nobly
acquired treasure came in 1977, with the solemn announcement by
the seventh Earl of Rosebery that the grandly castellated Victorian
masterpiece of Mentmore (just north of London) would have to go
on sale to meet a bill of £4 million in estate duties. The Government
of the day had turned down Lord Rosebery’s offer of the house in
lieu of duty: it refused even to accept a bargain-basement offer of
just £3 million for the house — an astonishingly low price,
considering the value placed on the structure and its bewildering

THE FOUNDATION OF EORDLV EXISTENCE .73

father of the fifth Countess. ^ the Environments

angered to white heat by j fault, and thus place part

decision to aUow the sale to proceed by

of ‘Britain’s heritage’ at risk ^ g 6 extravaganzas of

Statesman, a journal that ra Rothschild and the plaintive

wealthy ennobled Jews like Bare fortunes, thought the

whines of those who i en . -fhat the present Lord

Government’s attitude rather patsi whose claim to

Rosebery, a little-known fipre a j. racehorses,’ owns two

fame came from the breeding and Scotland, the

other sizeable houses besides - .„jjot short of a few pounds,

other in Suffolk-and was most t

was largely ignored, ^bat e .. ^urbs seemed, to the

devastating period of of furniture and paintings

critics, quite irrelevant. Tha' ^ Rothschilds and handed

far superior to those hands and good shape was

down to the Rosebecys ate still m g seemed to

discounted by the lections were truly a vital

considerwhetherinfacttheMenmorec

part of British heritage and of crucial p

wellbeing. ...necred that the campaign to try

In fact one might almost have susP Rosebery out of his

and persuade the G"'""™'"' “ ? „,ltag it later, for a proSt of
dilemma by buying the . [^om behind the walls of

perhaps £7 million) was uuth^'^fJXte.The Twenty-Five
estates faced with similar P'obkins i office-could they

Invisibles, meeting each month at th Mentmore was a

have had an interest in promulga London and St Paul s

citadel of importance equal to the » ^ p„fect example

Cathedral? It was a perfect ^'bidefor h . j ,old you

to enable the other large “ Twenty-Five had long said

so’ in another decade’s time. And tne organization --

they operated ‘under the co\tx o energetic groups which

Mentmore appeal early m 1977-

. ,0 have chosen the Ute Lord
• Wmuon ChurchiU-s ‘T"' ‘i^robvK”'5b

Roceberyio command the «he«fo« ^bv. J

of Great Brium durme the Seco^ ,j^n ,he mere

tmprea«d D<«T,mg Street aa havmg more
training of racehotaea

274 the foundation OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
As it turned out only a very few writers tried to put Mentmorc
into its proper perspective. One, William Feavcr, a distinguished
art critic and author, wrote in the Observer a series of remarks
that, considering the attitudes of his colleagues, appeared
faintly heretical. ‘Cue for lamentations,’ he said, referring to
the widespread protestations made immediately following the
Government’s aimouncement that it was not buying;

‘The house and collection, the argument went, were a priceless,
irreplaceable, unrivalled whole. The Government have spumed a
bargain. But, scanning the lists and actually examining the most
prized or, in auction parlance, “important” pieces, it is hard to find
anything that qualified indisputably as British heritage material.

‘You couldn’t count Venetian state barge lanterns, however big
and gilt, or a Louis XV clockwork orange tree, however perfect in
every detail.

‘Only a perfervid Jacobite would be distraught at the prospect of
the export of a large and lofty Masucci of the Old Pretender’s
marriage and a matching Cherri of Bonny Prince Charlie’s baptism.
Yes, one might opine, Gainsborough’s painting of hounds streaking
in for a kill should be acquired by the nation at all costs. But
Francois Drouais’ portrait of Mme de Pompadour, late in life and
awash in silks? Regretfully, no.’

Mr Fcaver’s article came at the very height of the debate over
Mentmore, which occupied the headlines throughout a spring
otherwise devoted to bleak stories about disputes at British Leyland
motor-car factories. Two days later the Government, after even
more anguished thought, it said, than had preceded the original
decision to tell Lord Rosebery ‘thanks, but no thanks’, made up its
mind once and for all; it would definitely not buy Mentmore, and if
Lord Rosebery was to pay his bills in full, then the sale would have
to go ahead. A delighted Sotheby’s sprang into action, and the
auctions began in May. One imagines there will be many further
Mentmores once capital transfer tax begins to take its intended bite.

Although the County Landowners’ Association, with its forty
thousand members and a fairer knowledge than any other body of
precisely who owns what land, and how much they own, stays
obtusely silent in order to protect iu members’ interests, there were
recommendations in the mid-1970s coming from within the lobbies
of landownership for the establishment of National Registers of
Land. Lord Rothschild, wearing his hat as chairman of an advisory

THE FOUNDATION OF FORDLV EXISTENCE 275

co™AUtc=onagriailiuraU.ra«^^^^^

formal recommendation ih , . ^ land resources, such a

allocation of the nation s ar P ^ ^ landoi'-ncrs may be
register would have ^'should be more bureaucratic

appalled by the suggestion that thw ufe in November

probing into their affairs, commen this proposal .

>976, but there were ‘good reasons Society pamphlet

Then again, Lady Stocks ms ^‘*^8 out of existence’ and

in 1976 that inherited wealth shou address should be

all reference to people by titles out by the cries of

abolished-and her suggestion was n ^le offerings a few

abuse that tended to accompany such disagree

years before. ni,,. these that taxes on wealth for

There are growing indications I becoming politically

which no work has to be treasures may be, to most

acceptable in Briuin; that ‘ , u-ell accumulated and

people’s «rl.in knowledge, p,. .Pc

guarded by now to require no fn""'' ,|.,j,.home owner kc

Sxpayer-in abort, the landowner »d be aiay^^ TT,,

becoming further and further isolalrf as Ib^^^

Conservatives blustered, whw in unstorrms ‘’[*'1

abolition of Capital Transfer Tax— ^,_,pj acceptance, albeit
fox'a earth. Bm given the is not, retbaj'S’

grudging, that inherited ‘’ JLf^'ing any mote— given 'ha ■

something one has to wo^ .uccumb so the evident ttPfeti

one wonders ifeven the Tones will sue™ somehow ti

of mastcriy bodies like the Twenty-Five

seems rather doubtful. of the unique economic

The corollary, of course. IS the Grand, soman

status of the hereditary dwindling band will figbt m

manner, will go son, and "'-e.b^^™ pe known "i
the last asadisgruntledrumporpn^P reminder that a titled,
one can say with certainty is *°“*^*,„.cUquecanonly remain «f

constitutionally emasculated an ® . cTT, ui'b %'idf*r^'?

the people wish them so to do. ambitious pUf" 'I’

insouciance over their future and • ,he House of U^rJs,

curbing the powers .s entering us mi-

lt does rather seem as though pee

critical phase in its scvcn-hundi^->

There was a memorable ,t now,’ u beg •

ciuiiled simply, ‘Changing Hands .

276 THE FOUNDATION OF LORDLY EXISTENCE
‘not only from the advertisements, not only from various attractive
little descriptive paragraphs, not only from the numerous notice
boards with which the countryside is disfigured, but from personal
experience amongst our friends, if not actually of our own:
"England is changing hands”.

‘For the most part, the sacrifices are made in silence. “The
privileged classes”, to use an old name, take it all for granted. It had
to be. Only the background of their lives is gone. The historical
associations need not be enumerated: they are all in the beautiful
illustrated book to be had on application to the land agent. What
will not be found there are the intangible things: the loving care the
estate has received from each successive owner: how each in turn
grew to know every nook and comer of his vast possession, from his
earliest days when as a nursery child he played with the acorns
under the wees. . . .

‘Now, such is the minor consequent tragedy of all we have gone
through, all this . . . must be swept away— “England is changing
hands".’

The ‘tragedy’ was the First World War, and the changing of
hands came about because of the nightmare killing of so many of the
nation’s heirs across in the mud and gore of France. But what that
Times writer noted then could equally apply today. England is on
the verge of changing hands once again— only this time it will not be
a change from the hands of the landed rich to the mercantile rich; if
the Exchequer, and the people, have their corporate way, it will
change from the hands of the rich to the hands of the masses.
Whether that kind of redistribution will be for the general benefit of
that England remains to be seen. The proposition that such
reworking of England's acres will be for the greater good of every
Englishman is, to be fair, open to a great deal of doubt. Who, one
wonders, will look out for ‘the long-term benefit’?

OF MEN AND MANNERS

If he was a sage in business hours, be was always a boy at heart.
The heart was givers over to birds, beasts and flowers He was an
eager held naturalist and gardener, a still keener shot. And like
most great English killers of birds be was a merciful man who
cherished the victims he slew so cleanly.

Obituary in The T»»ts

The middle, lower middle and working classes are now
receiving the King’s Commission Theseclasses, unlike the old
atistocranc and feudal classes who led theoJd Army, have never

had 'their people' lo think about they have largely fallen

down ui their capacity as Army officers.

R. C Bingham, letter to The Times, 194I

All the obvious things have been done which were fought and
argued about. And yet, mysteriously enough . . the ideal, the
partem ofvalues, has not been achieved We have done them,
we have created the means to the good life which they all laid
down and said Tf you do all these thuigs, after that there’ll be a
classless society.’ Welt, there isn’t.

Richard Crossman, in Fabian Tract No.
z86, 1950

Dcspiw Mr MacmilUri’s

prers created by Mr Pitt -were unspealubly mid^,^^
be seriously doubted that, en . undying class system of

British Isles represent the very otEhzabeth 11, gamely

the kingdom. The Monarch, m ^ radiate the image of a
tries-though with littie . p her subiects, dogged

middle-class Queen, only slightly dist^f ft " filings.

by the same problems that afflia^ concessions. Public

But the peerage have had to nwk import to Their

approbation has only , Buccleuch or the Duke of

Lordships. It, like the f’“'" c„d awesome, then they

Wellington, peers choose to remain tOTOt

brook no familiarity or ’“''‘.“J”? t,„o,idtosee,thentheycan
Cowdray, to advertise their riches for th

still do so with impunity. If they wi puges, they can proceed
Duke of Portland, or snobbish, like otnc Citical views or

as they will, safe in the knowledge that Ihei B P^^ interest and

their eccentric behaviour will ,i,cm to alter

condemnation that will never harm a proportion of the

their ways. The Monarch of today as peers continue

dictates of public opinion; so long as demands of the

to be recognized, so they can turn t eir , . or at least, that

public, and stand icily ignorant of their

was so imtil recently. . _;-„f:ons which their names

The habits of the peerage, and *e in shifting sands of

help to preserve, are thus still a fair CO estates, the

modem British society. Like P® suonort them arc battle-
institutions they support and whicn ff ^ upheaval

scarred-but they still British people, it looks quite

dislocates the genteel manners of m ^ujue.

likely that they will remain standing for some

28 o

OF MEN AND MANNERS
It is not easy, for example, to change one’s accent— even though
Tony Benn, the former Viscount Siansgate, who relinquished his
title for life, tried hard to drop the unmistakably clipped tones of his
London public school, he has found the task well-nigh impossible.
Accent, though, is only the half of it: inflections of the voice, the
very words used, the degree of interest one affects in subjects of
conversation— these seemingly trivial matters all can mark one for
life as a member of the upper classes, and all prove as hard to discard
as they do for novitiates to learn. Nancy Mitford’s essay on The
English Aristocracy’ in Nobleue Oblige, though written in I956>
remains the standard work on the mannerisms of the nobility-
‘Dinner’ is eaten in the evening, ‘luncheon’ (not lunch, and most
certainly not dinner) is eaten at noontime; port is passed to the left,
never lifted from the table surface (‘Slide it, man! Slide it! one
crusty octogenarian Earl bellowed one evening when, in my
presence, an unfortunate guest happened to allow the decanter to
rise a millimetre or two above the shiny oak surface); Stilton cheese
is always to be sliced, never scooped (though silversmiths still
market elegant cheese scoops, little trowels with mechanical
pushers for removing the cheese, which evidently sell to some of the
pretentious lower orders). Argument at dinner over whether you
are a sheer or a scooper is still considered an excellent choice of topic
by some aristocrats. The consensus view seems to be that since
scooping ruins the cheese, the practice is only for the vulgar rich;
slicing is elegant and gentle to the cheese, and altogether
combinative of economy, prudence and pohtesse. A similar
argument over whether porridge should be eaten standing or sitting
was allowed to run in the letters columns of The Times in 197®:
observation suggests that few Dukes eat their gruel on their feet — it
tends to frustrate their attempts to open their morning letters.*

Other mealtime observances: the provision of a separate, silver,
set of pepper, salt and mustard holders, very sharp knives, the
pouring of the cream and sugar into coffee cups first, but of the milk
into tea last— all arc marks of social rectitude that have come down
from the arbiters of manners in the stately homes of England. The
noble families manage their faultless behaviour without noticeable
effort. ‘I never have to think about saying “writing paper’’ instead

' Eating porridge standing up is said by a Scotsman to be an old Scottish custom
that has nothing to do with Ducat ennoblement. It has more to do, one imagines, with
Scotsmen bemg unwilling to submit their sub-kilt regions to the icy woodwork of
night-chilled chairs.

OF MEN AND MANNERS

„f •■no.epaper-; says the Duke JroCtwl

foolish to mate a fuss about Everyone I meet talks

can be sure I would not in the language.'

about "tvtiting paper - mannerisms have often

Writers on the subiect of "PP“ perpetually on the

remarked that the true Upper _ a aspirants— the

lookout tor mistakes made in P , -,. napkin', or 'Scotch'

inadvertent use of ‘serviette ms ea word ‘kinsman

tor ‘whisky', 'relative' for 'relation (Some use^t^,_^
for any relation mote distant ^e word to describe C. R

Moncreiffe of that Ilk says he " „eo was his thirteenth

Scott Moncreiffe, the translator of pro . ^ oommon

cousin twice removed, “Jrupperclassesreallycarea l

ancestor in 1496.) Frankly, ' f°;^^“''auon merheard atone stately
that much for such niceties. ,n„eosts why: the family were

house in County forthcoming Christmas

discussing whom they ‘J''" some O'Haras, itoy «

party for their eldest son. ™ . nip. 'Ah'! ^

bound to be all tight,' said L ^ ^ lyhat's this name-

Craigs, we've heard of them so ^e, « ^^ffnem. Don't think we d
Morton? Can't say I know Smyths, Stockfords-yes,

better have them along, ^'’^mteliigence network that exists to
they'll all do. . . ■ ■andsoon.Th.intellig,^^^.|^^^ “*"*hoJ

provide subtle dif"""™" * It tmres little whether those «

potentialguestsisdiscreetand^gua.t.

reiects say t^ members of one distmguish^

‘drawing-room , It ca*® or that members o j

have taken good care, the noble, an

somehow vaguely differe ^ ,

suitable. m me question, as Evelyn

warned him tbatthiswuuld” ^1.

X. _ _-:a,uKr.,mne MFH - can’t even write

lovclydescribedt e y^eoffence^ passage and threw the

write like a

book from her cry
gentleman’.’

282 OF MEN AND MANNERS

Peers of the old school like matters to proceed slowly arid
decorously, it is often assumed. If sea mail is slower than air mail,
they use the former — it is more dignified; if the man can be reached
by letter rather than by telephone, they write instead of calling; they
journey by train rather than aeroplane, by horse rather than by car.
Long live the ocean liner, the airship, the four-in-hand — swift
death to Concorde, the Channel Timnel and the mass-produced
car. But what nonsense these assumptions are! Peers fly by
Concorde, send telegrams, babble on the telephone like everyone
else. When petrol became expensive, the old Duke of Portland was
to be found driving the ultimate in popular motor cars, the Mini.
‘Just picked up a couple when the fuel got too much,' he explained.
‘Easier to get around the parks, you know.*

And again it is said they prefer to talk in terms of circumlocutory
vagueness, disapproving of direct attention to a topic, finding
argument based on fact tedious and rather vulgar. From the
cavernous interior of the bath chair, the angered mumbles of an
elderly noblemen protesting dully at the machinations of Socialist
governments on the performance of England in the last Test have
become lasting caricatures of noble conversational habits. That true
peers should talk in detail and with deep knowledge of the
complexities of such topics as the Joint European Torus, the genetic
characteristics of Sika deer, the prospects for trade with Saudi
Arabia, the future of Jimmy Carter or the mating habits of African
elephants strikes at the heart of the accepted notion of noble
behaviour. Yet these were all conversations into which I was drawn
at various times during the winter of 1976, and I heard not a whisper
from a single bath chair, nor a gouty grunt from beside the
inglenook as an ancient Marquess protested at the length of hair on
a footballer spotted on the sports page of the Telegraph, or the
decline in the quality of claret.

Progress is, in short, being made. The titled apexes of the class
system are dropping their more archaic mannerisms, retaining only
those that imbue them with charm and isolate them a little from the
lower orders. A man that insists on sliding port, and slicing Stilton,
but who can discuss with intelligence and interest the development
of European politics is, one would assume, more at one with his
fellow countrymen than one who slides, slices, grunts, grumbles
and bellows in a cobweb-covered world of vague and faded elegance
and determined insulation from the world beyond his park’s fine
sandstone gateposts.

OF MEN AND MANNERS

283

Speech and manners are one thing; education, and progress m the
nation’s great institutions, is quite another. Here, while progress is
undoubtedly being made, and equahty of opportunity far greater a
factor in British society than, say, two decades ap, the hab.ts of Jhe
ennobled upper classes, and the ennobled middle classes whom Mr
Macmillan so despises, are hard to break Preparatory school,
Eton, Christ Church, the Grenadiers, the older London clubs-a 1

’ . to the world m which the truly noble

sti 1 prove 1 which he finds it most comfortable to

feels most at ease and m wnicu

“Natali prep, schoolsmeetwitb the approvaloftheirvictims. One
Eton?a^repon=dtor//arfer’r<.-.d Queen magarineon the terror, of

his school “ sons of Scottish farmer., and o-yed

•Most of * P^7'.itod home. Everyone wa. mad on
more to the “oft through tain,.now and

rugger. |! / jstick against which everything wai judged,
hail, and was the yardstic » , ^

The headmaster was , beatable offence. Twle,“ySr

the

The headmaster was 3 a beatable offence. Twice .

ttat discovery witha foo b 11 ^

there was a rrhod' ’ pay. out always coincided with
Scotland rugby

Edinburgh rugger ‘"‘"”^',0 be believed. They were the dreg. „f

‘The .taffhad |^sa,„ntalented,andunsympathniJrhc

their profession — unqu o. Vitus’s dance. The

Latin master suffered ftr..!’„Tbieoted natii^

Latin master most bigoted nature, lo wh'^T

convinced Conservativ ^ standing as a Liberal candidate I

“LTsettpossibleea^^-Xl^^^^^^^^

no purpose but to “rroutage , r™, un „„„

no purpose but to cnco parents’ social life.’
only for the with ’Winchester, tecko„„ .

And then Eton-std'. Britain. Not, if,, Jl'

base for the Es alone-Manchu,,,

training 1

finest

the

measures of academic » and exhibitions to (5. ™ .

School still wins inore « school. Etonun, c,- ^

Cambridge colleges . JJ.orevil-manncredbcuj^^* and

ortenare,eatremclystoP^”^„asonesucha.i.„,^“wonhy

of the worst slum school „,.ky„0U8h-„t,^0fhis

284 OP men and manners

the huge old school in the shadow of Windsor Castle, emerge well
suited for the comfortable rigours of managing Britain in its stately
decline. Eton is not the most costly school — Winchester,
Westminster, Stowe, Shrewsbury, Millfield, Cranleigh and
Worcester College for the Blind will set parents back considerably
more than will Eton; it is far from being the gaudiest, or the
loveliest, or the best at sports or scholarship. But its products—
assured, confident, well mannered and intellectually solidly based,
in the main — are a sure commodity of which the peerage, and the
class it dominates, likes to avail itself. Of the present members of the
House of Lords 432 were schooled at Eton. In I977 t'o fewer than
ninety-three sons of hereditary nobles were being educated there;
and while some peers, like the thoroughly modem Marquess of
Queensberry, preferred to send their offspring to comprehensive
schools in Central London, the majority of the well-founded
families to be found in Burke’s cling resolutely to the older schools
of which Eton remains the finest paradigm.

From Eton the stately caravan still proceeds, as it has for
generations, to either the ancient universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, or to the
Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester— the RAC taking the
heirs to prepare them for the duties of managing their esutes, the
RMC taking more of the second and subsequent sons for training in
the martial arts. In 1977, Cirencester spotted the sons of the Earls of
Radnor, Harrington and Iddesleigh, of the Viscounts Allendale,
Falmouth and Monckton of Brenchley, and of the Lords Stafford
and Wynford. Lord Elphinstone, then twenty-four years old and
eighteenth in line, was the only Cirencester student who was
already a peer in his own right. Nearby girls’ schools, which regard
the Cirencester students as the most eligible bachelors for miles,
believe the college to be the repository for the dunderheads of the
nation’s nobility— and it must be said that while the college has an
excellent reputation in its field, the young men it turns out are more
likely to become aristocratic versions of the homy-handed sons of
rural toil than the great movers and shakers of the realm.

The same cannot be said for the dozens of sons of peers who make
the trek up to Oxford and Cambridge for their three years of
polishing and finishing. A senior don at Christ Church, Oxford — a
place known colloquially as ‘The House’, and a college to which
most of the young Hons, repiair — refutes any suggestion that his
distinguished institution is actually ‘the Oxford college to which

OF MEN AND MANNERS ^

tilled families still like to send ^trance examination

offered a bright boy of a titled famdy f ,d that at the

we certainly have no prejudice agams • body of

time there were five sons of hereditary p suggest that

scholars at the college, a as possible’, as the

this represents ‘as wide a range of ^3 is ^he

don does, is going a little far; would be three-

present student body of Christ » stvled cither ‘Hon.’ or

quarters of a million men entitle Christ Church thus has

‘Lord’— there are in fact only ‘ ^-ggc in its ranks as has

some 200 times as many members o _„,,ion which can hardly
the rest of British society and this is a proportion w

bear out the don’s assertion.’ rbecausethesonsofpeers

Tosugges.that.h=pr<.pomon.scOTCCt^ „„moners i. .o begin

just happen lobe cleverer than th .hat of the importance of

treading on egtremely t^^ngcrous grou ■ ^ould be fat saftr
the genetic factor in the <''«'« of ,^5 humbug and

for colleges like Christ Church appreciation for r e

admit that yes, they have an '"...„,nclude them on the roll
cleverer sons of British nobility md ''b' ^ ,he guardiMS of

if at all possible. It is a mark of t e that they r^rnte

such institutions that they fee' re pj^pairassment, do

perpetuate privilege— why, if *'

simply not alter their ways? j ,he hereditability

The question of the fly, and consider the ^

imelligencew,llallowu5.odigress,hn V

if there have been any, of the fa;^^'’ ™f„aiority of the irerednary

been practised over the years by f.irly closely related m or^e

peers.M the Dukes, for -aw''’ ”le closest re>an=n;b.P [Ja' «
another; marriages betwc nobility do

permitted in marriage by mo j^sh peerage- C ,he

fairly commonplace among ‘be to choos™ mams

tend to stick to th^u own b Buccleuch a b

Ddohess of Northum^r^^;^.

5, „,a,,oChn..CW' ^*irf
Cpl.m otlhe Oppidju t».W>

lot of talent in famil>'s

286 OF MEN AND MANNERS

mother was a daughter of the Ehike of Richmond, his grandmoth«
was daughter of the Duke of Argyll and his sisters are Elizabeth,
Duchess of Hamilton, and the Duchess of Sutherland. The young
Duke of Roxburghe is now safely married, to give a more up-to-date
example, to the sister of the Duke of Westminster, daughter of the
late Duke.) There have been occasional marriages out of the class—
to actresses, especially, mostly in Edwardian times — and the peers
have been shrewd enough to do what budgerigar breeders
recommend for improving the quality of that avian breed: they ip
in the green’ every so often, by marrying rich American heiresses.
(Even this course is not certain to improve the stock; the very
existence of an heiress suggests some weakness in the stock of the
American families unless the heir was killed or died before
inheriting.) American families with only a single daughter are
regarded with some suspicion among the noblest British familic^
however affluent they may be. Sometimes a marriage is effected, an
for years the words ‘bad blood’ are whispered sotio voee when the
consequences of the union are examined and found wanting-
Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, commented with asperity
once on the facial similarities of the various European families— the
Trauttmansdorffs, the Lobkowiczs, the Auerspergs and the like—
who were all so deeply interrelated as to render them one giant
family. Consuelo noted sourly that breeding ‘could be too much of a
good thing’.

Professor John Maynard Smith, the noted Sussex University
specialist on inbreeding, doubts that any of the known deleterious
effects of consistently dose matings are discernible among the
British peerage. ‘Of course there will be features like receding chins
and prominent noses that will be passed around a bit — just like the
Hapsburg lips in all the Velasquez paintings. Those kinds of
features, which are hereditable of course, do tend to become
noticeable if there is a good deal of intermarriage. You would expect
that.’ (A Duchess de La Rochefoucauld, noticing the striking nasal
resemblance between a prominent French nobleman and an
unknown young woman, commented: ‘God forgives and the world
forgets: but the nose remains.’)

The damaging effects of inbreeding — infertility being the most
dramatically deleterious — would not, Maynard Smith asserts,
become evident unless two conditions had been met: that the group
of peers had only bred among themselves, and that they had bred for
the same number of generations as there are members of the

OF MEN AND MANNERS

287

peerage. Thus if the sons and daughters of the present 900 or so
peers, let us say one of each per peer, married within the group of
I j8oo eligible men and women; and if their offspring did the same;
and the whole group continued to behave so for 1,800 generations —
then, it can fairly be said, the infertility effects of the inbreeding
would demonstrate themselves. But not until then; under present
conditions ‘only noses and lips and chins, size and hair colour and so
on can be expected to show any similarity’.

The sensible marriage policies of successive noble families have
had other effects than the mere transmission of facial effects —
transmission that has brought about the unfortunate term ‘chinless
wonder’ for the most aristocratic young men around. They have
created a small group of Britons who are undoubtedly taller, lankier
and better-looking than the average. Thar an upper-class Briron is
so often so easily recognizable in a crowd owes much to his
breeding: his clothes will represent his budget, of course; but his
height, his slim elegance, his handsome face, his rather pointed,
perhaps slightly receding chin, his longish nose, his wavy hair, his
blue eyes— all these will have been handed down as the result of
generations of sensible weddings between the prettiest repre-
sentatives of older generations of gilded youth. Ugly, fat, baldmg
peers ate rate— save for the life peers and peers of first creation;
flaxen-haired, pink-cheeked and impossibly beautiful children still
tumble from the noble loins of England. Jt is a situation that will
obtain for many generations more, so rigid and impervious are the
rules of the class system in the reaches in which the peerage swims.

Handsome, dashing young men — the phrase ‘Guards Officer’
seems quite naturally attachable. Why is it that the sons of the
British peerage still prefer the Guards 10 any other division of the
British Army? And why, in the Guards, is the Grenadiers still the
favoured regiment? Among the present officers of the ‘First or
Grenadier Regiment of Foot Guards' there are six sons of here-
ditary peers, more than in any other unit of an Army that is still
heavily dependent on the landed and titled families of the country.

Why the Grenadiers? Why not one of the glittering cavalry
regiments, like the I4th/20th King’s Hussars or the I7th/2t5t
Lancers? Why not the traditicmal sentries to the Monarch— the
Household Cavalry of the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals?
The latter has the Army's only non-Royal Duke in uniform as a
member — the young Guy Roxburghc; in 1977 when he was a

288 OF MEN AND MANNERS

captain, he served a grim four months in barracks in Londonderry.
Why not one of the principal infantry regiments — the Royal Scots,
say. First of the Line and immensely proud of the tradition?

From a number of Grenadier officers came admirable and
fascinating suggestions for the regiment’s peculiar position. The
following explanation should be regarded as an amalgam of many
conversations within, and without, the Grenadiers’ messes.

A lot of the young officers like the fact that they are generally
garrisoned in London, and the informality — no uniforms, no
insistence on officers’ mess routine and so on. They have a tradition
of always having a Colonel of the Regiment who is a member of the
Royal Family, which lends a certain tone. There are old and long-
standing connections with the great families. The Grenadiers run
themselves in a way that allows a man to indulge his outside
interests.

Ironically, the recruiting policies they use to attract ‘other ranks’
are considerably easier than even among the socially ‘unspeakable’
Army units like the Engineers and the Signals, since there are no
special technical skills needed to be a guardsman in the Grenadiers.
Whether the consequent difference in backgroimd between the
officers — well-bred, rich, suave young bloods, filled with con-
fidence, loaded with social connections and potential activities in
and around London — and the men — invariably poor unemployed
from Walsall and Stoke and grim old towns of the mucky English
Midlands, men of much lesser intelligence and of a social standing
approximating zero — has any effect on the efficacy of the regiment
as a fighting force, one cannot say. They insist they have ‘quite a
name for battlefield excellence*.

London clubland is another institution in which the peerage is
heavily grounded. Yet while Eton and Christ Church, the
Grenadiers and the better City stockbroking firms that often take
the brighter but more peaceable sons of the shires are managing to
maintain a certain stability, clubland is all at pnee becoming tired
and seedy, full of old stories, never of new tales. Time was when a
noble Lord could not move for annual accounts from Brooks’s or
White's, the Turf, St James’s or Boodle’s. Nowadays the changed
social tendencies of the British upper classes, the relative
impoverishment of some of their number and the widespread
movement of nobility away from the metropolis have started the
death-watch beetles ticking away in the woodwork of some of the

OF MEN AND MANNERS

2S9

mor= vulnerabk clubs: many members prophesy that the London
club is dying on its feet, and that before another two decades are up
the streets south of Piccadiily will be filled wt* shops and offices,
“nd bereft of the bow-windowed mans.ons heavy w.th tobacco
smoke, the bouciuets of fine clarets and all the atmosphere of

”B“om thetond World War there were about tao of th«e
sacred preserves tn

membership. Beefsteak, where all the

lOQ guineas o ® j existence of only one table in the

waiters are called Chat luncheon

dmmg-room ensures that y _ essentially a

neighbour. The js a reserved, bolt-hole club,

clubbable man s clu , clubbable of the peers, to

no fewer than sixteen of the
judge by He, instead, was a stalwart of the

mstnutions, . jj^ne Cricket and a host of other sponing

Savage, the Arts, clubland clubs to which his fellow

and ;„e oddly absent from his list. Harold

peers sttll belong in dro ^

Macmillan, who decltn ^ ^

bettet clubs in L'’"“ j and conversation, the Athenaeum

the Beefsteak and Ptatt ^^^^^^^,1 wisdom, the Turf tor mixing
for gathering the irui and Buck's tor mixing with his

with his horsey pais, u ^^caping from the common herd
Tory cronies, the "®' ° special charaaets which endear them to
Although Ihe " aaions, there ts a certain similarity about
Britons of various pe proving less and less charming to

most of them ""‘f ' aa„linity. now officially frowned upon, still
their memberships. M ^^rs Thatcher became leader

dominates the.t “P'" female members of the Royal Family

of the Conservative Fat at the Carlcon; until raaemly

were allowed to ‘ „ from telephoning one of London’s

females were fc'^falobs.andwetebrusquelytoldsoby an irate

morecelebrateddtmng deep-brown tod cream rooms

steward if ever 'hey accoutrements, octagonal card tables,

still display rLckgaimnon. cigar holders and s„nff tpaes,

half-played g»”'« “ “ baihmoms. Tales mvanably „u,r „„,y „
moustache combs Faraday, dead for three days under bis

male membets-Michael

OF MLK AND MANNERS

290

copy of the newspaper before he was discovered by the Athenaeum
staff; the colonel at the Oriental who set the same chair on fire with
his cigar fourteen times in a single year; the porters whose task it was
to wake sleeping peers each hour to assure them they had not died
while asleep; the plate washer who only wore his false teeth on
special occasions and who insisted he was the rightful Marquess of
Queensberry and had to be given a week off so that he would not
badger Princess Anne’s fiance, Mark Phillips, when he stayed at his
club in the days prior to his wedding.

At Brooks’s, the venerable Whig Club which has continued in
business on St James’s Street since 1764, membership stands at a
fairly healthy 1,200 — though the number was boosted somewhat by
the closure of the St James’s Club and the transfer of some of its
members to Brooks’s. Four Dukes belong, and the peerage (with
seventy-three Lords, at the last count) is generally more heavily
represented than at any other institution except White’s, its High
Tory relation, or the Turf Club. White’s, in 1980, had 144 peers?
including six Dukes; the Turf had 120 peers, including a round
dozen Dukes— nearly half of the total number on the rolls. But the
age of the members is worrisome for the club officials: three of the
committee members are nonagenarians, and the average age of all
the members is fifty-five. Watching the early morning activities of
the determined Brooks’s men is to witness something like a
Serengeti ritual: the ponderous progress of the old bull elephants as
they stroll around the game reserve, some distance from the main
herd, walking endlessly till they die. Ancient and grizzled men,
their scraggy necks hanging down over boiled and starched collars,
indolently read from the columns of The Times or the Sporting Ltfe.
They talk not, neither do they hum: deadly silence prevails, except
for the ticking of the clocks and the crackle of the coal fires. A few
club servants wander listlessly about, polishing brasswate and
setting dusty pictures straight. The bar opens with just three
members tempted in. The card tables are unoccupied. No clatter of
backgammon chips disturbs the peace. London busies herself
outside; inside Brooks’s, privilege slumbers on.

‘Mmd you, luncheon is always pretty crowded,’ coughs Colonel
Warner, the breezy librarian, ‘and dinners aren’t bad now,
especially since ladies are allowed m. In fact letting the ladies in has
been very beneficial for the club; we have all sorts of coming-of-age
parties, golden weddings and suchlike; they wouldn’t have allowed
that in the old days.’

OF MEN AND MANNERS

291

The Society of Dilettantes meets five times a year in the Brooks’s
famous Great Subscription Room, preserving the mystique of
literary and artistic nobility and breeding; it is a more secret coven
than the mere Brooks’s membershtp, and dislikes publicity. But one
gathers it is in almost as poor a condition as the club in virhich its
members meet — sad, ruminant, sunk in a brown study of nostalgia.
The club is still exclusive, of course, the membership is Very
limited: it’s not a question of money, you know, more of one’s
reputed conduct and one’s merit.’ But it is ages since there was a
seven-year waiting list at one club — there is none to speak of at
Brooks’s these days, and the time when potential members
trembled at the thought of those two black balls being cast into the
pot to bar them from membership are long gone. The black ball is as
unnecessary as a revolving door at Brooks’s; and at nearly every
other London club besides. TTie peers still haunt the sombre halls
and idle by the Zoffanys and the Reynolds portraits when on their
monthly three-days visits for an appearance at the House; but other
members who might have lent style, if not rank, are now called
home to the suburbs of an evening, and can only drop in for the
occasional luncheon now and then; and anyway the food is not so
good, and the staff is getting pretty slipshod, and there was that
bomb set off outside by the IRA in ’74, old boy. . . .

‘Staff is a problem, I must admit,’ said a club steward. ‘You just
cannot get servants these days. Why, we’ve got a Nigerian here
now— he’s kept downstairs, you know— and there’s an Israeli, and a
girl from Egypt. Even so, staff costs run to £too, 000 a year, and go
on rising all the time. It is just not the time to run a gentleman's club
any more. If the peers left us, we’d be in a proper fix.’

If their institutions are in disorder, the traditional pastimes could
hardly be in better shape. Foxhunting, despite the attempts of the
anti-bloodsports group, continues on its merry way. Polo, helped to
no small extent by Lord Cowdray and until recently by the Duke of
Edinburgh, flourishes. Shooting, stalking, salmon fishing — though
made expensive by the need to cater to the game-hungry Americans
and Germans — ride a never-breaking crest. The hobbies of the
individual nobles are allowed their fullest expression: the Duke of
Hamilton can afford to collect motorcycles and racing cars; the
Lord O’Neill can build mighty model-railway layouts and play with
them from dawn till dusk; the Marquess of Cholmondeley can
collect his tin soldiers and fight mock battles; the Duke of

292 OF MEN AND MANNERS

Devonshire can scour the London auctions for exquisite paintings;
the Marquess of Bristol can continue his associations with the fallen
monarchs of Europe. Self-indulgence is an understandable right of
the members of a group, many of whom have little else left with
which to occupy themselves — only hobbies, pastimes, sport, and
worrying about the future of their fortunes, their lands and their
titles.

Such is the face of the British nobility. It is a face somewhat
wrinkled with age and care, but full of the old character that lent it
its original allure. Some of the cosmetics ate becoming a little more
expensive, and the cracks in the make-up more difficult to hide. But
the accent and the tone is still just about right, the teeth are in fair
shape and the eyes are only a little dulled in the harsh lights of the
plangent demands for equality, the plaintive whining of the body
politic below. It is a face cast down with concern for the future,
occasionally cast back to spot the pursuing enemy, yet often held
high again with a toss of fierce pride. But it is probably not the face
of nobility that needs so much attention; more sickly still is the
ennobled body, and most vulnerable of all the heart — the ancient
engine that has hitherto given such impetus and drive to the titled
few, the Chamber of the House of Lords. That, if true diagnosis be
made, is where the real sickness has its root.

THE FATAL WEAKNESS

Mankind will not always consent to allow a fat, elderly
gentleman to fill the first place, without insisting upon hiS doing
something to deserve it. I do not undertake to say in what
parncularyearherediurydisiiDctioaswi!] be abolished' but to
the philosopher . . . the ultimate fate of such distinctions is
already decided.

John Stuart Mill, published anonymously
ID the Examner, igjz

To tid Parliament of the hereditary pnociple would be i big
advance towards rational democracy.

GuarAtm, ipdS

Heredity no longer commands assent as a sufficient condition
for a seat in Parliament.

Thi Tuner, 196S

What’s wrong in Btiumis mote what’s wrong at the top than
what’s wtoog with the bottom. They haven't been served very
well by their elite

William PTaff of the Hudson Institute,
(Quoted in the Netn York Timti, 1976

Their Lordships are an amazingly stubborn crew. For more than a
century and a half their ancient rights have been subjected to the
fiercest challenge, their futures plunged into the deepest doubt,
their excesses and their activities held up to scorn. The whole
character of titlcdom has been changed during the twentieth
century, and more and more exemplars of mercantilism have been
promoted to noble status, while the reign of the landowners has
been scissored to a minimum. The House of Lords, bastion of the
peerage power, has been all but emasculated, its power successively
cut back, its membership vastly widened, the degree of respect it
commands sadly diminished. The influence of the peerage on the
daily lives of Britons is very much less than it was only fli^y years
ago, even though there are far more titled men and women on the
boards of directors of the country’s largest companies than either
mathematics, or the strict exaction of talent, would suggest. The
institutions which these privileged few hold dearest — their land,
their exclusive educational and recreational preserves, the business
of the state’s defence, or its diplomacy — are no longer so exclusive
and reserved for the higher ranks of titlcdom.

The hereditary peers arc, in short, the victims of a massive attack
of well-seated woodwoiro, riddled with Dutch elm disease, thick
with the death-watch beetle. And yet, as Richard Crossman might
have remarked in that celebrated Fabian tract of 1950, here they all
are stilly here, in the centre of a London dominated by the interests
of extra-territorial efficiency and wealth— the Arab sheiks, the
Eurocrats, the American bosses of the multi-nationals — is the only
legislative assembly remaining in the modem world where the
majority of the members ate selected by right of birth, and birth
alone. Here despite the constant strivings of zealous Socialists who
have brought the Welfare State and the nationalized monopolies
and the emerging systems of camprehensive education; yet here

THE FATAL WEAKNESS 397

old system by some entrenchedly Tory government with a vast
majority, or a very occasional an^d out of affection, or the use of
the Monarch's tights to create hereditary titles for the elevation of
some furure Royal offspriag — astde from those possibilities —
hereditary peerages seem destined never to be created again.

But still the coimtry seems unwilling to curb any further the
powers of the House of Lords — curbs which svould, of themselves,
go some long way towards removing the anachronism that Their
Lordships, in more candid and port*$oaked moments, admit
themselves to be. A writer in the Observtrt Rudolf Klein, summed
up the essential reasoning in an article in 1965:

‘The need to reform the I_ords is accepted, in theory at least, by
all parties. But in practice, it suits both the Tory and the Labour
parlies to keep the present ramshackle structure more or Jess
intact — with just the occasional repair to the mullioned windows
and a touch of paint to the crumbling fajade. ... [A crumbling
fapde, Mr Klein might have noted, had he been writing a decade
later, that was costing more than four million pounds a year to
maintain.] Labour is terrified in case a refonned House of Lords
becomes respectable: the fact that it is so obviously an anachronism
ensures that the Conservative peers will use their powers
circumspectly. The Tories have no strong incentive to change a
slcuation which suits them well enough. . . . [As well it might, with
their built-in majority of about ten to one.] But of course, all this
W'as as true in 1910 — the first occasion when a clash between
Commons and Lords produced a curb on the Upper Chamber’s
powers— as it is today. And it may be over-optimistic in the extreme
to hope, that should there be another crisis, anything more than an
emergency repair will be carried out to the Gothic structure of the
Lords.’

How right Mr Klein’s predictions were. Time and again the
legislative machinery of the country has become embroiled in ‘new’
programmes for reforming the House of Lords. As recently as the
winter of 1976, when Their Lordships had the temerity to obstruct
the nationalization programme of a Labour Government for the
basic reasons that the Government was in a minority and thus, in
the view of the Lords’ Conservative bosses, not representative of
the true feelings of the people, the row broke our again; as this is
being tt-riitcn both parties have committees u-asting their time
discussing new proposals for reform. Little is expected to come of
either, so firmly wedded is Britain still to the unwritten principles of

29 $ the fatal weakness

disguised oligarchy and to the God-given rights of the upper
classes.

It would be tedious to run through either the history of various
reform measures, or the proposals of today, so chimerical do they
look in the harsh glare of global realities. In summary, the labour
Party objects, not just to the existence of an hereditary right to
legislate, as one would expect, but to the continued existence o
bicameral parliament. An Upper — or a second — Chamber is always
bound to be a force for the dilution and obstruction of radicalism,
the Left contends; thus real change is slow to eventuate, is
perpetually frustrated, and legislation becomes distant from the
popular will. Real socialism will not be permitted to attack the
problems inherent in British society until one Chamber, elected by
the people, sets in motion tough laws to allow such battles to begin.
Abolish the House of Lords, abolish the second Chamber, bring the
process of lawmaking back to the people to whom the law belongs.

The Tory argument is less distina. There are those of the right,
like Enoch Powell, who question the rights of twentieth-century
man, a mere upstart, to tinker with the constitutional arrangements
of the foregoing seven hundred years. What, he wonders, if we are
wrong? What a terrible responsibility, to have wrecked the
machinery that has served this island kingdom so very well for so
very long. A timid argument, perhaps, a template for Conservative
philosophy, but, not surprisingly in a country so weighed down
with historical responsibilities, a persuasive one. It was in fact an
‘unholy’ alliance between Mr Michael Foot, of the Labour Left,
and Mr Powell, that effectively wrecked the last real plan for
‘democratizing’ the Lords in 1968. Foot did not want a reformed
Chamber that had such wide powers as to result in the dampening of
radical ardour in the resulting combined House; and Powell did not
want to tinker with a House that had been operating so well and so
blamelessly for so very long. Moderates of both parties who agreed
in principle with the need for some reform thus saw the whole mass
of their proposals torpedoed by the conflicting conservators of the
extreme wings.

There are other Tory positions, though. A Conservative
committee, chaired by Lord Home of the Hirsel (whose political
ambitions have necessitated his sporting three sets of names — The
Earl of Home, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and Baron Home of the
Hirsel — in rapid succession) looked into such questions as what to
do with the life peers and peers of first creation (i.e. those who are

THE FATAL WEAKNESS

Still the original title

much before the Second Wor > -iiow the hereditary peers to

peers while fairly elderly)! whether vote in

continue to sit until they die ' ” ^ of appointed men of

proceedings, whether to include a leavcnmg
distinction and so on. reform becomes a maner

If matters do begin to move aga , committee study and

for parliamentary debate rat an all-party agreement

press comment, then it seems p revising Chamber of fairer

will somehov, be forged to «eate^ f„ been

composition than at present. ^ removal of the long-

introduced— the creation of li neercsses in their own right,

standing prohibition of women, e , ^ . delaying powers of the

frornattendingtheHoutetthelj^nng^ bn,

Lords and so on-that ,o permit peers to

su^iiistogly little activity, ts * 8 a, d,e

renounce their titles for life. feared by many critics as

centrepiece of the 1963 {,„per House; young and able

likely to hasten the ‘*'” 1 ^ |",i,ies and tun for the

peers, the critics said, would cast off theit tmes.^^^

Ckimmons, leaving the Lords vanned age. They need

peopled with senile ,, Jove affair with titledom

not have worried. Britons have --Jofthe seven hundred-odd

than the authors of the Act imagine , „aluy fifteen have: the

who were now legally able to ’ dequately to reform *e

remainder either claim they can g . | ds needs no reforming

Lords from within, or themselves. The Utter

and they love the situation m which mey one-nme

view may be defensible; the former, ® comforts of

radicals who are now happily *”* v„dicalism as one would

Victorian ivory towers and di^Uy a ^

expect from converts to the EstabU headed by that most

The fifteen who have ,,j,eDCOple,TonyBenn.He

celebrated advocate of the Berm, son of the wealthy

was bom plain Anthony Neil We<^ official dignity. His father
Baronet, but totally lacking m “‘j! ^^^^^ent mandarin and an
became, however, a successful ronstimencies and for two

equally successful MP for a variety ot co Anthony was

parties-first Liberal. Westminster School and

seventeen and just on the ® s given the Viscounty of

taking his place in the Army, his father was gi

300 THE FATAL WEAKNESS

Stansgate in the county of Essex; from plain schoolboy Anthony,
Benn went to war as the Honourable Anthony, and proceeded, thus
dignified, to New College, Oxford, and eventually, to the House of
Commons as Labour MP for Bristol, South East.

In i960, the first Viscount Stansgate died and, such was the
unshakeable process of dignification in those days, the Honourable
Anthony Wedgwood Benn became the second Viscount, instantly
debarred from the House of Commons. He unsuccessfully
petitioned the House of Lords to be allowed to renounce his title.
He was ousted from his Bristol seat. There had to be an election in
May 1961. The newyoung Viscount stood and was handsomely re-
elected by his people. The Election Court, however, took a dim
view: it was illegal, the Court ruled, for a peer to sit in the
Commons, and Stansgate must move over. The incensed Viscount
did indeed move over, but began immediately to campaign for the
law that was eventually to be passed in 1963, permitting him and his
fellow peers to disclaim for life. The very moment the Act received
the Royal Assent, Stansgate requested his common title back,
became Anthony Wedgwood Benn, stood for Bristol South East,
and won. His political career with the Labour party proceeded
almost as fast as he was able to discard the trappings of his old
honours: first he paced his Christian name down to the mote
familiar ‘Tony’; then petitioned the almanacs of distinction— Who's
Who, Burke’s, Debrett's—io delete his name, or at least delete
references to his public-school background and his entitlement; and
finally made an abortive attempt at ‘democratizing’ his accent,
rendering it classless. His most recent scheme aims to achieve the
creation of 1,000 life peers who will then take their seats only to vote
for their own extinction. He remains the determined champion of
the meritocrat, firmly set against hereditary privilege, and, unlike
many of his party colleagues who are awed by Royalty and nobility
and the trappings of archaic elegance, a stalwart to his principles,
unshakeable and isolated.

Well, not quite isolated. There is the Earl of Durham, who
disclaimed his title so he could sit In the House of Commons —
except that he wanted to call himself ‘Lord Lambton’ rather than
the ‘Antony Lambton’ he should correctly be. The Daily Telegraph
was alone in pointing out that Lambton could not enjoy the best
of both worlds, and be both a Lord (his courtesy title, and the one
under which he was elected, he claimed) and a corrunoner at the same
time. In any case Lambton’s political career came unstuck for other

THE FATAL WEAKNESS

301

reasons in .973. -

whole question of how the chilclrM P Should they

their titles should be knosvn is because their

forgotheircourtesytitles.orthcs y • • jUgjj pjgcedence

father is no longer a peer? Or should they

and take up their courtesy titles if they i j . once their

right to reclaim what is essentially on y actually devotes his

father has died? The Earl Marshal of Engl"^ actu ^
time to such pressing matters, and has r peers who

can use their titles and precedence if t y before they

disc, aim may no. rcvcr. .0 ^s, .tU^ *cy mcd^bc ^
acceded to the peerage which they

complicated, but is merely pointless.) -mtnentlv sensible

A^d sriU no. alone. Lord tr’^Xrp^ciple X-'
writer with a celebrated distaste for t —iHlv disrespectful

once managed to earn him— for became and still is

remark about the Queen— a slap roun t e ^ pougias-Home to
John Grigg. The Earl of Home ^ ^ ^jn and now,

stand in a by-election and take up the Pf«n'iersh p ^
no longer electable but still t®"tP*tat»ve y ac , ^ jgsurrected life

rightful hunting ground in the Hous^ Hailsham did much the
peer, Lord Home of the rhgn reverted to the life

same— turned to become Qtnotm HoBg, he expires, his

peerage of Lord Hailsham of St Maty e • f^jmer title, the
present title will go with him to the pougUs Hogg

viscounty, will arise again in the person o Viscount,

who, unless he wants also to disclaim, eM could pursue his
The Earl of Sandwich disclaimed so ^ ^^^hur Silkin, son

Commons career as Victor Montagu, ut i ’ . resulted in

of the Labour peer who introduced the similar reasons,

the passage of the 1963 Act, did *c ,^ith politics:

Others disclaimed for reasons that t QrdBeaverbrook,oui

Sir Max Aitken declined to become another ^ become

of ‘respect for my father’; Sir Hugh came reason, ‘filial

the second Lord Fraser of AUander or . j^e title of fifth
respect’. Charles FitzRoy decided agamsi m hteenth-century

BaronSouthamptonbecausehehad.hesai , instead

reluctance to support an ‘appropriate ^ Malta. Larry

supports his third wife at home on t e «ays he has a radical

CoUier.athrice-marrieddoctorlivingm s L Monkswell;

distaste tor callirg himself the fourth Bato

302 THE FATAL WEAKNESS

Christopher Reiih allows that he could not possibly match the
legendary image of his father, the BBC’s first and unforgetta e
manager, Lord Reith. And another doctor, Alan Sanderson, quotes
his ‘retiring disposition’ as the reason for not accepting the title o
the second Lord Sanderson of Ayot. In April 1977 Trevor
Lewis decided that the 1,500 acres of Pembrokeshire he inherited
on the death of his father, the third Lord Merthyr, was
enough — the title would only make him feel ‘rather a fraud . His
father, a guiding light in legal and rural circles, spent the best part 0
ten years campaigning for Parliament to fix the date of Easter.
Trevor Lewis has no such ambitions, though admitted he would not
stand in the way of his son one day reclaiming the title: at the time 0
the disclaimer, Mr Lewis’s son was seven weeks old.

It is unlikely, then, that the Aa really altered the composition of
either the Lords or the Commons toany significant degree— and the
rapidity with which men like Hailsham and Home crept back into
the Lords after their Commons careers had ended might well
suggest that the interest of some politicians in the Act’s provisions
was more for the supplying of a platform than the reform of British
parliamentary democracy. One peer, Lord Avebury, had m
December 1970 to make the agonizing decision between renounc-
ing his title and standing again as a Liberal MP in a very narrowly
marginal seat, and keeping his title and going to the House of Lords.
He took the latter course, joining the small but vociferous band of
Liberals there, a band that included the fourth Earl, ‘Johnny
Kimberley (in 1979, he left the Liberals for the Conservatives), a
relation of the late P. G. Wodchouse, a man who has been five times
married, a recovered alcoholic who is now a leading light of the
National Council on Alcoholism, and father to a policeman. Lord
Avebury is not politically notable to any great extent — though,
given the appalling electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party, all the
Liberal peers are probably more noticeable in the Lords than if they
were merely unsuccessful campaigners for the Commons once
every five years, at cleaion time.

The inclusion of women — both as life peeresses and as peeresses
in their own right— in the Upper Oiamber had to come, of course;
and It is true that women play a greater part in the House than their
still small numbers might suggest. But their efforts, rarely reported
in the press and scarcely noted if they speak outside the chamber,
could almost be called wasted. Their inclusion has proved as
meaningless as the dissoiters’ right to disclaim. It cannot be

THE FATAL WEAKNESS

304

Well, of course, not everyone will agree that Japan is a healthier
place to live in now. It is firmly bound to the ugly excesses of
consumer insanities, its cities arc unbelievably polluted, physically
ugly, its peace and sanctity arc threatened. But on the other hand
the country is enjoying prosperity tmdreamed of two decades ago;
with the peers safe in their old clubs, stripped of their power and
their wealth and rendered into political eunuchs, the old Japanese
class system is nearly dead. The Emperor continues, revered and
respected as a symbol of continuing Japan; but the legions of
ennobled Princes, Marquesses, Counts, Viscounts and Barons are
no more — to the general good, it is now accepted, of modem
Japanese society. Pollution would have happened, peers or no
peers.

Could Britain not look hard at what an equally old and wise
society on the other side of the globe has achieved, and learn,
however bitter the pill, a lesson? What, indeed, would be the real
effects of passing laws stripping our peers of any special fights or
recognition? If all honours were to be dropped, if the House of
Lords were to be abolished, if uxation were to bring ownership of
property down to levels of reasonable equality and trim the fat from
the mighty holdings of land and treasure enjoyed by a tiny minority
now— what really would happen? Would the Monarch be
threatened? Certainly not. Would the great houses rumble down
and the splendid gardens regress to weedy jungles? Not if some
national institutions were established to prevent it. Would there be
revolution in the towns and shires, widespread grief at the upsetting
of the hymnal doctrine that:

The rich man in his castle,

The poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly,

And ordered their estate ....

or would, on the other hand, matters that suffer from the class
system improve out of all recognition? Would the barriers that
separate ‘us’ from ‘them’ come down almost overnight? Would the
kind of divisions that make many an Englishman experience a
feeling of bitter envy when he sees a Rolls-Royce, while an
American admiringly gloa^ at the posabilily that he might one day
own one— would those kinds of attitudes and diversions gradually
fade? Would the sovereignty ofthe people become rightly absolute,

THE FATAL WEAKNESS 305

and would the law pass totally into the hands of the masses, rather
than some portion of it be retained in the icalous guardianship of a
highly titled few? Quite probably the answers to all these questions
would be yes — Britain would be made healthier and more vital by
the abolition of its peerage system, and the sooner the better.

It is hard to have to utter sentiments like these. Throughout my
researches and travels I have come across men and women who,
while ennobled and symbolic of ancient prerogatives and comely
elegance, have been unfailingly kind and courteous, whose lives are
in many cases pillars of responsibility and dignity, who look after
their acres, or their houses, or their people with cheerful love and
affection. There are few robber Barons, few evtl Earls, few
damnable Dukes. I agree entirely with the remark, from lolanthe,
quoted at the beginning of Chapter t ; ‘the Peerage is not destitute of
virtue.’ Far from it. But it does not belong here any more. Privilege
based on birth is a concept more akin to medieval times, when the
known world was smaller in extent, when political development was
limited, when the peasantry could, perhaps iustihably, have been
regarded as in need of being looked after.

But, naive and unseemly it may be to say so, the world is not like
medieval England any longer. For Britain to retain respect among
the thrusting, grasping, assertive countries of the globe that now
surround her, for her to win the admiration of the ^ngladeshi and
the Venezuelan, the Kenyan and the Michigander, and for her to
win the friendship of the new generations of leaders springing up
from every classroom of the twentieth century, she must develop a
machinery of government that is in tunc with the demands of the
century, and to the needs of the people — not just of Perthshire or
the Borders or Wiltshire, but of the world at large. On Spaceship
Earth, ennoblement by reason of fortuitous birth has no place: the
British nobility, decent a body of men and womenas well they may
be, have outlived their usefulness, and must go quietly, out by the
back door.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RCFEREKCE

Almanack de Gotha (final edition), 1944-

Burke’i Landed Gentry tVolamts I, II and III (igth edition), 1965.
Burke'i Peerage and Baronetage iiofth edition), 1970.

The Complete Peerage, Volumes I-XII, Si Catherine’s Press,

1910-1959-

Debretl'i Peerage and Baronetage, 1976-
Doifs Peerage, Baronetage and Kmghtoge, 1909.

HistoriePeerage of England, Sir Harris Nicolas, J ohn Murray, 1 857-
The Poyalty, Peerage and Nobility of the World, Annuaire dc
France, 1977.

Whitaker’s Almanac, 1980.

Who's Who, 19S0.

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