peerage

peerage. The formal body of aristocracy, distinguished by titles and by the right to sit in the House of Lords. Though the rank of earl preceded the Conquest, it was hardly necessary to define the peerage closely until the House of Lords developed as a regular element in Parliament in the 13th cent. To the ranks of baron and earl were added duke (1337), marquis (1385), and viscount (1440). The peerage remained small until the end of Elizabeth's reign, when there were just over 50 English peers, but the impecuniosity of the early Stuarts led them to sell titles and by 1641 there were more than 130 peers. Apart from attendance in Parliament, their main privileges were access to the monarch and the right to trial by the House of Lords. By the Act of Union of 1707 the Scottish peerage was closed, sixteen representative peers elected to the House of Lords at Westminster, and a new peerage of Great Britain instituted. After 1801, the Irish peerage was severely limited, 28 representative peers elected, and a new peerage of the United Kingdom established. From 1780, the number of peers increased greatly as bankers, industrialists, scientists, and men of letters were ennobled to augment the landed aristocracy. The greatest change however was the introduction of life peerages from 1958. By 1993 there were more than 1,000 peers, 758 of them hereditary and 382 life peers. Those bishops who sit in the Lords do so, not as peers, but as lords of Parliament. Hereditary peers were deprived of their seats in the Lords in 1999 by the Labour government.

J. A. Cannon