Who is british aristocracy

But numerous attempts, via private bills, to abolish male primogeniture for hereditary titles and peerages have been unsuccessful.

Now five daughters of peers have taken their case to the European Court of Human Rights. The right for all hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords was abolished in the late s. Most of its or so members are now life peers.

However, there are still 92 hereditary peers. Only one is a woman, the Countess of Mar. When a hereditary peer dies or retires, his peers — excuse the pun — hold a by-election to choose a replacement. Some would argue that the fact that women are barred from this process is an issue of little import.

There is scant appetite for reform of the House of Lords and those who wish to do so are more likely to call for abolishing it entirely or, at least, the right of any hereditary peer to hold decision-making power over the country thanks to an accident of birth.

But it does matter. In a country that, in , celebrated years since women first began to get the vote, it is a bizarre throwback that aristocratic daughters do not have the same rights as their brothers.

The tradition has been maintained even in the face of dramatic changes elsewhere in gender-related legislation. Women are making slow but steady inroads into parliament , but they still represent just one-quarter of the House of Lords.

To sequester a significant proportion of the seats in the upper house for men does not just perpetuate gender inequality, but also militates against the benefits to debate and decision-making that greater diversity brings. If a British business in said it was reserving an eighth of its jobs for men, it would be laughed out of court. There were no legal distinctions among these ranks, but it was generally understood that a duke would be far wealthier and more important than a viscount or baron.

In the House of Lords consisted of 23 dukes, 18 marquesses, earls, 22 viscounts, and barons, plus 28 Irish representative peers and 16 Scottish representative peers. Knights and baronets hereditary knights are not peers and not technically members of the British aristocracy; nor are members of the landed gentry without peerages, although some were very rich and owned landed estates larger than many peers.

Virtually all peers were males, although in some very old Scottish peerages, women could succeed to the title and, very occasionally, a prominent woman would be given a peerage in her own right such as baroness Burdett-Coutts, the famous nineteenth-century philanthropist.

Women peers were, however, not allowed to sit in the House of Lords until The very largest landowners in Britain almost always though not invariably held peerages, and the highest ranks in the peerage, generally speaking, owned more land, and derived more income from their land, than the lower ranks. A landed aristocrat who greatly increased his landed wealth was often advanced in status to match his wealth.

Perhaps the clearest case of this is the Grosvenor family who became baron Grosvenor in , Earl Grosvenor in , Marquess of Westminster in , and, finally, Duke of Westminster in He is said to own , houses and business properties in central London including most of Oxford Street , the real market value of which must be almost incalculable.

Old-fashioned merchants, contractors, and professional men were also a part of this extended system, which was viewed by a later generation as the quintessence of venality and corruption. After around the s, such open self-enrichment became virtually impossible, and the only legitimate incomes recognised by the aristocracy or others were derived from the ownership and development of land and other resources or from business and professional life rather than from government sinecures.

The most notable non-landed group to receive peerages were, certainly, the Lord Chancellors, that is, the chief judge and head of the British judicial system. All were, by definition, notable barristers, although many, like Lord Eldon, Mansfield, and Ellenborough, had also acquired large landed estates from their lucrative fees at the bar.

For about a century after the beginning of the industrial revolution, the new men of wealth it generated made virtually no impact upon the aristocracy or upon new peerage creations.

On average, about 4 or 5 new peerages were created annually in the century after , or perhaps in the period , but, apart from the 20 or 25 Lord Chancellors, not more than another 20 went to men engaged in a middle-class form of wealth-making.

Occasionally a London banker like Lord Carrington or several members of the Baring family of enormously wealthy and powerful merchant bankers would be rewarded with a peerage after serving in Parliament and acquiring a significant landed estate, but even this was rare. So, too, was the awarding of a peerage to a writer and Indian official like Lord Macaulay, the great historian.

Even rarer were peerages granted to industrialists or manufacturers. Despite the effects of the industrial revolution, the first manufacturer to be given a peerage was Edward Strutt, a wealthy cotton manufacturer in Derbyshire and Liberal MP, who was created baron Belper in Protestant dissenters a very large percentage of the northern business class , Roman Catholics, and practising Jews were never offered peerages until the late nineteenth century.

For instance, Queen Victoria declined a recommendation to offer a peerage in the s to Sir Moses Montefiore, the most prominent British Jew of the time, although in the situation had changed sufficiently for Sir Nathaniel Rothschild, the head of the renowned merchant bank and a long-serving MP, to be given a peerage as Lord Rothschild.

Both William E. Gladstone during his Premiership and, more significantly, Lord Salisbury during his Conservative governments and now created many peers drawn from business and professional backgrounds.

Nearly one-half of new peerage creations in this period were awarded to businessmen, the others going to other government ministers and MPs, professionals, generals and admirals, colonial administrators, etc. Rubinstein Not every significant business family was ennobled during this period, but certainly a great many were. First, many peerages continued to be awarded to leading politicians, increasing numbers of whom were not rich or even affluent.

What attitude would they take to peerage creations and whom would they ennoble? Ramsay MacDonald gave peerages to four middle-class Labour supporters in and to 20 more during his Labour government.

It did, however, broaden the basis of ennoblements and in gave a peerage to the first genuinely poor man ever to receive one, Henry Snell Lord Snell a Labour MP and Secretary of the London School of Economics who had begun life as an agricultural labourer. The great magnates and tycoons of the industrial and commercial revolutions were wealthy men in their own right who owned the assets of the companies they controlled.

Increasingly, however, the chairmen of the large-scale companies were managers who did not own the assets of these companies and were unrelated to the families which did. While they were, of course, well-paid, they were often not rich in the sense in which this is commonly understood.

Not surprisingly, there was always a very large majority of Conservatives in the House of Lords, which still retained and retains the right to delay non-financial legislation for one year.

If the Lords was not regarded simply as an appendage of the Tory party even when Labour was in power , more Labour peerages had to be created, but many trade union and Labour figures refused to accept hereditary peerages, either on grounds of principle or because they regarded their own claims to become part of the hereditary aristocracy as ludicrous.

In response, in the MacMillan government introduced the most far-reaching change in the British aristocracy in recent times by initiating the creation of life peerages for both men and women. Theoretically, the Queen can create a life peerage of a higher rank, but none has ever been created, even for retiring Prime Ministers. An even more extraordinary change brought about by the Act was that life peerages could be given to women, who were enabled to take their seats in the House of Lords for the first time.

The best-known case of someone taking advantage this provision is Anthony Wedgwood Benn Tony Benn , the leader of the far left of the Labour party during the s and s, who inherited the title of Viscount Stansgate from his father. One of the changes stemming from the coming to power of Harold Wilson and the Labour party in , however, was that no new hereditary peerages were created by Labour.

Margaret Thatcher broke this pattern by creating four new hereditary peerages in the mids along with many life peerages , although none was created by John Major.

However Major did create one baronetcy, that is an hereditary knighthood. In contrast, however, the number of new life peerages have escalated dramatically, especially under Wilson, as this Table of the creation of new peerages in this century, by Prime Minister, shows from Butler and Butler ; House of Lords Library :.

These figures can be misleading as dissolution honours created by an outgoing ministry fall, in fact, into the following ministry, e.

Douglas Home. Excluding the creation of Law Lords and advancements in ranks. More than a quarter of all Scottish estates of more than 5, acres are held by a list of aristocratic families. In total they hold some 2. Many noble landholdings are among the most prestigious and valuable in the world. In addition to his 96,acre Reay Forest, the 23,acre Abbeystead estate in Lancashire and the 11,acre Eaton estate in Cheshire, the Duke of Westminster owns large chunks of Mayfair and Belgravia in London.

These holdings attract some of the highest rental values in the world. One legal provision unique to England and Wales has been of particular importance to these aristocratic landlords: over the centuries they built many millions of houses, mansion blocks and flats, which they sold on a leasehold rather than freehold basis. This is unearned income par excellence. Built property aside, land ownership itself is still the source of exorbitant wealth, as agricultural land has increased in value.

Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, the 18th Duke of Norfolk, is still the premier duke of England, as well as being the Earl Marshal, the Hereditary Marshal of England, a member of the Lords and the holder of nine other titles. Many of those who have ceded their homes to the National Trust or to a charitable trust of their own devising with all the concomitant tax advantages still occupy their ancestral pads, with the added benefit of modern plumbing and wiring.

The country-house business is in fine fettle. True, the owners of lesser homes face significant challenges and a few peers have decided to downsize. Grand homes such as Chatsworth, Woburn and Longleat attract many thousands of visitors, while the stately homes that survived in private hands up until are virtually all still in the same private hands today, and many peers continue their annual peregrination from one well-appointed palace to another.

The Buccleuchs, for instance, have the rose-coloured sandstone palace of Drumlanrig, in Dumfries and Galloway, as their main home, but they spend winter months at the much-enlarged hunting lodge, Bowhill, in the Borders, and at Boughton in Northamptonshire, an 11,acre estate that includes five villages and a stately home that hosts artworks by Van Dyck, El Greco and Gainsborough.

Habits and obsessions have barely changed. They play polo and love guns, horses and hounds. The 10th Duke of Beaufort was master of his eponymous hunt for 60 years and the hunt still meets regularly at Badminton, Gloucestershire. Emma, Duchess of Rutland, hostess of the Belvoir hunt and countless shooting parties , is so committed to making shooting a central attraction at Belvoir that she toured all the best shoots in the land and published her rhapsody to hunting in Shooting: A Season of Discovery.

H ow have the aristocracy achieved such a remarkable recovery of their fortunes? First, in common with their ancestors, they have systematically, repeatedly and successfully sought to avoid tax.

The 18th-century satirist Charles Churchill wrote words that might have been the common motto of the aristocracy:. If he succeeds in ordering them so as to secure this result, then, however unappreciative the commissioners of Inland Revenue or his fellow taxpayers may be of his ingenuity, he cannot be compelled to pay an increased tax. His fellow peers took this principle to heart. Nobody pays more tax than they have to. Extraordinarily, in the Court of Appeal agreed.

This tax loophole was closed in the budget. The primary means of squirrelling away substantial assets so as to preserve them intact and deliver a healthy income for aristocratic descendants without bothering the taxman is the trust. Countless peers with major landholdings and stately homes have put all their assets into discretionary trusts, thereby evading both public scrutiny and inheritance tax.

Income is subject to tax, but the patrimonial asset remains intact. Legally, he was quite correct.