with the exception of the right to sit in the House of Lords and its attendant parliamentary privileges, every peerage privilege: a widowed peeress retains her privilege of peerage while unmarried, but loses it if she marries a commoner (Co. Litt. 166, Cowley v. Cowley [1901] A.C. 450). Dissolution of marriage probably deprives a peeress of all peerage privileges which she acquired by marriage.
The children of peers are commoners. The eldest son of a peer of the rank of earl (and above) is usually known socially by the position of name of his father’s next peerage, but the courtesy nature of such title is clearly indicated in every public or legal document, the phraseology employed being “John Smith, Esq., commonly known as Viscount Position of Families of Peers. Blackacre.” Several cases are on record in which peers' eldest sons have actually borne courtesy titles not possessed as peerage honours by their fathers, but inasmuch as such are only accorded by courtesy, no question of peerage privilege arises. The younger sons of dukes and marquesses are entitled to the prefix “Lord” before their Christian names, and all the daughters of earls as well as of dukes and marquesses are entitled similarly to style themselves “Lady,” on the principle that all the daughters are equal in rank and precedence. The younger sons of earls and all the younger children of viscounts and barons are entitled to the prefix “Honourable.” Usually when the direct heir of a peer dies his children are given, by the Crown, on the death of the peer, the courtesy titles and precedence they would have enjoyed had their father actually succeeded to the peerage.
An alien may be created a peer, but while remaining an alien cannot sit in the House of Lords, nor, if a Scottish or Irish peer, can he vote at elections for representative peers. Peerages may be created (1) by writ of summons, (2) by patent. The writ of summons method is not now used except in the case of calling up an eldest son in the barony of his Creation of Peerages. father. This does not create a new peerage but only accelerates the heir’s appearance in the House of Lords. On the father’s death the peerage remains vested in the son. Should the son die without heir the peerage revests in the father. The invariable method of creation in all ordinary cases is by patent. The letters patent describe the name of the dignity, the person upon whom it is conferred, and specify its course of descent.
Claims to peerages are of two kinds (1) of right, (2) of grace. In theory the Crown, as the fountain of honour, might settle any claim without reference to the House of Lords and issue a writ of summons to its petitioner. This would not in any way prevent the House of Lords from examining the patent and writ of summons when the favoured Claims to Peerages. petitioner or any heir claiming through him came to take his seat. If of opinion that the patent was illegal the house might refuse admittance, as it did in the Wensleydale case. In the case of a petitioner who has persuaded the Crown to terminate in his favour as a co-heir the abeyance of an ancient barony and who has received his writ of summons, the matter is more difficult. The house cannot refuse to admit any person properly summoned by the Crown, as the prerogative is unlimited in point of numbers; but it can take into account the precedence of the newcomer. If he has an old barony he naturally expects its proper place on the bench of barons; but if the house thought fit they might compel him to prove his pedigree before according any precedence. If he refused to do this they would still be bound to admit him, but it would be as the junior baron of the house, with a peerage dating, for parliamentary purposes, from the day of his summons. The general result is that the Crown, unless there can be no question as to pedigree, seldom terminates an abeyance without referring the matter to the House of Lords, and invariably so refers all claims which are disputed or which involve any question of law[1] The procedure is as follows: The claimant petitions the Crown through the home secretary, setting forth his pedigree and stating the nature of his claim. The Crown then refers the petition to its legal adviser, the attorney-general. The petitioner then in course of time appears before the attorney-general with his proofs. Finally the attorney-general reports that a prima facie case is, or is not, made out. If a case be made out, the Crown, if it does not take immediate action, refers the whole matter to the House of Lords, who pass it on to their Committee for Privileges for examination and report.
The Committee for Privileges, which for peerage claims is usually constituted of the law lords and one or two other lords interested in peerage history, sits as an ordinary court of justice and follows all the rules of law and evidence. The attorney-general attends as adviser to the committee and to watch the interests of the Crown. According to Committee for Privileges the nature of the case the Committee reports to the house, and the house to the Crown, that the petitioner (if successful) (1) has made out his claim and is entitled to a writ of summons, or (2) has proved his co-heirship to an existing peerage, and has also proved the descent of all existing co-heirs. In the first case the writ of summons is issued forthwith, but the second, being one of abeyance, is a matter for the pleasure of the Crown, which need not be exercised at all, but, if exercised, ma terminate the abeyance in favour of any one of the co-heirs. The seniority of a co-heir (though this alone is of little moment), his power to support the dignity, and the number of existing co-heirs, are all factors which count in the chances of success.
Reference has already been made in the earlier part of this article to the reply of Bishop Peter de Roches to the English barons who claimed trial by their peers, and, as was suggested the bishop probably had in his mind the peers of France. Possibly the word pares, as eventually used in England, was borrowed from this source, but this is uncertain. The great Peers of France. men known originally as the twelve pairs de France, were the feudal holders of large territories under the nominal sway of the king of France. They were the (archbishop) duke of Rheims, the (bishop) dukes of Langres and Laon, the (bishop) counts of Beauvais, Noyon and Chalons, the dukes of Burgundy, Normandy and Aquitaine, and the counts of Flanders, Toulouse and Champagne. These magnates, nominally feudatories, were tactically independent rulers, and their position can in no way be compared to that of the English baronage. It is said that this body of peers was instituted in the reign of Philip Augustus, though some writers even ascribe its origin to Charlemagne. Some of the peers were present at Philip’s coronation in 1179, and later again at the alleged trial of John of England when his fief of Normandy, was adjudged forfeit to the French Crown.
As the central power of the French kings grew, the various fiefs lost their independence and became united to the Crown, with the exception of Flanders which passed into the hands of the emperor Charles V. In the 14th century the custom arose for the sovereign to honour his more important nobles by granting them the title of Peer of France. At first the grant was confined to the royal dukes, but later it was conferred on others, amongst whom late in the 17th century appears the archbishop of Paris. To several counties and baronies the honour of a peerage was added, but most of these eventually became reunited with the Crown. As a legislative body a chamber of peers in France was first founded by Louis XVIII. in 1814; it was hereditary and modelled on the English House of Lords. The revolution of 1830 reduced its hereditary quality to life tenure, and in the troubles of 1848 the chamber itself finally disappeared.
Austria, Hungary and Portugal are other countries possessing peerages which to some extent follow the English model. In Austria there is a large hereditary nobility and those other members of it in whose families the legislative dignity is hereditary by nomination of the emperor, sit in the Herrenhaus or Austrian Upper Chamber, together with certain prelates Other Peerages. and a large number of nominated life-members. In Hungary all those nobles who possess the right of hereditary peerage (as act of 1885 and subsequent acts) and who pay a land tax of certain value, are members of the House of Magnates, of which they form a large majority, the remainder of the members being Roman Catholic prelates, representatives of Protestant churches and life peers. In Portugal until recent years the House of Peers was an hereditary body, but it is now practically a chamber of life-peers. (G. E.*)
PEERLKAMP, PETRUS HOFMAN (1786–1865), Dutch classical scholar and critic, descended from a family of French refugees named Perlechamp, was born at Groningen on the 2nd of February 1786. He was professor of ancient literature and universal history at Leiden from 1822 to 1849, when he resigned his post and retired to Hilversum near Utrecht, where he died on the 27th of March 1865. He was the founder of the subjective method of textual criticism, which consisted in rejecting in a classical author whatever failed to come up to
the standard of what that author, in the critic’s opinion, ought to
have written. His ingenuity in this direction, in which he went
much farther than Bentley, was chiefly exercised on the Odes
of Horace (the greater part of which he declared spurious),
and the Aeneid of Virgil. He also edited the Ars poetica and
Satires of Horace, the Agricola of Tacitus, the romance of Xenophon of Ephesus, and was the author of a history of the Latin poets of the Netherlands (De vita, doctrina, et facultate Nederlandorum qui carmina latina composuerunt, 1838).
See L. Müller, Gesch. der klassischen Philologie in den Niederlanden (1869), and J. E. Sandys, Hist. of Class. Schol. (1908), iii. 276.
PEESEMSKY, ALEXEY FEOFILACTOVICH (1820–1881),
Russian novelist, was born on his father’s estate, in the province of Kostroma, on the 10th/22nd of March 1820. In his autobiography he describes his family as belonging to the ancient
- ↑ This was not done in the case of the earldom of Cromartie called out of abeyance in 1895. The holder of the title being a lady the house has had, as yet, no opportunity of considering the validity of the Crown’s action.
