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History Of The British Peerage
The history of the British peerage, a system of nobility found in the United Kingdom, stretches over the last thousand years. The current form of the British peerage has been a process of development. While the ranks of baron and earl predate the British peerage itself, the ranks of duke and marquess were introduced to England in the 14th century. The rank of viscount came later, in the mid-15th century. Peers were summoned to Parliament, forming the House of Lords. The unions of England and Scotland to form Great Britain in 1707, and of Great Britain and Ireland to form the United Kingdom in 1801, led successively to the establishment of the Peerages of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, and the discontinuation of creations in the Peerages of England and Scotland. Scottish and Irish peers did not have an automatic right to sit in the House of Lords, and instead elected representative peers from amongst their number. Peerages were largely hereditary until the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nobility
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally appointed by and ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The characteristics associated with nobility may constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles or simply formal functions (e.g., precedence), and vary by country and by era. Membership in the nobility, including rights and responsibilities, is typically hereditary and patrilineal. Membership in the nobility has historically been granted by a monarch or government, and acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, ownerships, or royal favour has occasionally enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility. There are often a variety of ranks within the noble class. Legal recognition of nobility has been much more common in monarchies, but nobility also existed in such regimes as the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), the Republic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peerage Of England
The Peerage of England comprises all peerages created in the Kingdom of England before the Act of Union in 1707. From that year, the Peerages of England and Scotland were closed to new creations, and new peers were created in a single Peerage of Great Britain. There are five peerages in the United Kingdom in total. English Peeresses obtained their first seats in the House of Lords under the Peerage Act 1963 from which date until the passage of the House of Lords Act 1999 all Peers of England could sit in the House of Lords. The ranks of the English peerage are, in descending order, duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. While most newer English peerages descend only in the male line, many of the older ones (particularly older baronies) can descend through females. Such peerages follow the old English inheritance law of moieties so all daughters (or granddaughters through the same root) stand as co-heirs, so some such titles are in such a state of abeyance between the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slavery In Britain
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman Britain, Roman occupation, which occurred from approximately AD 43 to AD 410, and the practice endured in various forms until the 11th century, during which the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom in the midst of other Economy, economic upheavals. Given the widespread socio-political changes afterwards, slaves were no longer treated differently from other individuals in either English law or formal custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries. British merchants were a significant force behind the Atlantic slave trade (also known as the "transatlantic" slave trade) between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, but no legislation was ever passed in England that legalised slavery. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hide (unit)
The hide was an English unit of land measurement originally intended to represent the amount of land sufficient to support a household. The Anglo-Saxon hide commonly appeared as of arable land, but it probably represented a much smaller holding before 1066. It was a measure of value and tax assessment, including obligations for food-rent ('), maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications, manpower for the army ('), and (eventually) the ' land tax. The hide's method of calculation is now obscure: different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent even in the same county. Following the Norman Conquest of England, the hidage assessments were recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and there was a tendency for land producing £1 of income per year to be assessed at 1 hide. The Norman kings continued to use the unit for their tax assessments until the end of the 12th century. The hide was divided into four yardlands or virgates. It was hence nominally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Churl
A churl ( Old High German ), in its earliest Old English (Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man" or more particularly a "free man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelled , and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the '' Oxford English Dictionary'', it later came to mean the opposite of nobility and royalty, "a common person". Says Chadwick: This meaning held through the 15th century, but by then the word had taken on negative overtones, meaning "a country person" and then "a low fellow". By the 19th century, a new and pejorative meaning arose, "one inclined to uncivil or loutish behaviour"—hence "churlish" (cf. the pejorative sense of the term ''boor'', whose original meaning of "country person" or "farmer" is preserved in Dutch and Afrikaans and German , although the latter has its own pejorative connotations such as those prompting its use as the name for the chess piece known in English as a pawn; also the word villain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literature dates from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman language, Anglo-Norman (a langues d'oïl, type of French) as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland. Old English developed from a set of Anglo-Frisian or Ingvaeonic dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles (tribe), Angles, Saxons and Jutes. As the Germanic settlers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sub-Roman Britain
Sub-Roman Britain, also called post-Roman Britain or Dark Age Britain, is the period of late antiquity in Great Britain between the end of Roman rule and the founding of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The term was originally used to describe archaeological remains found in 5th- and 6th-century AD sites that hinted at the decay of locally made wares from a previous higher standard under the Roman Empire. It is now used to describe the period that began with the recall of Roman troops from Britannia to Gaul by Constantine III in 407 and ended with the Battle of Deorham in 577. This period has attracted a great deal of academic and popular debate, in part because of the lack of written records from the time. Meaning of terms The period of sub-Roman Britain traditionally covers the history of the parts of Britain that had been under Roman rule from the end of Roman imperial rule, traditionally dated to be in 410, to the arrival of Saint Augustine in 597. The date taken for the end ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglo-Saxons
The Anglo-Saxons, in some contexts simply called Saxons or the English, were a Cultural identity, cultural group who spoke Old English and inhabited much of what is now England and south-eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to Germanic peoples, Germanic settlers who became one of the most important cultural groups in Britain by the 5th century. The Anglo-Saxon period in Britain is considered to have started by about 450 and ended in 1066, with the Norman conquest of England, Norman Conquest. Although the details of Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, their early settlement and History of Anglo-Saxon England, political development are not clear, by the 8th century an Anglo-Saxon cultural identity which was generally called had developed out of the interaction of these settlers with the existing Romano-British culture. By 1066, most of the people of what is now England spoke Old English, and were considered English. Viking and Norman invasions chang ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Peoples
The Germanic peoples were tribal groups who lived in Northern Europe in Classical antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. In modern scholarship, they typically include not only the Roman-era ''Germani'' who lived in both ''Germania'' and parts of the Roman Empire, but also all Germanic speaking peoples from this era, irrespective of where they lived, most notably the Goths. Another term, ancient Germans, is considered problematic by many scholars since it suggests identity with present-day Germans. Although the first Roman descriptions of ''Germani'' involved tribes west of the Rhine, their homeland of ''Germania'' was portrayed as stretching east of the Rhine, to southern Scandinavia and the Vistula in the east, and to the upper Danube in the south. Other Germanic speakers, such as the Bastarnae and Goths, lived further east in what is now Moldova and Ukraine. The term ''Germani ''is generally only used to refer to historical peoples from the 1st to 4th centuries CE. Different ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reform Of The House Of Lords
The reform of the House of Lords, the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, has been a topic of discussion in UK politics for more than a century. Multiple governments have attempted reform, beginning with the introduction of the Parliament Act 1911 by the incumbent Liberal Government. When the Labour Party came to power in the 1997 general election, the Blair government passed the House of Lords Act 1999. On 7 November 2001 the government undertook a public consultation. This helped to create a public debate on the issue of Lords reform, with 1,101 consultation responses and multiple debates in Parliament and the media. However, no consensus on the future of the upper chamber emerged. All three of the main parties promised to take action on Lords reform in the 2010 general election, and following it the Coalition Agreement included a promise to "establish a committee to bring forward proposals for a wholly or mainly elected upper chamber on the basis of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hereditary Peer
The hereditary peers form part of the peerage in the United Kingdom. As of April 2025, there are 800 hereditary peers: 30 dukes (including six royal dukes), 34 marquesses, 189 earls, 108 viscounts, and 439 barons (not counting subsidiary titles). As a result of the Peerage Act 1963, all peers except those in the peerage of Ireland were entitled to sit in the House of Lords. Since the House of Lords Act 1999 came into force only 92 hereditary peers, elected from all hereditary peers, are permitted to do so, unless they are also life peers. Peers are called to the House of Lords with a writ of summons. Not all hereditary titles are titles of the peerage. For instance, baronets and baronetesses may pass on their titles, but they are not peers. Conversely, the holder of a non-hereditary title may belong to the peerage, as with life peers. Peerages may be created by means of letters patent, but the granting of new hereditary peerages has largely dwindled; only seven hered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Life Peer
In the United Kingdom, life peers are appointed members of the peerage whose titles cannot be inherited, in contrast to hereditary peers. Life peers are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the prime minister. With the exception of the Dukedom of Edinburgh awarded for life to Prince Edward in 2023, all life peerages conferred since 2009 have been created under the Life Peerages Act 1958 with the rank of baron, and entitle their holders to sit and vote in the House of Lords so long as they meet qualifications such as age and citizenship. The legitimate children of a life peer appointed under the Life Peerages Act 1958 are entitled to style themselves with the prefix "The Honourable", although they cannot inherit the peerage. Prior to 2009, life peers of baronial rank could also be created under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act 1876 for senior judges, referred to as Law Lords, with functions then taken over by the new Supreme Court. Before 1887 The Crown, as '' foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
