What is a peerage, as in the peerages of the United Kingdom?

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I was doing some reading and I found out that Thomas Fairfax, 6th Lord Fairfax of Cameron succeeded his father’s Scottish peerage. I also read about that the peerage of Scotland is a part of the peerages of the United Kingdom. However I’m still not sure was a peerage is. Is it something that is inherited? Is it associated with wealth and land ownership? I am not British but would like to have a better understanding about the peerages of the UK and to learn more about British history.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Peerage mean to be a Peer, an equal to the highest level of nobility. Forget what someone else said about hereditary system, that’s just not true. Some Peer are for life, but can’t pass their title, and some noble hereditary title are not peer.

Specifically for the UK a Peerage went through different period. After the Normand Conquest there were 170 Barons, which at the time was the highest feudal land tenure with specific rights, Baron was neither a title, nor was it hereditary at the time (very different from the Baron we know today), around 20-25 of those Barons had the title of Earl which was title and was hereditary. You could say that those were the Peers, but Peerage wasn’t an official concept at the time for the English. One of the responsibility of Barons was the duty to answer when summoned to the Great Councils, which later evolve into the Parliament.

13th century. In the Magna Carta they talk about Free man needed to be lawfully judged by their Peers, but it wasn’t clear who were Peers of Barons/Earls and would have a right to pass legal judgment on them. There was dispute over the usage of Peer and Peerage as a legal concept at the time. The nature of Baron also changed during that time, the first Hereditary Baron was appointed, it was becoming more of a tool for the King to appoint their allies in the struggle for power between the King and the high nobility.

14th century, by that point Peerages was an accepted concept in England and it become more and more of an hereditary seat to the Parliament which started to gain a bit more power than before. Still the people summoned at the Parliament was a mix of tenure and writs of summon.

15th century, the Parliament had gain a lot of power by that point and even some Peer by writs claimed to be hereditary. There was still some life peer, but they become more rare in the next couple of centuries until the 19th century. Life Peer went from 18 in the 17th century to 28 in the 19th century to 664 today.

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