noun
definition
Peers as a group; the nobility, aristocracy.
definition
The rank or title of a peer or peeress.
definition
A book listing such people and their families.
Examples of peerage in a Sentence
He was raised to the peerage in 1895, and died in London Jan.
He would have taken his title from Beaconsfield had he survived to enter the peerage.
A peerage was openly talked of as his due, while his own ambition pointed to some responsible office at home.
Her children he adopted as his own; and it was chiefly for her sake that he desired the peerage which was twice held out to him.
About the end of the year 1579 his wife died, leaving him one son, Archibald (who in 1627 was raised to the peerage by the title of Lord Napier), and one daughter, Jane.
But in 1756, when the government was evidently approaching its fall, an unexpected vacancy occurred in the chief justiceship of the king's bench, and he claimed the office, being at the same time raised to the peerage as Baron Mansfield.
When the Liberals returned to power in 1880 he was raised to the peerage as Viscount Sherbrooke, but from 1875 till his death at Warlingham, Surrey, on the 27th of July 1892, his health was constantly failing, and by degrees he figured less and less in public life.
Saigo's patriotism and his great services in the cause of the restoration of the administrative power to the throne were so fully recognized that his son was raised to the peerage with the title of marquess, and his own memory was honoured by the erection of a bronze statue in Tokyo.
The Terre d'Auvergne was first an appanage of Count Alphonse of Poitiers (1241-1271), and in 1360 was erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duch y -pairie) by King John II.
He was created Viscount Osborne in the Scottish peerage on the 2nd of February 1673, and a privy councillor on the 3rd of May.
On the 19th of June, on the resignation of Lord Clifford, he was appointed lord treasurer and made Baron Osborne of Kiveton and Viscount Latimer in the peerage of England, while on the 27th of June 1674 he was created earl of Danby, when he surrendered his Scottish peerage of Osborne to his second son Peregrine Osborne.
Its head, the duke of Norfolk, is the first of the dukes and the hereditary earl marshal of England, while the earls of Suffolk, Carlisle and Effingham and the Lord Howard of Glossop represent in the peerage its younger lines.
At this time came his sudden lifting to the highest rank in the peerage.
In November 1660 by his father's death he had become Viscount Valentia and Baron Mountnorris in the Irish peerage, and on the 20th April 1661 he was created Baron Annesley of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire and earl of Anglesey in the peerage of Great Britain.
A patent of 1604 created Henry Howard (1540-1614), younger son of Surrey the poet, earl of Northampton, a peerage which ended with the death of this, the most unprincipled of his house.
Roger Stafford, the impoverished heir male of the ancient Staffords, had been forced to surrender his barony to the king by a deed dated in the preceding year, a piece of injustice which is in the teeth of all modern conceptions of peerage law.
In England nobility is apt to be confounded with the peculiar institution of the British peerage.
Yet nobility, in some shape or another, has existed in most places and times of the world's history, while the British peerage is an institution purely local, and one which has actually hindered the existence of a nobility in the sense which the word bears in most other countries.
The peerage, as it exists in the three British kingdoms, is something which is altogether peculiar to the three British kingdoms, and which has nothing in the least degree like it elsewhere.
The word "gentleman" has lost its original meaning in a variety of other uses, while the word "nobleman" has come to be confined to members of the peerage and a few of their immediate descendants.
That the English peerage does not answer to the true idea of a nobility will be seen with a very little thought.
His remoter descendants have no advantage of any kind over other people, except their chance of succeeding to the peerage.
But perhaps no cause was more important than the growth of the peerage.
After a marriage between the prince and Lady Diana Spencer, afterwards the wife of John, 4th duke of Bedford, had been frustrated by Walpole, Frederick was married in April 1736 to 1 Frederick was never actually created duke of Gloucester, and when he was raised to the peerage in 1736 it was as duke of Edinburgh only.
C(okayne), Complete Peerage, sub "Gloucester."
He was created in 1793 earl of Mountnorris in the peerage of Ireland.
The 1st viscount was also the ancestor of the Earls Annesley in the Irish peerage.
In 1793 he was raised to the peerage of Ireland as Baron O'Neill of Shane's Castle, and in 1795 was created a viscount.
By the death of his elder brother, killed near Ticonderoga on the 6th of July 1758, he became Viscount Howe - an Irish peerage.
In reward for his devotion to the court party during the Fronde he obtained many signal favours, and Saint Aignan was raised to a duchy in the peerage of France (duchepairie) in 1663.
He did not, however, sit long in the House of Commons; for, on the death of his mother in 1837, he succeeded to the peerage which had been conferred on her with remainder to her only surviving son, and as Viscount Canning took his seat in the House of Lords.
It passed into the hands of the houses of Rieux and Lorraine, and was raised to the rank of a duchy in the peerage of France by Henry III.
In 1781 John Bourke, a Mayo man, believed to be descended from the line of "MacWilliam Oughter," was created Viscount Mayo, and four years later earl of Mayo, a peerage still extant.
During his absence he was elected member for King's Lynn, which he represented till October 1869, when he succeeded to the peerage.
Next year, as the Melbourne administration was near its close, Plunkett, the venerable chancellor of Ireland, was forced by discreditable pressure to resign, and the Whig attorney-general, who had never practised in equity, became chancellor of Ireland, and was raised to the peerage with the title of Baron Campbell of St Andrews, in the county of Fife.
A peerage of Great Britain was conferred on his wife as Baroness Hood of Catherington in 1 795, and he was himself created Viscount Hood of Whitley in 1796.
The marquis de Ruvigny has compiled The Jacobite Peerage (Edinburgh, 1904), a work which purports to give a list of all the titles and honours conferred by the kings of the exiled House of Stuart.
During the voyage Gladstone had determined to offer Tennyson a peerage.
On the 10th of November 1834 Lord Althorp succeeded to his father's peerage, and thereby vacated the leadership of the House of Commons.
The peerage became extinct at his death.
He was created a baronet in 1886, and was raised to the peerage in 1896, a few days before his death.
He entered Parliament in 1874 as Conservative member for the city of Dublin, holding the seat till 1880, when he was raised to the peerage.
The protector, hearing of his "grievous complaint," sent him a writ, and Lenthall was elated at believing he had secured a peerage.
In 1581 it was erected into a duchy in the peerage of France (duche-pairie) for Albert de Gondi, marshal of France and general of the galleys.
Lord Armstrong, who was raised to the peerage in 1887, was the author of A Visit to Egypt (1873), and Electric Movement in Air and Water (1897), besides many professional papers.
In July 1861 he accepted from Lord Palmerston the office of solicitor-general, a knighthood, and a safe seat for the borough of Richmond in Yorkshire, secured for him through the friendly action of Lord Zetland, and thus began the second spell of Palmer's membership of the House of Commons, which continued till his elevation to the woolsack and the peerage.
At the election of November 1868 Palmer was again returned for Richmond, and Gladstone offered him the office of lord chancellor or the office of a lord justice with a peerage; both offers were declined by Palmer, and he assumed a position of independent opposition to the measure relative to the Irish Church.
He was created a baronet in June 1916, and the same year was raised to the peerage.
But this failure was not on the same footing as that of Minden, and in spite of virulent party attacks, King George III., on the resignation of the North ministry, offered him a peerage.
He unsuccessfully contested Coventry in 1863; in 1865 he was elected in the liberal interest for Warwick, for which he sat until his elevation to the peerage.