"Peerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... what we most admire is his message, in which he proved you have no right to coerce the South or suppress rebellion. This was a splendid discovery for us, as it demonstrated how superior our Government is to yours. If Mr. Buchanan would come here, we would raise him to the peerage, and, in commemoration of his two great acts, would give him the double title of the Duke of Lecompton and Disunion. Floyd, Cobb, and Thompson should each be earls. Thompson should be called Earl Arnold, in gratitude for the services to us of ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and letters might be forged. I've known such things to be done. Fetch me a big red volume you'll find on the third shelf from the floor, at the left of the south window. You can't miss it. It's 'Burke's Peerage.'" ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... usurper and betrayer of his wife's father, by exposing and magnifying, indeed, the sums of money which he has lavished upon his courtesan, Mistress Villiers, now, by his heretic and unsanctified breath, raised into the peerage by the title of Countess of Orkney. All these items added together form a vast sum of discontent; and could we his Catholic majesty to rouse himself to assert once more his rights by force of arms, I should not fear ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... the same, in spite of her flouting, her birth assured her a social position from which she could be thrown by nothing less than outrageous immorality or a Bolshevist revolution. That Lackaday, to whom the British Peerage, in the ordinary way, was as closed a book as the Talmud, realized her high estate I was perfectly aware. Dear and garrulous Lady Verity-Stewart had given him at dinner the whole family history—she herself was a Dayne—from the time ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... department in 1893 was, as I have said, Mr. Francis Hopwood. He became Sir Francis in 1906, and from then onwards advanced from office to office and from honour to honour, until, during his secretaryship of the Irish Convention in 1917, his public services were rewarded with a peerage. As railway secretary of the Board of Trade he was particularly distinguished for tact, strength and moderation. Singularly courteous and obliging on all occasions, I, personally, have been much indebted to ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... romance as the Portland peerage was up to recent years, there is still another chapter to be added, in relating some of the statements made in connection with the claims put forward by Mrs. Druce and Mr. G.H. Druce to the honours and wealth of the Bentincks. It must be stated emphatically that there ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... a shower of eggs to a bill to indemnify the rebels, was created an earl. Now to pelt a governor-general with eggs is an overt act of treason, for it is an attempt to throw off the yoke. If therefore he was advanced in the peerage for remunerating traitors for their losses, he ought now to assent to another act for reimbursing the expenses of the exhausted stores of the poultry yards, and be made a marquis, unless the British see a difference between a rebel mob and an indignant ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... pages of this book there will be some recital of the victories won by the fire-maker, the electrician, the photographer, and many more in the peerage of experiment and research. Underlying the sketch will appear the significant contrast betwixt accessions of minor and of supreme dignity. The finding a new wood, such as that of the yew, means better bows for the archer, stronger handles for the tool-maker; ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... other alien peer is the twelfth Viscount Taaffe, of the Irish peerage, an Austrian subject, as his predecessors have been since their estates were confiscated by Cromwell after the Battle of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 150, February 2, 1916 • Various
... of Geoffrey of Monmouth. At the Dissolution Newburgh was given by Henry VIII to Anthony Belasyse, the punning motto of whose family was Bonne et belle assez. One of his descendants was created Lord Fauconberg by Charles I, and the peerage became extinct in 1815, on the death of the seventh to bear the title. The last owner—Sir George Wombwell, Bart.—inherited the property from his grandmother, who was a daughter of the last Lord Fauconberg. Sir George ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... time as angry against the Pretender as any of her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she not only brought back my lord to the Church of England, but procured the English peerage for him, which the junior branch of our family at present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would not rest until her husband slept at Lambeth, my papa used laughing to say. However, the bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... somewhat petit figure, cast in a mould that, if set off more to advantage, would have been recognised as elegant. But John Lindsay—for so he was called—bore always the stamp of misery on his striking features. There lay between the poor little man and the Crawford peerage only a narrow chasm, represented by a missing marriage certificate; but he was never able to bridge the gulf across; and he had to toil on in unhappiness, in consequence, as a mason's labourer. I have heard the call resounding from the walls twenty times a day—"John, Yearl ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... office; and her nephew was sent out with Lord Albemarle to Spain. A more remarkable relative was Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, who evidently knew the value of her patronage, for a more importunate suitor, and a more persevering sycophant, never kissed hands. Finally, she obtained a peerage for her husband, a distinction in which, of course, she herself shared, but which probably she desired merely to throw some eclat round a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... of Coombe was not a title to be found in Burke or Debrett. It was a fine irony of the Head's own and having been accepted by his acquaintances was not infrequently used by them in their light moments in the same spirit. The peerage recorded him as a Marquis and added ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... began his military career at twenty-two, and had reached the zenith of his military fame at thirty-five; he was raised to the peerage at thirty-six, and died ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... surveying the field of desirable husbands for Eleanor. She could see nothing but Englishmen, behind whom lurked the historic London drawing-rooms and British estates. That is how and why young Windomshire, a most delightful Londoner, with prospects and a peerage behind him, came to be a guest in her city house, following close upon a long sojourn in the Bermudas. HE had been chosen; the battle was over, so far as Eleanor's hand was concerned. What matter ...
— The Flyers • George Barr McCutcheon
... essays seem to have been particularly affected by this order of the peerage; for, somewhat later, we have one, "On Unnatural Flights in Poetry," by the ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... was so entirely decided by the battle of Trafalgar, that no opportunity was afterwards afforded for great successes. But at the end of the war, when the leading Peninsular generals were raised to the peerage, it was thought due to the service to confer a similar distinction upon a naval officer. Sir Edward Pellew received this mark of his sovereign's favour. He was created Baron Exmouth, of Canonteign, a mansion and estate in the South of Devon which he had ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... embarrassed as she looked up at me. "There isn't a confounded job I haven't applied for—waited for—prayed for. You can fancy we'd be pretty bad first. Secretaryships and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. I'd be ANYTHING—I'm strong; a messenger or a coalheaver. I'd put on a gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in front of the haberdasher's; I'd hang about a station to carry portmanteaux; I'd be a postman. But they won't LOOK at ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... over the earlier pages of the Huntingdon peerage story, you will see how common a name Ada was in the early Plantagenet days. I found it in my own pedigree in the reigns of John and Henry.... It is short, ancient, vocalic, and had been in my family; for which reasons I gave it ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... astute and practised chaperone knows pretty well who everybody is. They have books of reference, too,—the 'Peerage' and 'Landed Gentry.' I believe now, though, a good deal of matrimonial business ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... the features, figure, even to the hands—distinction all over—ugly distinction! Now, if you'd only an estate and a mansion, and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in churls' blood; as it is, you've no power; you can do nothing; you're wrecked and stranded on the shores of commerce; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... that squire—Miss Ida's grandfather—a peerage; the Herons had often been offered a baronetcy; but they'd always refused, and the squire declined the peerage. He said that no man could wish to be higher than Heron, of Herondale; that better men than he had been contented with it, and he was quite satisfied with the rank which ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... motives. 'But for that Cosway,' she said (I spare you the epithet which she put before your name), 'with my money and position, I might have married a needy lord, and sunned myself in my old age in the full blaze of the peerage.' Do you understand how she hated you, now? Enough of the subject! The moral of it, my dear Cosway, is to leave this place, and try what change of scene will do for you. I have time to spare; and I will go abroad with you. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting his claim to the peerage he is seeking?" ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... convinced of this buoyancy of spirit, quickness of fancy, and blitheness of heart. It even vents its exuberance in bubbles of levity and elaborate trifling, so that all but the very light-hearted are fain to say: Something too much of this. Compared with our standard humorists—the peerage, or Upper House, who sit sublimely aloft, like 'Jove in his chair, of the sky my lord mayor'—Southey may be but a dull commoner, one of the third or fourth estate. But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these: "Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a radical? She talks of the emancipation of women by keeping them at school till one-and-twenty, of the elevation of the masses, and the mutual improvement of everybody not in the peerage." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... foregoing paragraph, the phrase "belted Earl," is used advisedly. At the period of which Sir WALTER SCOTT wrote (vide any of his novels) it will be found that members of this rank of the Peerage are all spoken of as belted. For some time the fashion fell out of use. The belt was appropriately revived by the late Earl of BEACONSFIELD, and is now quite a common thing with the aristocracy. The Earl of SELBORNE is very particular about the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... British heir to the earldom of Stirling, a Scotch peerage; and, as he believed that he was a direct descendant of the last Lord Stirling, the young man went to England, and laid claim to the estate and title. He was successful in proving his direct descent from the earls of Stirling; ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... the Peer brought in the handsomest Tom of the Peerage. Puff, with a black coat, had the most magnificent eyes, green and yellow, but cold and proud. The long silky hair of his tail, remarkable for its yellow rings, swept the carpet. Perhaps he came from the imperial house of Austria, because, as you see, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... Sir Robert would have liked to purchase a peerage, and Dryden was furious at the "shame and scandal," though a quieter spirit, John Evelyn, dined more than once with the Mayor, and evidently had some admiration for his hospitality. "He was a discreete Magistrate" Evelyn writes, "and tho' envied, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... learn from an indiscretion of my Peerage, in 1870, and is, therefore, as near to thirty (the dangerous age!) as to the six-and-twenty your droll old Marietta gives her. Her Christian names are Beatrice Antonia Teresa Mary—faites en votre choix. She was married at nineteen to Baldassarre Agosto, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... in his biography. "If there be anything in Lord Russell's theory that Life Peerages are wanted specially to represent those forms of national eminence which cannot otherwise find fitting representation, it might be urged, for the reasons we have before mentioned, that a Life Peerage is due to the most truly national representative of one important department of modern English literature. Something may no doubt be said in favour of this view, but we are inclined to doubt if Mr. Dickens himself would gain anything by a Life Peerage. Mr. Dickens is pre-eminently ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... troubled this time. For although it is acknowledged, and has been taught by all philosophers from King Lemuel and Lao-Kiun downward, that no greater prize can be gained by any man than the love of a good woman, which is better than a Peerage—better than a Bonanza mine—better than Name and Fame, Kudos and the newspaper paragraph, and is arrived at by much less exertion, being indeed the special gift of the gods to those they love; yet all women perfectly understand the other side to this great truth—namely, that no greater happiness ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... which he was threatened, after having written to urge Murat to action with fatal effect, Joseph joined Napoleon in Paris, and appeared at the Champ de Mai, sitting also in the Chamber of Peers, but, as before, putting forward ridiculous pretensions as to his inherent right to the peerage, and claiming a special seat. In fact, he never could realise how entirely he owed any position to the brother he wished to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever my dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, on the influence of a Court, and of a Peerage, is not, which of the two dangers is the most eligible, but which is the most imminent. He is but a poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of Peers, far from supporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject,—offering a pledge in that situation for the support of the rights of the crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here,—those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors and of their posterity to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new nobility, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... ready to enact iniquity into law. His compliance with the King's desire to violate the first principle of Magna Charta, "endeared him to the Court, and secured him further preferment as soon as any opportunity should occur." So he was soon made Lord Chancellor and raised to the peerage. Littleton had once been on the popular side, but deserted and went over to the Court—he was sure of preferment; and as he became more and more ready to destroy the liberties of the People, he was made Chief ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... Our Peerage we've remodelled on an intellectual basis, Which certainly is rough on our hereditary races - (They are going to remodel it in England.) The Brewers and the Cotton Lords no longer seek admission, And Literary Merit meets with proper recognition - (As Literary Merit ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... though he sorely needed the repose that he might hope to find in the Upper House, he was assailed with as much fury of vituperation as if he had betrayed the State. A country that was preparing to rejoice at his return to power lashed itself into a fury of indignation at his exaltation to the peerage. In the twinkling of an eye men who had been devoted yesterday to Pitt were prepared to believe every evil of Chatham. His rule began in storm and gloom, and gloomy and stormy it remained. The first act of his Administration roused the fiercest controversy. ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the rain, I reached the house, and was most graciously received by Sir Samuel Semaphore and his lady, and their lovely daughters. Oh, the most splendid women that ever were built! The youngest is now, I believe, the prime ornament of the Scottish Peerage; and I never can forget the pleasure I so frequently experienced in those days in the society of this delightful family. The same evening I returned to the Pen. On my way I fell in with three officers in white jackets, and broad—brimmed straw hats, wading up to the waist amongst the reeds of ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... bad to worse. The emperor raised Nancy Peters to the peerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, for reasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marry Emmeline, eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem. This caused trouble in a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... long as nothing particular comes of them. But if a dramatist were to make these three brothers meet in Messina on the eve of the earthquake, in order that they might all be killed, and thus enable his hero (their cousin) to succeed to a peerage and marry the heroine, we should say that his use of coincidence was not strictly artistic. A coincidence, in short, which coincides with a crisis is thereby raised to the nth power, and is wholly inacceptable in serious ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... certainly formidable; and the chief matter of surprise now is, that the Whigs should have suffered the Regent to accept the office under such conditions. They prevented him from creating any peerage, or granting any office in reversion, or giving any office, pension, or salary, except during the royal pleasure, or disposing of any part of the royal estate. They took from him also the whole ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... upon the erudite gentleman who conducted this seminary, and by that title alone was he known throughout the ship. He was domiciled in the Ward-room, and circulated there on a social par with the Purser, Surgeon, and other non-combatants and Quakers. By being advanced to the dignity of a peerage in the Ward-room, Science and Learning were ennobled in the person of this Professor, even as divinity was honoured in the Chaplain enjoying the rank of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... van Noord two years ago, and at present has a membership including some of the most famous artistic folk of London; not only painters, but authors, composers, actors, actresses. I may add that the peerage, male and ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... A peerage was offered to him in 1868. He refused it for himself, but asked Queen Victoria to grant the honor to his wife, who became the Countess of Beaconsfield. But in 1876 he accepted the rank and title of Earl of Beaconsfield. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... defend himself from an accusation by Essex of having declared himself in favour of the Infanta's claim to the throne. By careful preparations he secured the peaceable accession of James II. to the throne, and was raised to the peerage, and eventually made Earl of Salisbury in consequence. For the rest of his life he remained ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... however, do the young lady the justice to state that, though her future husband was no great things as a 'man,' as she afterwards discovered, he was the heir to a peerage and great wealth. Both he and she, like most of my collaborators in this world, have long since passed into ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... industry he showed himself equal to the highest efforts of literature; fiction, poetry, the drama, all were enriched by his labours. As a politician he was not quite so successful. In 1866 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Lytton. He assumed the name of Lytton, his mother's maiden name, in 1844, on succeeding to the Knebworth estates. He died January 18th, 1873, and was buried ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... business. By one of those fortunate accidents which have been frequent in the history of Anglo-Saxon enterprise, a man was found equal to the occasion. Lord Kitchener of Khartoum won his well-deserved peerage because he was a good man of business; he looked carefully after all important detail, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... breakfast, "Major," says he, "I wish I knew where to get a real slapping trotter of a horse, one that could trot with a flash of lightning for a mile, and beat it by a whole neck or so." Says I, "My Lord," for you must know, he says he's the nearest male heir to a Scotch dormant peerage, "my Lord," says I, "I have one, a proper sneezer, a chap that can go ahead of a railroad steamer, a real natural traveller, one that can trot with the ball out of the small eend of a rifle, and never break into a gallop." ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... it an inquiry into the structure of English society, and she made him tell her what a lord was, and a commoner, and how the royal family differed from both. She asked him how he came to be a lord, and when he said that it was a peerage of George the Third's creation, she remembered that George III. was the one we took up arms against. She found that Lord Lioncourt knew of our revolution generally, but was ignorant of such particulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Surrender of Cornwallis, as well as the throwing of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... great position, power, and wealth, during former reigns. Many owe their greatness to the fact that they are the offspring of the illegitimate children of kings, or the descendants of the ignoble minions of kings. Some few are enrolled in the peerage on account of their great wealth; and a still smaller number for the eminent services they have rendered their country like Wellington, Brougham, or Ellenborough. A vast majority can boast only the merit or the successful baseness of their ancestors. But all of them ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... species. It seems to be forgotten that the species suffers when the "fittest" are not able to perpetuate their type. Ritchie, in his "Darwinism and Politics" ("Darwinism and Politics" pages 9, 22, London, 1889.) reminds us of Darwin's remark that the institution of the peerage might be defended on the ground that peers, owing to the prestige they enjoy, are enabled to select as wives "the most beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks." ("Life and Letters of Charles Darwin", II. page 385.) But, says Galton, it is as often as not ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... death of the grandson of the old lord at Corsica in 1794, the only claimant, that had hitherto stood between little George and the immediate succession to the peerage, was removed; and the increased importance which this event conferred upon them was felt not only by Mrs. Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the winter of 1797, his mother ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... rushed into the King's presence, and poured out accusations of treason against Cecil. I cannot but disbelieve this story; the evidence all goes to prove that he still regarded Cecil, among the crowd of his enemies, as at least half his friend. On May 13, Cecil was raised to the peerage, as a sign ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... old system, had five or six seats at his disposal: subject only to the necessity of throwing a few pounds to the 'venal wretches' who went through the form of voting, and by dealing in what he calls this 'merchantable ware' he managed by lifelong efforts to wriggle into a peerage. The Dodingtons, that is, sold because they bought. The 'venal wretches' were the lucky franchise-holders in rotten boroughs. The 'Friends of the People'[3] in 1793 made the often-repeated statement that 154 ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... measure the Irish parliament was abolished, and it was arranged that Ireland should be represented in the common parliament[46] by four spiritual lords and twenty-eight temporal peers, chosen by the Irish peerage for life, and by one hundred members (sixty-four sitting for counties, thirty-five for boroughs, and one for the University of Dublin) of the House of Commons. The Anglican Church of Ireland was amalgamated with the established Church of England, though, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... idea that the touching of pitch will defile still prevailed with him. He was a gentleman;—and would have felt himself disgraced to enter the house of such a one as Augustus Melmotte. Not all the duchesses in the peerage, or all the money in the city, could alter his notions or induce him to modify his conduct. But he knew that it would be useless for him to explain this to Lady Carbury. He trusted, however, that one of the family might be taught to appreciate the difference ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... to tame herself and them to the duties of the long day of anticipation so joyous on their part, so full of confusion and bewildered anxiety on her own. She looked in vain, half stealthily, as often before, for a recent Army List or Peerage. Long ago she had lost the Honourable Colin A. Keith from among the officers of the —th Highlanders, and though in the last Peerage she had laid hands on he was still among the surviving sons of the late Lord Keith, of Gowanbrae, the date had not gone back far ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sponsors, consisting of cups and bowls, some gilded, and others of massy gold, were carried by four persons of quality: Henry Somerset second earl of Worcester, whose father, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, had been acknowledged as a kinsman by Henry VII., and advanced to the peerage; lord Thomas Howard the younger, a son of the duke of Norfolk who was restored in blood after his father's attainder, and created lord Howard of Bindon; Thomas Ratcliffe lord Fitzwalter, afterwards earl of Sussex; and sir ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... farther. The house of the Canynges of Bristol has in its pay eight hundred sailors; its trading navy counts a Mary Canynge and a Mary and John, which exceed in size all that has hitherto been seen. A duke of Bedford is degraded from the peerage because he has no money, and a nobleman without money is tempted to become a dangerous freebooter and live at the expense of others.[862] For the progress is noticeable only by comparison, and, without speaking of open wars, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... (on any accident to the King) on the Prince, Duke of York, or some of the Princes, who will all be linked in a common cause with their brothers, who have been so grossly affronted; and Prince William, the third, particularly so by the last cause of hindering his peerage while abroad. The King's recovery before the Regency Act was passed will be another great advantage to the Prince; his hands would have been so shackled, that he could not have found places for half the expectants, who will now impute their ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... till it was rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little was to be ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hospital, in order to indicate with a few graphic gestures the cripple's limp. Equally he need not be a superb swordsman in order to get through an effective stage combat. It is not absolutely essential that he should be elevated to the peerage before being permitted to play a duke. People talk about fencing, dancing, and elocution, as if actors had nothing to do but fence, dance, and spout. An actor has to simulate everything, from "shouts off" to a crowned king in the centre of the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Square, London, the Rev. Canon Mecklin, sub-dean of the Chapel Royal, officiating. The honeymoon will be spent at the town-house of the groom, in York Terrace. Lord Casselthorpe has long been known as the blackest sheep of the British Peerage, being called the 'Coster Peer' on account of his unconventional language, his coarse manner, and slovenly attire. Two years ago he was warned off Newmarket Heath and the British turf by the Jockey Club. He is eighty-eight years old. The bride, like some other lights ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... otherwise prove incomprehensible in his character and actions. Let it be said, therefore, at once, that he was the second, and at one time favourite, son of the Earl of Swimbridge, whom the whole world knows to be beyond all question the proudest member of the British peerage. Amiable, generous, high-spirited, and with every trait of the best type of the British gentleman fully developed in him, this son had joined the British navy at an early age, as a midshipman, and had made rapid progress in the profession of his ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of Dorset and lord-treasurer—was then fifty-one years of age. A man of large culture-poet, dramatist, diplomatist-bred to the bar; afterwards elevated to the peerage; endowed with high character and strong intellect; ready with tongue and pen; handsome of person, and with a fascinating address, he was as fit a person to send on a mission of expostulation as any man to be found in England. But the author of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... facts, he was a local Tory of some renown—an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave his son a peerage. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... as the monk chronicles point out, rapidly by their own crimes; and very few of our nobility can trace their names back to the authentic Battle Abbey roll. The great majority of the peers have sprung from, and all have intermarried with, the Commons; and the peerage has been from the first, and has become more and more as centuries have rolled on, the prize ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... been conducted, and knows how much she owes to Sir Henry Hardinge's exertions. The Queen hopes that he will see an acknowledgment of this in the communication she has ordered to be made to him relative to his elevation to the Peerage. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... of explanation are here necessary. The Fongereues family re-entered France with the allied armies, and immediately obtained the favor of the king. The old Marquis was elevated to the peerage, and Magdalena felt that her ambitious projects were on the eve of fulfilment. The Vicomte de Talizac easily obtained proof of the death of Simon Fougere; his wife and children had disappeared, and probably perished. The Vicomte, therefore, did not hesitate to claim as sole heir the ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... one, and that's hardly safe; 'Burke's Peerage' has gone through too many editions. Couldn't ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... through the enormous grants of Church-land made to Henry's courtiers. The old baronage was thus hardly crushed before a new aristocracy took its place. "Those families within or without the bounds of the peerage," observes Mr. Hallam, "who are now deemed the most considerable, will be found, with no great number of exceptions, to have first become conspicuous under the Tudor line of kings and, if we could trace the title of their estates, to have acquired no small portion of them mediately or immediately ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... and France had a deep interest. It is not only because Normandy is the cradle of so many families which after events made English, because so many Norman villages still bear names illustrious in the English peerage. It is because it is in the earlier history of Normandy, above all, in the reign of William himself, that we are to seek for one side of the causes which made a Norman conquest of England possible, just ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... on the long-threatened canvassing expedition—with the details of which I need not burden my "Confessions." Suffice it to say, that when Lord Kilkee was advocating Toryism in the west, I, his accredited ambassador, was devoting to the infernal gods the prelacy, the peerage, and the pension list—a mode of canvass well worthy of imitation in these troublesome times; for, not to speak of the great prospect of success from having friends on both sides of the question, the principal can always divest ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... came about that the fine apartment they occupied in Rome had many visitors. Among these was a certain Secretary of Legation, the Hon. Charles Erskine Russell, who, it was expected, would in the course of nature succeed to a peerage. He was a very agreeable as well as an accomplished and wealthy man, and—he fell in love with Barbara. With the cleverness of her sex she managed to put him off and to avoid any actual proposal before they left for Switzerland in the early summer. Thither, happily, he could ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... treasurer advised Her Majesty to create twelve new lords,[64] and thereby disable the sting of faction for the rest of her lifetime: this promotion was so ordered, that a third part were of those on whom, or their posterity, the peerage would naturally devolve; and the rest were such, whose merit, birth, and fortune, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to the discord of her features than to the source of her eligibility to disfigure the peerage—that being her father's lucrative transactions in Pork, which I ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... between Hawick and Langholm, James ordered him to instant execution. Had Johnnie Armstrong, like the Scotts and Kers and Johnstones of like calling, been imprisoned beforehand, he might possibly have lived to found a British peerage; but as it was, the genius of the Armstrong dynasty was for a time extinguished, only, however, to reappear, after the lapse of a few centuries, in the person of the eminent engineer of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the inventor ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... and domestic life, his many and pleasant relations with General Jackson, George M. Dallas, and most of the leading men of his own times. We close this short notice with a quotation from Charles J. Ingersoll: 'A purer, sweeter, or superior spirit seldom has departed. He belonged to a peerage of which there are very few members.' We doubt not this important record will obtain ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence of any personal claim to greatness to be referring back and depending on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through slaughter to a peerage was honoured above those whose brains and whose industry were the means of promoting the comfort of their fellow men. Believe me, my young friends, the highest honour of earth, is the honour of independence, and the highest ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... Carnot and Sieyes, whose names would have carried great weight with the republican party—had not both of these old jacobins and regicides accepted, on entering the Emperor's service, high rank in his peerage—a proceeding in direct violation of all the professions of their lives. He was further favoured with the aid of his brother Lucien, who, in spite of all previous misunderstandings, returned on this occasion to Paris; ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... whom the Americans sometimes surnamed the 'No-flint General,' from his common practice of ordering the men to take the flints out of their muskets, and trust to their bayonets alone. After some twenty years of further service, the veteran was raised, by the favour of his Sovereign, to the peerage as Lord Grey of Howick, and afterwards Earl Grey. His son became Prime Minister (father of the present Earl Grey), and the greatest orator who, since the death of Chatham, had appeared in the House of Lords."—Ib., pp. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... himself to the study of history, and is said to have been on terms of intimacy with every contemporary historian of distinction, with the exception of Guizot. He sat in the House of Commons 1859-65, but made no great mark, and in 1869 was raised to the peerage as Lord Acton of Aldenham. For a time he edited The Rambler, a Roman Catholic periodical, which afterwards became the Home and Foreign Review, and which, under his care, became one of the most learned publications of the day. The liberal character ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... the Moslem world but for Southern Europe as well, an approximate knowledge even of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the coasts of the White Sea. His work, dedicated to Roger and called after him, Al-Rojary, was rewarded with a peerage, and it was as a Sicilian Count that he finished his Celestial Sphere and Terrestrial Disc of silver, on which "was inscribed all the circuit of the known world and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... to Scotland for two personators of King Richard, Trumpington and another (probably John Maudeleyn) whom they intended to pass off to the people as King Richard—which is in itself a contradiction to the charge of setting up March as King. Cambridge and Scrope pleaded their peerage. A commission was issued, August 5th, 1415, by which their judges were appointed—Thomas Duke of Clarence, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (brothers of the King), Thomas Earl of Dorset (the King's half-brother), who sat as proxy of Edward Duke of York; ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... it is far from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me under an obligation to praise him. He belongs to that living pantheon of France which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed sternly repress all private feelings which might seduce me into an excessive enthusiasm. Otherwise I might be suspected of servility; for M. Cousin is very influential in the State by means of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... difficulty. Some time afterwards be might be seen hastening to the Privy Council—and by about two or three o'clock at the bar of the House of Lords, in the midst of an admirable reply in some great appeal or peerage case. When the House broke up, Sir William Follett would doff the full-bottomed wig in which alone Queen's counsel are allowed to appear before the House of Lords, and, resuming his short wig, reappear in either—or by turns in both—the Courts of Nisi Prius, where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... 'Oh, but you're as bad as that sort of person who can't be made to realise that the oldest peerage in Ireland counts for nothing in comparison with an oil-king's millions and being able to entertain the right set.... And besides, really Mr McKeith, there's no difference at all between us. You talk such a lot about YOUR grandfather having been a Scotch peasant. Why! MY mother's father ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... dollars. Ye ar-re savage, but inthrestin'. Ye misname our titles. Ye use th' crool Krag-Jorgensen instead iv th' ca'm an' penethratin' Lee-Metford. Ye kiss ye'er heroes, an' give thim wurruk to do. We smash in their hats, an' illivate thim to th' peerage. Ye have desthroyed our language. Ye ar-re rapidly convartin' our ancesthral palaces into dwellin'-houses. Ye'er morals are loose, ye'er dhrinks ar-re enervatin' but pleasant, an' ye talk through ye'er noses. Ye ar-re mussy at th' table, an' ye have ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... was then the prize of merit only; and one so valuable, that Elizabeth herself said, when asked why she did not bestow a peerage upon some favorite, that having already knighted him, she had nothing better to bestow. It remained for young Essex to begin the degradation of the order in his hapless Irish campaign, and for James to complete that degradation by his novel method of raising ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... move, my MARY, but, it stroikes me, a bit thin, And it won't come home consolin', to "the poor ov Adam's kin." Faix! they won't stop 'cabin passengers,' big-wigs, an' British Peerage, But—they don't want the poor devils that crowd over in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... kindness I was induced to acquiesce in his wish to be permitted to open to you an idea which I find that Mr. Grenville and you consider (in part of it) as strongly objectionable, as hazardous to Government, and as unwise on my part. As I cannot think of accepting the peerage for my second son under such circumstances, I have only to express my regrets that the idea ever has been opened to you. I was never very particularly attached to it, and certainly feel the full force of your arguments against it; but I likewise feel ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... to have been originally malignant.' Though, in native belief, class I. was prior to, and 'appointed' class II., Major Ellis thinks that malignant spirits of class II. were raised to class I. as if to the peerage, while classes III. and IV. 'are clearly the product ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... before that young gentleman's superiority. The bully was also a snob, and probably believed that Henry Alexander belonged to the highest aristocracy. He was well descended and well connected (there was an abeyant peerage in his family), but in point of fact, his social position was not better than that of some other boys in the school. I remember well the intense astonishment of the bully when he found out one day that Alexander bore ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the remainder of their respective personal estates, together with what he had an expectation of from his godmother, would make such a noble fortune, and give him such an interest, as might entitle him to hope for a peerage. Nothing less would satisfy ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the House of Lords Act, elections were held in the House of Lords to determine the 92 hereditary peers who would remain there; pending further reforms, elections are held only as vacancies in the hereditary peerage arise); House of Commons - last held 7 June 2001 (next to be held by NA May 2006) election results: House of Commons - percent of vote by party - Labor 42.1%, Conservative and Unionist 32.7%, Liberal Democrats 18.8%, other 6.4%; seats by party - ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Arms and his minions, for refusing to give way in a debate and calling the Speaker "the insignificant little fellow in a wig." His election cost him L20,000 plus L30,000 subscribed by the county. When Pitt offered him a peerage he said no: "I was born Jack Fuller and Jack Fuller I'll die." When he travelled from Rose Hill to London Mr. Fuller's progresses were almost regal. The coach was provisioned as if for arctic exploration and coachman and footmen ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... undistinguished in the more peaceful pursuits of philosophy and science. Take, for instance, the great names of Bacon, the father of modern philosophy, and of Worcester, Boyle, Cavendish, Talbot, and Rosse, in science. The last named may be regarded as the great mechanic of the peerage; a man who, if he had not been born a peer, would probably have taken the highest rank as an inventor. So thorough is his knowledge of smith-work that he is said to have been pressed on one occasion to accept the foremanship ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... the lump, and rather contemptuously (like 'reading, writing, and arithmetic'), and have no settled position whatever. In a book of precedence, however—a charming class of work, and much more full of humour than the peerage—I recently found indicated for the first time the relative place of Literature in the social scale. After a long list of Eminent Personages and Notables, the mere perusal of which was calculated to bring the flush of pride into my British cheek, I found at the very bottom ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... splendid matrimonial alliance,—so splendid that its history was at the time known to all the aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten by any of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of the peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest son of the Marquis of Hartletop,—than whom no English nobleman was more puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars and ribbons are any sign ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... is an elaborate psychological study of modern temperaments. For her, it is realistic, and she has certainly caught much of the tone and temper of the society of our day. Her people move with ease and grace and indolence. The book may be described as a study of the peerage from a poetical point of view. Those who are tired of mediocre young curates who have doubts, of serious young ladies who have missions, and of the ordinary figureheads of most of the English fiction of our time, might turn with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... suppose, that, if the Gunpowder Plot had been a success,—that, if King, Lords, and Commons had all been hoisted by Mr. Fawkes, the English nation would have gone to wreck, that it could not have survived the loss of most of the royal family, the greater part of the peerage, and most of the gentlemen who had been chosen to serve in the House of Commons? England would have survived such a blow as that blowing-up would have inflicted on her, though for the time she might have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... great office he was finding full play for his powers and his high public purposes. He had won greatly on the confidence of the King. He had just received a fresh mark of honour from him: a few days before he had been raised a step in the peerage, and he was now Viscount St. Alban's. With Buckingham he seemed to be on terms of the most affectionate familiarity, exchanging opinions freely with him on every subject. And Parliament met in good-humour. They voted money at once. One of the ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... there has been a wonderful work doing here; and it is thought that the crown will be taken off her head by a strong handling of the Parliament; and really, when I think of the bishops sitting high in the peerage, like owls and rooks in the bartisans of an old tower, I have my fears that they can bode her no good. I have seen them in the House of Lords, clothed in their idolatrous robes; and when I looked at them so proudly placed ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... discoveries he has made, is, that "the soap-makers and the brewers are the compounders of the great staple commodities of consumption in Great Britain, and therefore surpass even Charles himself in the number of their additions to the Peerage." This valuable hint should not be lost upon those employed in these useful occupations, as hope is calculated to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... the children of the marriage would rank as princes, and she said that she saw nothing to prevent this. He also asked if he would be raised higher in the peerage, and might look to being made a prince at last, and styled Highness as soon as the contract had ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... statesman whom Charles, with his usual defiance of public opinion, soon afterwards raised to the peerage as Lord Digby (on the passing of the Bill of Attainder against Lord Strafford), was, after its publication by its author, condemned to be burnt at Westminster, Cheapside, and Smithfield (July 13th, 1642). Digby voted against putting Strafford to death, because he did not think ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... got the chateau by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time after the return ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... existence of an heir apparent be ascertained, without the opinion of the judges. It is admitted there is no written opinion to guide us. The analogy of property is in favour of the heir presumptive; that of peerage in favour of the ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... and the Princess of Wurtemberg. They were most agreeable, intelligent, and amiable young men, and I was glad to meet them. Lord and Lady Langdale (who have a place in the neighborhood) were invited to dine with us. He is Master of the Rolls and was elevated to the peerage from great distinction at the bar. Lady Langdale is a sensible and excellent person. At dinner I sat between Mr. Bates and Lord Langdale, whom I ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... serious that a separation must ultimately have taken place. One was the breadth of ocean between the two parts of the empire—then, and for sixty years, a more serious obstacle than at present. Another was the peerage—a part of the British system which could not have been abolished without the overthrow of the government, and yet incapable of introduction here. The proposition would have shocked the moral sentiment and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... read it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could and would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in the not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Norfolk. They were not exactly "great people" and no member of the family was of very eminent distinction in any walk of life, though they had judges, soldiers, and sailors etc. among them, and though, some time before the house became extinct, its representative attained the peerage with the title of Earl of Yarmouth. But they were busy people in the troublesome times of the Roses, and they obtained a good deal of property, partly by the death of Sir John Fastolf, noted in the French wars and muddled by posterity (there seems to have been no real resemblance between them ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... honours and promotions were subsequently published in the Gazette. Of these, the more prominent officers who received such recognition of their distinguished services were as follows: The Sirdar was raised to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. In addition thereto the dignity G.C.B. was conferred upon the Sirdar, and Sir Francis Grenfell. Major-Generals W. F. Gatacre, A. Hunter, and H. M. L. Rundle were created ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... ago, when he was much younger and not quite used to the ways of London Society, James was a little wild, but all that sort of thing is over now. He knows"—she paused, setting herself as it were for the punch—"he knows that at any moment the government may decide to give his father a Peerage ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sister, by the King's imperious mistress and his own incontestable merit, Churchill climbed fast up the ladder of preferment. He obtained successively the command of the only dragoon regiment in the service, a Scotch peerage, and the post of Ambassador to the Court of France. Lord Churchill, however, was destined to be advanced still higher in court favour through the influence of his wife and his own genius ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Lass. She was a collie—daintily fragile of build, sensitive of nostril, furrily tawny of coat. Her ancestry was as flawless as any in Burke's Peerage. ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home," from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had focused Nick's ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... occasions Samuel Warren, the author of Ten Thousand a Year, was given to boasting, at the Bar mess, of his intimacy with members of the peerage. One day he was saying that, while dining lately at the Duke of Leeds, he was surprised at finding no fish of any kind was served. "That is easily accounted for," said Thesiger; "they had probably eaten ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... went hand in hand;[2] Where lips, till sixty, shed no honey, And Grandams were worth any money,) Our Sultan has much riper notions— So, let your list of she-promotions Include those only plump and sage, Who've reached the regulation-age; That is, (as near as one can fix From Peerage dates) ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... his Peerage and Baronetage Ed 1879 Pp 885-6, gives a faithful account of the ancestors from whom I am lineally descended. "The family of Naesymth, he says, "is one of remote antiquity in Tweeddale, and has possessed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... (for it is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when any Peerage guide must reveal them pretty closely to the curious), and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my age the charge of two high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed to subdue ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... been RITE ET SOLENNITER ACTA ET PERACTA; and a corresponding entry was made in the protocol of the Lord High Chamberlain, and in the record of Chancery. We understand that it is in contemplation of his Royal Highness, when his Majesty's pleasure can be known, to raise Colonel Bradwardine to the peerage, by the title of Viscount Bradwardine, of Bradwardine and Tully-Veolan, and that, in the meanwhile, his Royal Highness, in his father's name and authority, has been pleased to grant him an honourable augmentation to ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... majesty, at their dismissal, having declared they should have leave to go abroad whither they pleased." They accepted of Mr. Hamilton's offer to carry them into France. "Arlington's Letters," vol. i., p. 185. Lodge, in his Peerage of Ireland, says, Sir George Hamilton died in 1667, which, from the first extract above, appears to be erroneous. He has evidently confounded the father and son; the former of whom was the person who died ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... much difference of opinion among the genealogists and family historians regarding Alexander's two wives. Both Edmonston in his Baronagium Genealogicum, and Douglas in his Peerage say that Alexander's first wife was Agnes, sixth daughter of Colin, first Earl of Argyll. This we shall prove to be absolutely impossible within the ordinary course of the laws of nature. Colin, first Earl of Argyll, succeeded as a minor ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... fiction, readers of his class would soon crowd out the more earnest workers. Here is a student with the thirty or more volumes of the "New England Historic Genealogical Register" piled before him, flanked on one side by the huge volumes of Burke's "Peerage" and on the other by Walford's "County Families." There are many readers of this class, the library's department of Genealogy and Heraldry being well filled. There is a lady here and there at the tables working ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... New England, the differences in what we should call social position, though noticeable, were not extreme. While in England some had been esquires or country magistrates, or "lords of the manor,"—a phrase which does not mean a member of the peerage, but a landed proprietor with dependent tenants[1]; some had been yeomen, or persons holding farms by some free kind of tenure; some had been artisans or tradesmen in cities. All had for many generations been more or less accustomed to self-government and to public meetings ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... good deal, and revolved on his axis, according to pattern given. And set (what chiefly induces us to name him here) his not reverent enough Subordinate, Lord Charles Hay, our old Fontenoy friend, into angry impatient quizzing of him;—and by and by into Court-Martial for such quizzing. [Peerage Books,? Tweeddale.] Court-Martial, which was much puzzled by the case; and could decide nothing, but only adjourn and adjourn;—as we will now do, not mentioning Lord Loudon farther, or the numerous other instances at all. ["1st May, 1760, Major-General Lord Charles Hay died" (Gentleman's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... as Lord George Germaine; son of the seventh Earl and first Duke of Dorset. A Member of Parliament and a soldier, he became in 1775 Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord North's Administration until the fall of his chief. His rise to the peerage in 1782 as Viscount Sackville gave cause to some acrimonious debates, which are referred to later, see Chapter 5. The Letters of Junius have often been ascribed to ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... the first volume of his Essay on Pope had been published, Lyttleton, then newly raised to the peerage, gave him his scarf, and submitted some of his writings, before they were printed, to ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... Henry VII. at Windsor. The king was also impressed with Russell, and appointed him to an office in the court, and three years afterwards, Henry VIII. becoming king, Russell was entrusted with many important duties, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Russell. He enjoyed the king's favor throughout his long reign, and was made one of the councillors of his son, Edward VI., besides holding other high offices, and when the youthful prince ascended the throne ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... cheque-book. They do not whisper with unsavoury slyness that such and such a man was "seen" going into a bank. I am quite convinced that the English aristocracy is the curse of England, but I have not noticed either in myself or others any disposition to ostracise a man simply for accepting a peerage, as the modern Puritans would certainly ostracise him (from any of their positions of trust) for accepting a drink. The sentiment is certainly very largely a mystical one, like the sentiment about ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... studied some books, but not the Peerage. The great name of Kinloch was new to him, not new to Scaife, who, for a boy, knew his ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... McCabe, 'but you have varieties among yourselves. You have a King and a Queen; and your peerage is rich in differentiated species. A Baronet is not a Marquis, nor is a Duke ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... handsome jointure, one of his early attachments, and was, without scruple, accepted. The power of the family might then be said to be at its zenith; and but for certain untoward circumstances, and the growing influence of his enemies, Sir Reginald would have been elevated to the peerage. Like most reformed spend-thrifts, he had become proportionately avaricious, and his mind seemed engrossed in accumulating wealth. In the meantime, his second wife followed her predecessor, dying, it was said, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... second in command, and he had his share in the operations which culminated in the "Glorius First of June," and for his services was made Baron Bridport of Cricket St Thomas in Somerset in the Irish peerage. Henceforth Bridport was practically in independent command. In 1795 he fought the much-criticized partial action of the 23rd of June off Belle-Ile, which, however unfavourably it was regarded in some quarters, was counted as a great victory by the public. Bridport's peerage was made English, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... Roger and others were instantly hanged over the bridge at Lauder. Cochran was now brought out, his hands bound with a rope, and thus conducted to the bridge, and hanged above his fellows."] Later scions of the family prospered, and in 1641, Sir William Cochrane was raised to the peerage, as Lord Cochrane of Cowden, by Charles I. For his adherence to the royal cause this nobleman was fined 5000l. by the Long Parliament in 1654; and, in recompense for his loyalty, he was made first Earl of Dundonald ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... well defined as elegantly skittish; She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do; And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British, And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... Academy was amused by, and afforded much amusement to, the newest child of genius fresh from Paris, with the slang of the Chat Noir upon his lips and the scorn of les vieux in his heart. Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant, millionaire and bohemian, peer with a peerage old at Runnymede and the latest working-man M.P., all came together under the regal republicanism of Langley House. Someone said that a party at Langley House always suggested to him the ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... election in which he had spent the last of his money, he was "counted out" in favor of a rather hod character named O'GLOORAL. Thus practically taught to understand the political genius of a Republic, which, as gloriously contrasted with any effete monarchy ruled by a Peerage, looks for its own governing class to the Steerage, Mr. WILLIAM ADAMS subsided impecuniously into plain BILL ADAMS and a book-keepership in dry goods; and was ultimately blurred into BLADAMS and employment as a copyist by Mr. DIBBLE, to whom his experience ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... and politician, Edward Bulwer Lytton was born in London on May 25, 1805. His father was General Earle Bulwer. He assumed his mother's family name on her death in 1843, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lytton in 1866. At seventeen Lytton published a volume entitled, "Ismael, and Other Poems." An unhappy marriage in 1827 was followed by extraordinary literary activity, and during the next ten years he produced twelve novels, two poems, a play, "England and the English," and "Athens: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... Lord Brougham ever alluded to Mrs. Partington. Certain it is he never made any speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill, as he was raised to the peerage some months before that bill was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 57, November 30, 1850 • Various
... titles and estates are perpetual, we do not create any. You give us too much credit; the present generation sets no value on considerations so far removed from their own time. The late King named Count K—— a peer, on the proviso of his investing an estate with the title; he gave up the peerage, rather than injure his daughter to the advantage of his son. Out of twenty affluent families, there is scarcely one inclined to place the eldest son so much above the rest. Egotism prevails everywhere. People prefer to live on good terms with all their children, ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... playful, girlish manners, and an irritating way of giving vent to the most utter platitudes with the air of having just discovered a new truth. She has been with us this morning and mentioned that her father was four times removed from a peerage. I stifled a childish desire to ask who had removed him, while Mrs. Wilmot murmured, "How interesting!" As she minced away Mrs. Crawley said meditatively, "The Rocking Horse Fly," and with a squeal of delight I realized that that was what she had always vaguely reminded me of. You remember ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas |
