Or knightidity.
That is Monty Python stuff. Run away!
At a quick glance the last non-royal dukedom seems to have been created in the 19th century? Is that correct? It would be a big deal for another to be created.
Oops technically 20th century. Duke of Fife 1900
Note that there is already a dukedom in Churchill’s family; his first cousin was the ninth Duke of Marlborough.
The duke wasn’t royal, but the title was really for his wife and daughter, who were princesses. He would have remained an earl had he married someone else.
So is it considered a royal dukedom?
Possibly when his daughter held it, but not when he did.
The 20th century began in 1901.
That was Governor-General Lord William Bentinck, 1829. A bit before Winnie’s time.
In fact, he was named after the first Sir Winston Churchill (1620-1688), father of John Churchill, who the 1st Duke of Marlborough, and IIRC the 5th or 6th best general in history.
As I recall, when in 1945 George VI offered to make him a Garter Knight (numbers fixed at 24 and reserved for exceptional service, usually in government or the military), Churchill turned it down because he could hardly accept the Garter so soon after the voters had given him the Order of the Boot.
As for Randolph, he managed to get up the noses of just about everyone. He had been an MP for a while in WW2, but thereafter his services were not required, but that didn’t stop him behaving as though he was a party bigwig. When he had an operation to remove a tumour that was found to be benign, someone (Evelyn Waugh?) remarked on what a triumph of medical science it was to find and remove the one part of Randolph Churchill that wasn’t malignant.
Churchill successfully led Britain through the war years, when many other potential leaders would have failed - some, like The Duke of Windsor, would have made peace with the tyrant. We are grateful for that.
Many Britons are aware that Churchill had racist and eugenicist views, opinions which were widely shared at the time but were hopelessly wrong.
it is instructive to remember that Churchill was voted out in the first general election after the end of the war; the old warhorse had served his purpose. A few years later Churchill was back, but achieved almost nothing useful in post-war Britain.
His big thing was to try to get a summit meeting with the post-Soviet leadership so as to establish a better security system. That didn’t really go anywhere. But his colleagues in government, for good or ill, substantially lessened the remaining aspects of the wartime and postwar command economy, without undoing the welfare state, and set in motion the economic boom and consumer economy of the 50s. And they brought in commercial TV. Whether or not that’s useful…
I am reading “Never Despair”, and his efforts at a summit are described. Eisenhower was not in favor, which I imagine had quite a bit of influence. Churchill agreed that the contemporary guys running the USSR were not as trustworthy as Stalin.
The fashion these days is to decry him as a racist drunk who starved India maliciously.
I fully intend to use a fair amount of my free time to look for a great opportunity to use this line.
A “royal duke” is a member of the royal family who is sufficiently closely related to the monarch to have the title “Prince” and the style “Royal Highness”, and who is also a Duke. Example: HRH Prince Andrew, also Duke of York. But it’s the individual holding the title who is royal, because of his close genetic relationship to the monarch. The ducal title itself is not royal, and may well descent to someone who is not a member of the royal family (because too distantly related to the monarch. In that sense no dukedom is inherently royal.
For example, George V’s third son Prince Henry was, obviously, a member of the royal family as a son of the then king. He was created Duke of Gloucester in 1928 and so became a royal duke. He died in 1974 and the title passed to his son Prince Richard who is still the current Duke of Gloucester. As the grandson of a monarch he too is considered to be royal. But when he dies, the title is due to pass to his son, who as the great-grandson of a monarch won’t have the Prince title or the HRH style. He will not be a royal Duke.
I would say the Duke of Cornwall is inherently royal.
Are all dukedoms heridtary? Are some reserved for the sons of the monarch? If Andrew had sons would York eventually never be a royal dukedom again? Would they have to make up new ones eventually?
All up to the monarch of the day and how much they want to stick to tradition, custom and practice.
Some titles have traditionally gone to the sons of the monarch, as in the days when that meant actually running/controlling that part of the country for the monarch, but it’s just ceremonial/honorific nowadays, and mostly it’s a family matter.
But Parliament would be involved in the mediaeval financial legacy of the Duchy of Lancaster (a title and estates belonging to the monarch but the estates are held in trust to produce income the monarch can dispose of as they wish) and Duchy of Cornwall (estates producing an income for the heir to the throne).