It’s customary for all the sovereign’s close relatives to be granted some peerage title, usually duke. As peers of the realm, did they ever sit, give speeches, or vote in the pre-reform House of Lords?
Not all the sovereign’s relatives are ipso facto members of the peerage – the second son of the queen’s cousin is Prince Something of Someshire (e.g., Prince Michael of Kent) without a title of his own.
Those who are given or inherit titles (Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and Prince Edward, Duke of Wessex IIRC, were created Dukes; the present Dukes of Kent and Gloucester inherited their titles from their fathers, the Queen’s uncles) were entitled to seats in the Lords and expected to at least make cursory appearances and speeches there from time to time, but were barred by custom from taking substantive positions on political issues.
I’m not sure what the recent revision to the membership of the Lords does to those rights.
None of the Royal family (Dukes of Edinburgh, Cornwall, York, Gloucester, Kent or Earl of Wessex) is listed in the current membership of the House of Lords. So they presumably are no longer able to sit post-reform.
There are a couple of dukes still in the Lords. The Duke of Norfolk maintains his seat because he’s an officer of state as the Earl Marshal. The Duke of Montrose has a seat as one of the elected hereditary peers.
Phillip, Charles, Andrew, and Edward were offered life peerages (as were all first holders of hereditary peerages) to enable them to remain members of the House of Lords, but they declined. Princess Margaret’s ex-husband, the Earl of Snowden, did however take up the offer. Also pre-reform the Duke of Cornwall (always the eldest son of the monarch) was entitled to take his seat in the Lords even if he wasn’t of age (21) yet. So Prince Charles could theoretically taken his seat in 1952 at the age of 4 :eek: .
Several of George III’s sons participated in debates in the Lords. The Dukes of York and Cumberland, for example, spoke against Catholic emancipation, but if I recall correctly, the Duke of Sussex spoke in favour of it. I believe the Duke of Clarence also participated in the debates, but I don’t remember the position he took.
Cumberland (an arch-conservative who later became the King of Hanover) also spoke on a bill that related to divorce, to allow the co-respondent in a divorce action to marry the principal after the divorce went through. (At common law, the co-respondent was barred from marrying the principal, since that was considered to be rewarding adultery.) Cumberland commented that for a woman proved to have committed adultery, leading to the divorce of her lover from his wife, marrying him might be her only hope of any security. One biographer of the Royal Dukes commented that this was the only liberal sentiment he had ever found Cumberland had expressed in his entire life.