# Hereditary Nobility: How Low CAn You Go? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 7, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044 "2014-08-07T16:59:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/1 "2014-08-07T16:59:07Z")
In current circumstances, being Duke of This or Earl of That is not what it once was. You don’t get to be the leader of some region, with serfs working on your fields and so on. Question is: how low in the world can/do people with hereditary titles sink? Are there Dukes and Earls working the late shift at McDonalds, or living on welfare, for example? And if not, why not? Basically, what would keep them above the lowest rung of society? [I’m thinking of England mostly, but this may apply elsewhere as well.] ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/2 "2014-08-07T17:08:21Z")
My grandmother’s family had some sort of low-level nobility (not any kind of royal blood) and from what I can gather, all it meant was that one point they owned enough land to have a little clout in their neck of the woods. And by “enough” we’re talking “could afford to hire someone to help rather than the family having to do everything by themselves.” ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/3 "2014-08-07T17:43:51Z")
[Peter Nelson, 9th Earl Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Nelson,_9th_Earl_Nelson), retired from the London Metropolitan Police with the rank of Detective Sergeant. Bit of a comedown from Vice-Admiral of the White, Duke of Bronté, Knight of the Bath, and England’s Hero, as was the case with his several-greats-uncle, Horatio Nelson. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/4 "2014-08-07T17:49:44Z")
I know for a fact that the present Earl of Dundee serves tea to his guests at the holiday cottage he runs. And there’s a Scots Lord who is a petrol pump attendant. I think it was this guy, [Lord Gray](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1430550/Lord-Gray.html). I am also led to believe there’s a lord who lives in Winchester or somewhere in a bog-standard high-rise council house, although it’s choc-full of antique furniture! ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/5 "2014-08-07T17:56:36Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > [Peter Nelson, 9th Earl Nelson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Nelson,_9th_Earl_Nelson), retired from the London Metropolitan Police with the rank of Detective Sergeant. That’s a bit misleading. Per your link, the guy retired from the police force at age 42 and went on to serve “as chairman of Retainacar (now Retainagroup), a company specialising in car security systems and as president of the Royal Navy Commando Association and of the Nelson Society”. > [@Malden\_Capell](#): > > I know for a fact that the present Earl of Dundee serves tea to his guests at the holiday cottage he runs. And there’s a Scots Lord who is a petrol pump attendant. > > I think it was this guy, [Lord Gray](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1430550/Lord-Gray.html). I don’t know anything about the first guy but the second seems - per your link - to have been more of a well-off eccentric rather than a down-at-the-heels petrol pump attendent. [ETA: in my McDonalds example, I was thinking of someone whose income was derived from a job at McDonalds, not a guy who owned the place and helped out as well.] ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/6 "2014-08-07T17:58:22Z")
[Here’s a recent story](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/nyregion/princess-fights-leaks-and-an-eviction-notice-in-manhattan.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1) about an Ottoman princess about to be kicked out of her NYC apartment by a developer who bought the building. [Bayezid Osman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_Osman), heir to the Ottoman House of Osman, worked as a librarian in NYC. [Karl von Habsburg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg) was a game show host. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/7 "2014-08-07T18:04:38Z")
Hmm, they may be tricky to find as British people tend to dislike talking about money 🙂 Another anecdote I have is that Viscount Montgomery got attacked in the press for cashing his pension while a lord, and his retort was it was the only money he got! ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/8 "2014-08-07T18:27:55Z")
I think that your anecdote is fictional. Monty served in Both world wars, and was made a Viscount in 1946 when he was commander of the British occupation forces and serving on the Allied Control Council. Beginning in 1951, he served as deputy commander of NATO’s European forces and remained in that position until his retirement in 1958. This amused me: [Bernard Montgomery - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery,_1st_Viscount_Montgomery_of_Alamein) > [@](#): > > Montgomery met Moshe Dayan in the 1960s and was harshly critical of US strategy in Vietnam, which involved deploying large numbers of combat troops, aggressive bombing attacks, and uprooting entire village populations and forcing them into strategic hamlets. Montgomery said that the Americans’ most important problem was that they had no clear-cut objective, and allowed local commanders to set military policy. At the end of their meeting, Montgomery asked Dayan to tell the Americans, in his name, that they were “insane”. He got that right. I bet he would have said the same about the second Gulf War too. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/9 "2014-08-07T18:29:06Z")
[James Thorne Erskine, 14th Earl of Mar and 16th Earl of Kellie](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Erskine,_14th_Earl_of_Mar) took up a career in social work. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/10 "2014-08-07T18:31:37Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > [Here’s a recent story](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/nyregion/princess-fights-leaks-and-an-eviction-notice-in-manhattan.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1) about an Ottoman princess about to be kicked out of her NYC apartment by a developer who bought the building. [Bayezid Osman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayezid_Osman), heir to the Ottoman House of Osman, worked as a librarian in NYC. She’s the first person I thought of. But _many_ people with hereditary titles have no inherited wealth. (And that’s not a new thing. It’s been going on for centuries.) ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/11 "2014-08-07T18:32:12Z")
I wonder if the OP has some misconception that titles come with some kind of remuneration. This is not true - sure some of the aristo’s inherit wealth and land, but so do commoners. Some belong to the best pensioner’s club in the world - The House of Lords where they can get £300 for just being there for a day, but some members are not lords at all. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/12 "2014-08-07T18:36:07Z")
I’m imagining that there are many, many more such people several generations removed from lords who went broke, and just stopped passing the hereditary entitlement down anymore – although technically could have, but the exercise would have been pointless and possibly exposing their descendants to undeserved ridicule. Literature is full of aristocrats who gambled away or otherwise lost their wealth, but how many real life cases would be conjectural. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/13 "2014-08-07T18:36:38Z")
> [@bob\_2](#): > > I wonder if the OP has some misconception that titles come with some kind of remuneration. This is not true - sure some of the aristo’s inherit wealth and land, but so do commoners. As a person who is very close to the OP - in fact we’re in almost constant contact - I can assure you that the OP had no such misconcepton. In fact, the OP alluded to this very fact in the second sentence of the OP. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/14 "2014-08-07T19:21:09Z")
[Countess Gloria of Schönburg-Glauchau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_von_Thurn_und_Taxis) was working as a waitress at the time she met her eventual husband, Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis (he was worth a billion dollars, but she wasn’t). ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/15 "2014-08-07T19:26:30Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > That’s a bit misleading. Per your link, the guy retired from the police force at age 42 and went on to serve “as chairman of Retainacar (now Retainagroup), a company specialising in car security systems and as president of the Royal Navy Commando Association and of the Nelson Society”. > … > I don’t know anything about the first guy but the second seems - per your link - to have been more of a well-off eccentric rather than a down-at-the-heels petrol pump attendent. > > [ETA: in my McDonalds example, I was thinking of someone whose income was derived from a job at McDonalds, not a guy who owned the place and helped out as well.] There are certainly some rich people (people who don’t “have” to work for a living) who have seemingly ordinary jobs anyway because they want to work or want to have the image of a working person. It’s quite likely that they don’t worry a whole lot since being fired is no big deal, and they also probably have enough social connections to get nice jobs. “Want to be a shift manager at Denny’s? Of course, Lord, we’d be honored to have you here.” On another note, in some jurisdictions, people who are on probation or parole are often required to work or attend school full-time as a condition of their probation. I heard a story about an independently wealthy person in the US who was working a McJob because he was on probation for some shenanigans and his probation officer told him he couldn’t just hang around his estate home all day. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/16 "2014-08-07T19:50:02Z")
I think quite a few Russian emigre nobles were forced into somewhat sub-stellar callings… ---
**Author:** ![scruffycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scruffycat/32/200_2.png) [@scruffycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scruffycat)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/17 "2014-08-07T21:08:24Z")
I’m sure I’ve read somewhere about quite a high ranking member of the nobility possibly an Earl who is a construction worker in the US. He’s actually an American citizen and there’s no stately home left back in England anymore. Can’t remember the name though. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/18 "2014-08-07T21:39:42Z")
> [@scruffycat](#): > > I’m sure I’ve read somewhere about quite a high ranking member of the nobility possibly an Earl who is a construction worker in the US. He’s actually an American citizen and there’s no stately home left back in England anymore. Can’t remember the name though. Earl of Wharncliffe? ---
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/19 "2014-08-07T21:44:17Z")
> [@Malden\_Capell](#): > > I think quite a few Russian emigre nobles were forced into somewhat sub-stellar callings… … or non-emigre. My childhood friend in USSR was a Baronet. A Baron now… ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044/20 "2014-08-07T21:57:39Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > I’m imagining that there are many, many more such people several generations removed from lords who went broke, and just stopped passing the hereditary entitlement down anymore – although technically could have, but the exercise would have been pointless and possibly exposing their descendants to undeserved ridicule. > > Literature is full of aristocrats who gambled away or otherwise lost their wealth, but how many real life cases would be conjectural. In the UK we have this nasty little tax known as ‘death duty’ - properly, Inheritance Tax. If your estate (everything you own wherever it is) is worth (currently) £350,000 you have to hand over 40% of everything over that. Since many of these grand families either did not make proper provision, or for other reasons (like losing several generations in WW1 and WW2) they lost their houses and their land. Of course there were the drunks and gamblers too which didn’t help, but all in all, it is only the clever ones that managed to keep things going. Anyone who watched Downton Abbey will be aware of the problems they had because of Inheritance Tax. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hereditary-nobility-how-low-can-you-go/695044.md?page=2)