I recently read the historical novel The Sunne in Splendour, by Sharon Kay Penman, set in the final stages of the Wars of the Roses. One point made repeatedly is that the Duke of York and the House of York are, in fact, deeply unpopular in York and Yorkshire, which are pro-Lancastrian. The Yorks don’t even seem to have any estates there. So I guess “York” was just a family title/name – but it must have had some connection to York at some point, mustn’t it? When did that change?
I don’t really know what you mean. The House of York is called the House of York because of the Duchy of York. Edward III made his son Edmund of Langley Duke of York in 1385. Edmund of Langley’s son was Edward of Norwich, who was Duke of York after him. When he died at the battle of Agincourt, the title of Duke of York passed to his nephew, Richard Plantagenet, who got all sorts of positions, was made Protector when Henry VI went crazy, and then, after Henry regained his sanity, got scared Richard would be a threat to his newborn son, and started to limit his power, declared himself king and started the Wars of the Roses.
The House of Lancaster, likewise, is descended from another one of Edward III’s sons, John of Gaunt, who he made Duke of Lancaster. John of Gaunt’s son, Henry of Bolingbrook, deposed and killed Richard II, and became King Henry IV. His son was the famous Henry V, and Henry V’s son was the unlucky Henry VI, who Richard Plantagenet rebelled against and see above.
But Henry VI was Duke of Lancaster, among his other titles, and Richard Plantagent was Duke of York (as well as other things…Earl of March, Earl of Cambridge, Earl of Ulster, Lord of Claire, etc.)
I think that, for the higher levels of the peerage, the answer is “they were always like that”. The king handed out tracts of land and titles to whoever was in his good books, and/or he owed a favour to. The recipient did not have to have any prior connection to the area granted, nor did they necessarily develop one afterwards. I’m looking at the wiki page for the Duke of Devonshire, for instance, and it lists a bunch of “family seat” residences in Yorkshire, Ireland, Sussex, London (of course) … but not one actually in Devonshire.
In terms of major Yorkist strongholds in Yorkshire, the most famous was probably the Duke of Warwick’s castle of Middleham, where Warwick raised Richard and George (later to be Richard III and George of Clarenece) after Richard Plantagent’s death. The Duke of Warwick owned a lot of other places in Yorkshire also, like Sheriff Hutton. In fact, the Nevilles and the Percys between them controlled most of the North (and were constantly fighting over it. That’s why the Nevilles for the most part were Yorkist and the Percys Lancastarian)
There was also Sandal Castle, held by the Duke of York himself (who was executed there by the Lancastarians after the battle of Wakefield),
Earl of Warwick, surely.
Complete guess. The Black plague and the collapse of the feudal system that had existed earlier.
I am pretty sure that is not true in general. Many of these titles go back to well before there was a king powerful enough to hand out tracts of land to anyone. The feudal system did not develop in that top-down sort of way. You were Earl or Duke or whatever of a certain region because you controlled that region, and families originally became royal, controlling larger regions, because they established themselves as pre-eminent amongst the aristocracy of that larger region. Even in cases (later on) where people got these titles because of some grant of title and land from some powerful king, originally that meant you got to own and ruledover that area, your wealth was dependent on the income from farming it. You had better go live there and run it (or, at worst, employ someone on the spot to run it for you) if you wanted to prosper.
I doubt whether there is any general answer to the OP’s question. Titles and landholdings will have become gradually disassociated at different times, for different families, as lands were bought and sold, and otherwise acquired and lost, over they years. I would not be at all surprised if some aristocratic families still do own significant amounts of land in the regions from whose name they derive their title. Others, of course, do not.
Right. Sorry, Dukes on the brain.
William the Conqueror specifically handed out land to his followers in widely dispersed areas so they couldn’t build up a regional power-base.
That was the case in France and Germany, but not in England, which actually was the most top-down feudal system in Europe because of the Norman Conquest. William the Conqueror did assign the land to his supporters. The previous English system was more what you describe, but it died with Harold.
I am aware of what William did. That was largely what I had in mind when I mentioned what happened “later on”. William, was largely slotting new people into pre-existing feudal fiefdoms (although no doubt he changed the way the land was carved up a bit, and created some new titles). He changed the personnel but did not create the system. That is why England still has Earls (a Saxon title) and not just Dukes (a Norman one).
Anyway, it is a bit beside the point, because it was at a time when the title (whether old or newly created) did still go along with the lands that were under the lord’s control. If William made you Duke of Cornwall (I do not know if he actually created that title) it was because he was giving you dominion over Cornwall. He was not doing what Aspidistra suggested, handing out titles regardless of land, which is something that has only happened in far more recent times, long after titles ceased, for other reasons, to have much connection with where, or whether, land was owned.
re: The specific situation in England, this is essentially the correct answer to the OP. After the Norman conquest it was unusual for English comital-level titles ( i.e. “earl” ) to correspond directly with land-holdings. There were a few partial exceptions in history were large concentrations of estates existed, such as in the various palatinates at times. But generally speaking while earls often had their seats in the corresponding county and held land there, it was no requirement and their demesnes as a whole were usually dispersed over a much wider area.
No dukes were created under William, nor any title in Cornwall. Indeed the title of earl which used to be synonymous with dux under the Saxon kings were quite deliberately reduced in status to a comital level - i.e. the same as a Norman comes. This only made sense, since William wasn’t about to put anyone at the same level of his own title as Duke of Normandy. Under William an earl of Surrey in England was the equivalent to a count of Mortain in Normandy and no one was given a comital-level title in both realms. Stephen of Blois for example before he became King of England held enormous estates in England but no earldoms, his comital title was in Normandy ( Mortain ).
To be an earl in Norman England meant only one thing as far as the county from which it took its name was concerned. It meant that an earl had the right to a third of the profits of the county court and the royal boroughs. So the title brought with it some wealth, but no land. At least not automatically - often something like the temporary keeping of a royal castle might be granted simultaneously to a newly created earl. But no land was specifically attached to earldoms. William created only seven earls out of 39 counties ( all of them very wealthy quite separate from their titles - there was a clear connection at that time between landed wealth and being granted a count-level title ). The number stayed about the same until Stephen started creating them left and right, pushing the number up to around 20.
Hmm . . . Did that right survive to the WotR period? (It would explain why, in Richard III, the Duke of Buckingham was so greedy to be Earl of Hereford as well, even though he already had a higher title.)
Wasn’t it this “temporary keeping” of royal castles that eventually evolved into the concept that the earl “owned” the castle and its huge tracts of land, even if that didn’t amount to a whole county? At the same time, wasn’t land held by feudal tenure understood to belong really to the Crown, if only nominally?
I’m honestly not sure.
But in Buckingham’s case it wasn’t really the then extinct Earldom of Hereford that was the issue, but more the Bohun estates - i.e. the landed wealth of the former Earl of Hereford. Part of the lands of that estate fell by female heirs to Buckingham and he claimed the part that had been confiscated to the Crown by Edward IV after the absorption of the Lancastrian estates ( which included the other inherited portion of the Bohun lands ). Edward refused him, Richard eventually granted him the land in exchange for his support.
That was always a problem. It became particularly acute during the chaos of the civil war between Stephen and Mathilda. Henry II solved that issue by simply confiscating former royal castles and pulling down those he deemed to have been raised illegally. But at times of royal weakness ( of whatever sort ) local potentates did have tendency to try to make temporary or lifetime grants permanent.
Yes, but not all land was under feudal tenure ( though much of it was ). Some estates was owned outright as allods, free from legal entanglement with the crown.
An example of a higher title held in that manner from France was the huge Duchy of Aquitaine. After 1038 it actually consisted of two joined ducal titles - Aquitaine proper and Gascony. Aquitaine was a feudal dependency of the crown and held by the authority of the King of France. However Gascony was an allodial title and technically could not be legally confiscated by the same process as Aquitaine. This ended with Henry III, who after being defeated in his attempt to reconquer Poitou was forced to accept Gascony as feudal benefice of France in exchange for the acknowledgement of the defeated Henry’s authority over a wide swath of the former Aquitaine south of Poitou.
Another example from Germany is the Welf lands in northern Germany. In 1180 Frederick I Barbarossa confiscated the ducal titles of the rebellious Henry the Lion ( Saxony and Bavaria ) as was his feudal right and divided up those duchies into smaller parts, granting the actual titles to new proprietors. But the vast Welf estates in Saxon Eastphalia ( and much lesser ones in Bavaria ) were left untouched - they were allodial possessions and not subject to the emperor’s whims. Eventually in 1235 Henry the Lion’s lone surviving grandson Otto the Child granted all those Saxon estates to Frederick II and then received them back again as a feudal grant along with the new title of Duke of Brunswick-Luneberg, the loss in autonomy of direct ownership apparently being worth the return to the more prestigious rank of duke.
Wow, Shakespeare got that wrong, too! “I am not in a giving vein.”
I do know that Prince of Wales has never had any connection to Wales beyond his title and has never played even a ceremonial role in Welsh government. Nor does the associated title of Duke of Cornwall carry any role in Cornish government – but, unlike most titles, it does come with land – land owned, not ruled, by the Duke – not all of it in Cornwall.
The Queen’s subsidiary title of Duke (not Duchess) of Normandy, OTOH, conveys sovereignty (not ownership) over the Channel Islands, which are not constitutionally part of the UK.
Side note: John of Gaunt was made Duke of Lancaster after he married the heiress Blanche of Lancaster, the heir to the Dukedom, mother to Henry of Bolingbrook. She died and he later married a Spanish princess and heiress, after she died, he married his long time mistress Katherine whose children were proclaimed legitement (by his then nephew and King Richard II) These children later were key players in the War of the Roses.
Wellllll…
I’d give Shakespeare a pass on this one. That had been the speculation of the major 16th century court historian of Henry VIII ( Polydore Vergil ) - that Richard had somehow tried to shaft Buckingham on the deal, hence Buckingham’s otherwise somewhat mysterious disaffection. But even in his own generation this hypothesis was attacked, as below. Quoting:
Polydore Vergil claimed that Buckingham quarreled with Richard over the king’s refusal to grant him the second moiety of the Bohun earldom of Hereford, but this notion was rejected by Sir Thomas More as politically implausible. In any event Buckingham’s demand had not been refused, for on 13 July 1483 Richard solemnly promised that, soon as Parliament met, he would forthwith procure an act to reverse the arrangement made in Parliament by Henry V, which had vested that king’s share of the Bohun inheritance in the House of Lancaster as a private heritage. Meanwhile, the duke was to be allowed to take all the revenues from the king’s portion as from the previous Easter. This pledge was made in letters issued under the king’s signet.
From Richard III by Charles Ross ( 1981, University of California Press ).