Not quite right. The Commission makes suggestions for peerages for Crossbenchers only. For party peers, they vet them for suitability (financial probity, background etc) just to ensure outright criminals aren’t knowingly being raised to the peerage.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
The previous Lord Nelson was a police sergeant, as is the current one - all descended from Admiral Nelson’s brother. Another ‘special remainder’ allowed the title to descend in the female line if necessary.
The Nelson peerage came with a perpetual pension, but the State bought it out some generations ago, like the Marlborough one.
I know the Earl of Mar and Kellie (not bosom buddies or anything, but well enough to chat to him in the street) and he’s a nice, thoughtful man. I don’t think his family have had much in the way of riches for a few generations. He worked for a living as a social worker - there can’t be many Earls who’ve chosen that career path!
Also, please note that the modern American notion of what adoption is like is a recent thing which arose in the U.S. in the mid-twentieth century. By this I mean someone adopting a chlld who is completely unrelated, genetically different, and unknown to the adopter before the adoption process began. (An adoption like this is actually kind of hip among current American celebrities.) A British nobleman in the era of Downton Abbey would have found the equivalent of modern American adoption bizarre:
If memory serves, informal adoption, without legal sanction or implications per se, may well have happened in the UK for a long time, but even after assorted 19th century scandals to do with “baby farming” and grim workhouse/orphanage-to-apprenticeship set-ups, it took until the 1920s for there to be legally-regulated adoption processes.
I know the Earl of Essex is a Deputy Headmaster somewhere…and there’s a lord in Scotland who works in a petrol station (doesn’t own them, works in one), and there’s a baroness in Ireland who lives in a council flat with some ridiculously old furniture…
But not if it were a matter of saving the family’s face by providing cover for a daughter’s indiscretion, if Downton Abbey itself was to be believed.
I’ve never watched Downton Abbey, but some reviews say that the adoption plot wasn’t believable.
https://www.esserlawoffice.com/blog/adoption/2014/02/28/downton-abbey-adoption-plotline/
Are there any real cases of a member of the nobility adopting a random child at the time of Downton Abbey, putting aside for the moment whether such a child could inherit a title?
It seems Wikipedia considers peers relevant enough to deserve an article just on the grounds of holding a peerage, so the current Earl of Essex also has an entry. Seems he was deputy headmaster in a primary school in Lancashire but kept a low profile about his title amongst his colleagues (which is feasible in the UK because British peers all have ordinary family names in addition to the title, and the two need not necessarily be similar).
What’s the title of this show? I must see it!
A baronet is not a peer.
So when you picked a title to lead in to “or whatever”, you chose poorly.
I’m not sure those reviews are good examples. The 3rd review says adoptive parents effectively had no rights and birth parents could take the child back at anytime, which is exactly what happened twice. And that directly contradicts what the 2nd review says about how unlikely it is that Edith would be able to unwind the adoption. The 1st review is really just the author calling out Edith for the emotional pain she caused Mrs. Drewe.
That’s right: Thatcher baronets - Wikipedia
Unlike the British practice, Japanese noblemen have adopted sons from time to time when they had none of their own, or had sons with concubines, to preserve the family title and holdings. Given their birth trends since WWII, the Imperial Family might soon have to consider adoption or allowing daughters to accede.
Malden Capell:
re: your cite from Debrett’s: I know that when William and Kate got married (or shortly thereafter) Parliament passed a law defining succession to the throne for his children as being gender-neutral primogeniture. Does this mean that if something bad should happen to Prince George, Princess Charlotte might inherit the throne but not the Duchy of Cambridge, etc? Or were William’s other titles made similar in that regard (either by that law or by the original letter patent of his titles’ creation, or by a separate act) to his position vis a vis the throne?
As it stands currently, Cambridge and William’s other titles (Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus) are limited to “the heirs male of his body lawfully begotten” (Source), so if something happens to George, then Charlotte will inherit the throne and Louis will get the other titles.
This assumes that whatever happens to George happens before William becomes king. Once William inherits the throne, his titles “merge into the Crown” (because a monarch can’t hold a title from himself), and at that point nobody can inherit them, but the titles can be recreated anew.
Succession to the Dukedom of Cambridge (and the Earldom of Strathearn and Barony of Carrickfergus) is to heirs male, so even if something bad happens to George, Charlotte will not inherit those titles.
In the likely course of things, when William becomes King his titles will merge with the Crown and cease to exist. However, if both William and George were to die before becoming King, then the throne would go to Charlotte while the Dukedom of Cambridge would go to Louis (William’s second son).
EDIT: snap, slash2k!
The Act to which **cmkeller **alluded, passed two years after Will and Kate got hitched: Succession to the Crown Act 2013 - Wikipedia
Doesn’t the Queen hold the Duchy of Lancaster from herself?
On a side note, since Christopher Guest’s children with Jamie Lee Curtis are adopted, they cannot inherit his peerage, so it passes to his brother upon his death.
I still remember being surprised when I found out that he was a British Lord. Certainly doesn’t fit the stereotype.
The duchy (the landed estate) is separate from the dukedom (the title). The Queen holds the lands and other properties that comprise the Duchy of Lancaster; since the reign of Henry IV (reigned 1399-1413), the estate has provided a private income for the reigning sovereign. However, Henry IV’s son (Henry V) was actually the last person to hold the title of Duke of Lancaster, as the title merged in the crown at his accession.
Traditionally, the Queen is toasted as “The Queen, Duke of Lancaster” in Lancashire (as HM is toasted as “The Queen, Duke of Normandy” in the Channel Islands), but neither title holds any legal significance.