Is there any governmental or even traditional role for someone who is a noble, related to the place they are … named for? If you’re the Duke of Cornwall (Prince Charles) do you do anything related to Cornwall itself?
I found an article about the Duke & Dutchess of Cambridge (William & Kate) visiting Cambridge in 2012, and they said they were proud to be “associated” with such a great city. Also the article said that the visit was “absolutely huge” hinting that it’s not a regular thing. My takeaway is that nobles don’t visit their “land” much at all.
My question of course focuses on the UK but I’m interested in how it works anywhere there is nobility.
Also, if the “namesakes” are largely ignored, at what point in history did that start? I assume in the beginning, the nobles of a place were actually of that place.
A lot of things printed about royalty in some of the British press are said to be “absolutely huge”.
And… I’m not sure, but would “patronage appointments” be a close-enough rendering of what that whole system is like? At some point in history, such positions did really give you authority over that area, and being a loyal friend and defender of the monarch was what got you in; now, they’re ceremonial.
The general part of your question is really too general to answer though. There is nobility all over the world and their status and history range from “No longer having any rights or function other than the name” to “Still rule their countries.”
The original family had nothing to do with the parcel of land now bearing their name other than the fact that they bought it from someone who was a direct subject the HRE. The family was quite wealthy and owned a lot of land, but none of it as a direct subject of the HRE, or anywhere in particular near where the country is now. It was solely bought for the status.
The title “Duke of X” is a honorific. When they make you a Duke a decision is taken (ostensibly by the monarch, but of course your views are considered) as to where you will be Duke of. Being Duke of X does not confer any official role in the government or admniistration of X. Nor does it give you any property interests in X. However people will generally choose titles which reflect places with which they already have associations; frequently places where they already own large amounts of property. So the Duke of Westminter does in fact own large amounts of land in Westminster, which is why he is absurdly wealthy, which is basically why his family got made Dukes in the first place. When Arthur Wellesley was given a title for his military prowess, he chose to be Duke of Wellington. Wellington in is Somerset; he owned an estate there.
Nobody gets created Dukes any more, except the sons, grandsons and male consorts of the sovereign (and not even all of them). These “Royal Dukes” as they are known traditionally choose titles from among a fairly small pool that get used and re-used by Royal Dukes - Duke of York (a title traditionally given to the second son of the sovereign); Duke of Gloucester; Duke of Clarence; etc.
At lower ranks of the peerage, similar rules often applied; people would choose titles referring to places with which they had some connection. But the connection could be fairly tenuous. In the nineteenth century when titles were being handed out, basically, as bribes or blandishments, the recipients were often given titles in the peerage of Ireland, because Irish peers didn’t have an automatic right to sit in the House of Lords, and the man to whom you are happy to pay a bribe is not necessarily the kind of man you want to place among the highest of the nation’s counsellors. So people who had little connection with Ireland were given Irish titles, named for places in Ireland, even though they had much more substantial connections to places in England.
After the Norman Conquest, titles related to territory meant having a governmental and military authority over, and responsibility to the monarch for, that territory. As government formalised over the centuries, the families inheriting those titles, and those awarded new titles, would lose those specific responsibilities and associations, and develop landholdings and commercial interests wherever they liked. Why stick to a draughty old castle in the back of beyond when there were more comfortable surroundings or better hunting or more profitable ventures elsewhere?
So, for example, the Grosvenors might have their original homes and holdings in Cheshire, but a clever 18th century marriage and astute property development made them fabulously rich on the back of the expansion of London into Mayfair and beyond, leading to the 19th century creation of the title Duke of Westminster. Likewise, the Cavendish’s might hold the title Duke of Devonshire, but their ancestral base is in Derbyshire, and so on.
Nowadays, the geographical association of titles is purely honorific or to refer to a personal connection to a place; there’s no land or governmental duty attached. Royal family titles are likewise often awarded to show that all parts of the UK are remembered. “Associating” a royal to an area simply increases the possibility of their turning up to open an event there, or lay a foundation stone, or just to wave and smile and be nice (one hopes) to people who want to celebrate or commemorate something important to them.
If you held an Irish peerage, you were still eligible to be elected to the House of Commons in England or Scotland. The usual procedure was to take your Irish title (which gave you the social privileges of being a Lord), then find a “rotten borough” in England and buy your way into the House of Commons in London (which is where the real power was).
Yes, but you could do that without having an Irish (or any) title. There’s no obvious reason why the owner of a rotten borough would favour you with his patronage merely because you had an Irish peerage. And if you’re simply buying your way into Parliament, all you need is money, not titles.
A title might be an asset, ironically, if you were standing in a more democratically-constituted borough. Some voters might be impressed by your title.
Sometimes. Generally speaking the earls that actually had real authority in whole counties, were those that represented “palatine” liberties on the Welsh border - basically Chester, Shrewesbury and maybe Hereford( that last is often assumed but disputed and difficult to suss out, since by Domesday it was already broken up ). Cornwall may have also had special status, but that is obscure until much later. There were also smaller, less vice-regalian liberties in other isolated cases as well, like the Sussex Rapes. Later the assorted Welsh marchers were granted similar freedoms.
But it was only those very trusted borderers who were given whole counties( Chester )or most of one( Shropshire ) to subdivide as they would and govern. And even in of those cases the biggest source of wealth lay outside of those rather poor counties. Chester counted more on a wide swath of estates across the midlands and later the Bolingbroke inheritance in Lincolnshire. Shrewesbury relied on the very wealthy Rape of Arundel in Sussex( the first earl's sons added even more honours before being dispossesd by Henry I ). Hereford had the Isle of Wight. All three also had extensive estates in Normandy to add to the total.
Otherwise even early on the connection to counties could be tenuous. Mostly it entitled them to a small fee taken to from legal proceedings in the county, which later became standardized and worth not much to nobles of that standing. In extreme cases like the De Vere earls of Oxford, they didn't own so much as an acre of land in their county of record. Relatively minor barons, they received their title during the contest between Stephen and Mathilda as a political sinecure and were granted that title as a make do. Territorially they were heavily based in Essex( but there was already an earl of Essex ), with outlying properties in Cambridgeshire( complicated by the earl of Huntingdon, who had a vague legal claim to the title of the combined shires ) and Suffolk( again complicated by the Bigod earls of Norfolk, who disputedly had some vague claim to combined title of both shires ). So Oxford, because why not ;)? It didn't really matter in context.
The Earls, and later Dukes, of Devonshire have little or no property in Devonshire, but vast estates and a huge palace in Derbyshire, with more landholdings north of there. Their other titles (Hartington, Hardwick) refer to places in Derbyshire. We really don’t know why the first Earl was given a title linked to Devonshire; one possiblity is that there was a transcription error at some point when the paperwork associated with their ennoblement was being prepared.
Sometimes it worked the other way around. In Germany there’s a Plesse Castle, not far to the north of Göttingen. A local family of the lower nobility acquired it around 1100 at which point they began using ‘Plesse’* as their family name. Not many generations afterward, they found it necessary to hand the castle to a more powerful noble who thus became their feudal overlord. The Plesse family remained in the castle as their fief and continued using that name.
*Or “von Plesse”, the nobiliary particle “von” being found in the vast majority of family names among the German nobility’s descendants today. However, I don’t know if this was true in 1100. I wouldn’t be surprised if the prefix “von” in those days might just as frequently have meant simply that the person was from a specified town or region. Perhaps some native Germans or historians knowledgeable in this area can confirm or refute this?
It was his brother Wellesley-Pole who picked Wellington as a title. There was no meaningful connection to the town which is a modest place in a minor county.
In 1660 Sir Edward Montagu was awarded a peerage by Charles II, and needed to choose a title. He chose the ‘Earl of Portsmouth’. Then a few days later - after all the documents had already been drawn up - he changed his mind at the last moment, and decided he wanted to be called the ‘Earl of Sandwich’ instead.
About a century later, his descendant, the 4th Earl, was hungry while playing a game of cards. He sent for a slice of meat between two slices of bread, so that he could keep playing and wouldn’t get his fingers greasy.
So we could very easily have been talking about ‘portsmouths’ instead of ‘sandwiches’ today.
