What’s the oldest English peerage still in the same family?
The Earldom of Arundel.
More here
If you mouse over “Earl of Arundel”, you’ll see that the Earldom was created in 1138.
I get into one of the peerage books courtesy of my mother’s distant cousin the Earl of Oxfuird.
Oops, Viscount of Oxfuird…
The Earldom of Arundel is certainly the oldest English title, but it hasn’t stayed in the same family the longest. That honour goes to the Baron de Ros, originally created in 1264 by Henry III.
The barony of Kingsale (in the peerage of Ireland, though, and not of England) dates from either 1223 or 1172, depending on the source you read, and has been in the same family (de Courcy) continuously.
It’s not that simple. The problem is that the antiquity of a title mattered, with the date of creation determining whether a particular peer outranked those with the same type of title. There was therefore an incentive for each family to attempt to date their creation as early as possible, whether using reliable evidence or not. Nor did it help that the earliest peerages dated from a period for which there are relatively few suviving records and when the notion of a ‘peerage’ was still developing. This left plenty of room for bitter antiquarian arguments. Most of the claims for very early creations have been disputed at some point. Yet, because they determined precedence, they were usually the subject of some sort of official ruling at some point. But those decisions need not match the historical facts. There was always a tendency for firm rulings to be handed down even if the fairer historical verdict would have been, ‘Well, we don’t really know’.
That said, there is general agreement that the de Ros barony is the oldest surviving English peerage, based on the summons of Robert de Ros to Parliament in 1264. There are several other English baronies that date from later in the thirteenth century. The problems start with those Irish and Scottish peerages that claim to be older.
The Kingsale barony was always considered problematic. What is certain is that there is no reliable evidence that it dates back as far as the thirteenth century. The Complete Peerage was willing to entertain the possibility that it might date from about 1340, but thought it more likely that it dated only from about 1390. The earliest certain date for its existance is 1397, which is why that was the date used to fix its precedence in the Irish peerage.
What one considers to be the oldest Scottish peerage depends on the competing claims of the countesses of Sutherland and Mar. The Mar earldom (which has a very convoluted history) may date back to about 1115 but, for precedence purposes, it is considered to date only from 1404; in contrast, the Sutherland earldom may date back to 1235 but the Sutherlands are able to trump the Mars because that claim has at least been officially recognised.