"Peerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... been made had acted throughout with the present noble duke in arranging the details of the measure in question; and the probability of his being able to fill the shoes left vacant by the accession to the peerage of the noble duke had, indeed, been discussed;—but the discussion had been made in reference to the measure, and only incidentally in regard to the office. He, Mr. Gresham, held that he had done nothing that was indiscreet,—nothing ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... in Lord Russell's theory that Life Peerages are wanted specially to represent those forms of national eminence which cannot otherwise find fitting representation, it might be urged, for the reasons we have before mentioned, that a Life Peerage is due to the most truly national representative of one important department of modern English literature. Something may no doubt be said in favour of this view, but we are inclined to doubt if Mr. Dickens himself would gain anything by a Life Peerage. Mr. Dickens is pre-eminently ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... man and seems to have far more political talent than any of the other Conventionnels who are here. On Napoleon's return from Elba he voted for him, but made strong objections against the formation of a peerage, which he said was perfectly useless in France, and pregnant with mischief to boot, as it would only serve as an appui to despotism. He wrote a pamphlet with some excellent remarks on this, subject. He therein points out the evils of an hereditary Chamber, and of a priviledged aristocracy, ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... seat in the Cabinet. Mr. Milnes immediately said, 'Oh, no, I will not accept either; with my temperament I should be dead in a year.' And nothing could induce him to do so either," continued Mrs. Henniker, "nor could he be induced to accept the Peerage which was offered him by Lord ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... if set off more to advantage, would have been recognised as elegant. But John Lindsay—for so he was called—bore always the stamp of misery on his striking features. There lay between the poor little man and the Crawford peerage only a narrow chasm, represented by a missing marriage certificate; but he was never able to bridge the gulf across; and he had to toil on in unhappiness, in consequence, as a mason's labourer. I have heard the call resounding from ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... obliterate the slightest touch etched by Time. She was five years older than I—thirty-three last birthday. There was no more chance for our Guernsey girls to conceal their age than for the unhappy daughters of peers, whose dates are faithfully kept, and recorded in the Peerage. The upper classes of the island, who were linked together by endless and intricate ramifications of relationship, formed a kind of large family, with some of its advantages and many of its drawbacks. In one sense we had many things in common; our family ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... such name in the peerage. It can't be Seymour that the Veechy means!—That is a great name, certainly; and some of them have been in the service; it is possible this barone may have had the impudence ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... department in 1893 was, as I have said, Mr. Francis Hopwood. He became Sir Francis in 1906, and from then onwards advanced from office to office and from honour to honour, until, during his secretaryship of the Irish Convention in 1917, his public services were rewarded with a peerage. As railway secretary of the Board of Trade he was particularly distinguished for tact, strength and moderation. Singularly courteous and obliging on all occasions, I, personally, have been much indebted to him for ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... State was as despotic under Villele or Guizot as under either of the Bonapartes. The Restoration fenced itself round with artificial creations, having no root in the condition or in the sympathies of the people; these creations simply weakened it by making it unpopular. The hereditary peerage was an anomaly in a country unused to primogeniture, and so was the revival, in a nation of sceptics, of the Gallican union between Church and State. The monarchy of July, which was more suited to the nature of French society, and was thus enabled to crush a series ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... favour. But at the commencement of the seventeenth century, their abbey lands infinitely advanced in value, and their rental swollen by the prudent accumulation of more than seventy years, a Greymount, who was then a county member, was elevated to the peerage as Baron Marney. The heralds furnished his pedigree, and assured the world that although the exalted rank and extensive possessions enjoyed at present by the Greymounts, had their origin immediately in great territorial revolutions of a recent reign, it was not for a moment ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... generally a touch of greatness in them and no nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel than do nature's noblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey with his millions never could be induced to increase his establishment his pride and pleasure were in the guidance of industry and the accomplishment ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... silent privilege analogous to the famous one of Lord Kinsale. He, by special grant from the crown, is allowed, when standing before the king, to forget that he is not himself a king; the bearer of that peerage, through all generations, has the privilege of wearing his hat in the royal presence. By a general though tacit concession of the same nature, the rising generation of the Lambs, John and Charles, the two sons, and Mary Lamb, the only daughter, were permitted to forget ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... with British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... are going up in the world. The peerage! Charles Street, Berkeley Square! I remember young Chevenix: he had swell connections—yes, yes. How things come about. This will please your mother, my dear. She sets a store by such things." Their ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... ruled, and had among their number men who were gentlemen of the grand style, capable of virile passions and striking deeds, incapable, constitutionally and by training, of the prudent foresight of careful tradesmen. Lord Thormanby, who rejoiced in a brand new Union peerage and was a wealthy man, kept race horses. Sir Francis, who, except for the Union peerage, was as big a man as Lord Thormanby, kept race horses too. Lord Thormanby bought a family coach of remarkable proportions. Sir ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Morley had been raised to the peerage and Lord Crewe had succeeded him at the India Office was anything done to meet the demand of the Western-educated classes for a larger share in the administrative work of the country or to redress the very reasonable grievances of Indians employed ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... feel no regret for all that. You shall be a duchess, and I am pleased to give you this title which you desire. Let M. de Montespan be informed that his marquisate is to be elevated into a duchy with a peerage, and that I will add to it the number of seigniories that is proper, as I do not wish to deviate from the usage which has become a ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... were realised by the merchants of the Staple; they were often in a position to aid the exchequer of the mother-country; and one of them named Fermour was, from some patriotic act in money-matters, raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Pomfret. We are told that a great revenue was derived to the crown from the customs' duty here levied on wool; that which passed into the Netherlands alone amounting to 50,000 crowns per annum—an enormous sum in those days. Modern Vandalism ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... villages of New England, the differences in what we should call social position, though noticeable, were not extreme. While in England some had been esquires or country magistrates, or "lords of the manor,"—a phrase which does not mean a member of the peerage, but a landed proprietor with dependent tenants[1]; some had been yeomen, or persons holding farms by some free kind of tenure; some had been artisans or tradesmen in cities. All had for many generations been more or less accustomed to self-government ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... father, who marched in the second crusade, and of his elder brother, who had ended his days in Palestine with the title of King of Jerusalem; two thousand two hundred knights owed service and homage to his peerage; [28] the nobles of Champagne excelled in all the exercises of war; [29] and, by his marriage with the heiress of Navarre, Thibaut could draw a band of hardy Gascons from either side of the Pyrenaean mountains. His companion in arms was Louis, count ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... ludicrously constrained. Why, man, the soul of such writing is its licence; at least the liberty of that licence, if one likes—not that one should abuse it. It is like Trial by Jury and Peerage and the Habeas Corpus—a very fine thing, but chiefly in the reversion; because no one wishes to be tried for the mere pleasure of proving ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and how I remembered her a baby, and said some graceful trifles on that theme, which I fancied were likely to please. But they were only received, and led to nothing. In a little while in comes Lord Chelford, always natural and pleasant, and quite unconscious of his peerage—he was above it, I think—and chatted away merrily with that handsome animated blonde—who on earth, could she be?—and did not seem the least chilled in the stiff and frosted presence of his mother, but was genial and playful even with that Spirit of the Frozen ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... notary, who got the chateau by foreclosing a mortgage. During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... associations render it a treasure among treasures, a rich and priceless gem. For at this Table nearly every man upon the Staff has, from the day it was made, sat and carved his initials upon it with a penknife, when officially elevated to Punch's peerage. As each has died, his successor has taken his place—just as the Institut de France creates Immortals to fill the chairs made vacant by death—and he has cut his initials or his mark close by those of the men who occupied the place before him. There they are, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... for ever falling back on some legend or fiction of ancestry; and in the absence of any personal claim to greatness to be referring back and depending on those great mistakes of our forefathers, when he who waded through slaughter to a peerage was honoured above those whose brains and whose industry were the means of promoting the comfort of their fellow men. Believe me, my young friends, the highest honour of earth, is the honour of independence, and the ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... shipowners in general were in no sense profiteers. He failed, however, to avert the wrath of Mr. DENNISS, who declared that if, after what had been revealed, any shipowner was made a peer, he should move to abolish the peerage. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... number and brilliancy, were only equalled by her balls. The dandies patronised her, and selected her for their Muse. The Duke of Shropshire betted on her always at ecarte; and, to crown the whole affair, she made Mr. Dallington Vere lay claim to a dormant peerage. The women were all pique, the men all patronage. A Protestant minister was alarmed; and Lord Squib supposed that Mrs. Dallington must be the Scarlet Lady of whom they ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... defence. After the war he did great things for the development of Madras; and when he resigned office at the age of forty-five and went to England, the strenuous upholder of British honour in the East was rewarded with an Irish peerage. Well would it have been for Lord Pigot if he had settled down for good on his Irish estate! But twelve years later he accepted the offer of a second term of office as Governor of Madras. It is not infrequently the case that a man who has ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... perhaps they wanted to work upon his paternal feelings, to get money out of him? That was what it all meant. He took alarm. He went over to the cradle and fondled the child, who held out both little arms to him. No heir to an English peerage could be more tenderly cared for than this little one in that house of trouble; his little embroidered cap was ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... ambition and dirt are crowned at last: he is a peer.(686) Lord Chief Justice Ryder, who was to have kissed hands with him on Monday, was too ill, and died on Tuesday;(687) but I believe his son will save the peerage. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in Newport about Governor Lawrence's time was Lord Baltimore (Mr. Calvert, he preferred to call himself), who remained there until his death. He was shy of referring to his English peerage, but would willingly talk of his descent through his mother from Peter Paul Rubens, from whom had come down to him a chateau in Holland and several splendid paintings. The latter hung in the parlor of the modest little dwelling, where I was taken to see them ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... going to make some remarks on the changes in the order of the peerage since the days of Louis XVI.—going, in fact, to be very sensible and historical—when there was a slight commotion among the people at the other end of the room. Lacqueys in quaint liveries must have come in from behind the tapestry, I ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... under Wellington; rising through the various grades of the service, until he rose to be second in command. He was commonly known as the "hero of Barossa," because of his famous victory at that place; and he was eventually raised to the peerage as Lord Lynedoch, ending his days peacefully at a very advanced age. But to the last he tenderly cherished the memory of his dead wife, to the love of whom he may be said to have owed all his glory. "Never," said Sheridan of him, when pronouncing his eulogy ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of Chancery as well as such business can be done under the present system, to retire upon half allowance, in order to make room for one Sir William Fullhat, who had no objection to L14,000 a year and a peerage. They were about to fill two sub-chancellorships, which they would not on any account allow the company in the present actual possession of the estates to fill up with a couple of their own shareholders; and were, in fine, proceeding to dispose of, by open sale, and by private contract, the freehold, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 7, 1841 • Various
... was all but persuaded; and he was afraid to listen longer lest he should be quite persuaded: for, if he should comply, and his misgivings should afterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not for wealth, not for a palace, not for a peerage, would he run the smallest risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that, of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with it much weight was on the point of swearing, and was prevented from doing so, as he himself acknowledged, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are beyond cavil. The truth of the matter is that I loathe the use of superlatives in serious works on crime. I will read, I promise you, anything decently written in a fictional way about 'master' crooks, 'master' killers, kings, queens, princes, and a whole peerage of crime, knowing very well that never yet has a 'master' criminal had any cleverness but what a novelist gave him. But in works on crime that pretend to seriousness I would eschew, pace Mr Leonard R. Gribble, all 'queens' and other honorifics in application to the lost ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... HASTINGS, carrying papers. The DUKE is a healthy, hearty man in tweeds, with a rather wandering eye. In the present state of the peerage it is necessary to explain that the DUKE, though an ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... a radical? She talks of the emancipation of women by keeping them at school till one-and-twenty, of the elevation of the masses, and the mutual improvement of everybody not in the peerage." ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... exploit their abysmal military ignorance in reckless criticism and censure of his operations; he knew what a passionate storm of anger and denunciation had arisen from the Opposition when he had been raised to the peerage some months earlier, after the glorious victory of Talavera, and how, that victory notwithstanding, it had been proclaimed that his conduct of the campaign was so incompetent as to deserve, not reward, but punishment; and he was aware of the growing unpopularity ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... with the utmost confidence, placed him in charge of his private affairs, and appointed him one of his cabinet ministers. On the 20th of March, Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent. He informed Napoleon that he remained faithful to the house of Bourbon; would not accept his peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that period on his ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... from 1770 to 1782 as Lord George Germaine; son of the seventh Earl and first Duke of Dorset. A Member of Parliament and a soldier, he became in 1775 Secretary of State for the Colonies in Lord North's Administration until the fall of his chief. His rise to the peerage in 1782 as Viscount Sackville gave cause to some acrimonious debates, which are referred to later, see Chapter 5. The Letters of Junius have often ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... apology for her socially aristocratic ailments; Vane Tempest's singular elopement with the beautiful wife of a green subaltern; Harry Chillingly's untoward end while potting tigers; Count Platen's enormous winnings at Baccarat; Fitzgerald Law's falling into a peerage; and Mrs. Claire Atterbury, the wealthy widow's purchase of a handsome boy-husband fresh from Sandhurst. All this with Jack Blunt's long expected ruin, and a spicy court-martial or two, furnished a running accompaniment to Anstruther's expensive "personally conducted ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... that little girl I'd picked out for you long before you ever met her—so I started to get there first and with the heaviest guns, I borrowed your yacht for the duke and had him sail her round himself, so he'd have her here to give the dinner party on. Then I got a Burke's peerage and told MacGregor who he was and had him study up on his family history and get acquainted with his sister, Lady Mary, and his younger brother, the Honorable Cecil Something-or-other—in particular he was not to forget to rave about the ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... to the Act of Proscription—I understand," said Franco. "But that was utterly invalid—a mere piece of political stage-play. The Italian government had no more power to proscribe your title than it would have to proscribe an English peerage,—no jurisdiction. It could create a new Count of Sampaolo, which it did; but it could n't abolish the dignity of the existing Count—a dignity that was ancient centuries before the Italian government was dreamed of. You ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... gained considerable sums, not only by jobbing in the stocks, but in dealing in porcelain, spices, &c. It was debated for a length of time in the Parliament of Paris whether he had not, in his quality of spice-merchant, forfeited his rank in the peerage. It was decided in the negative. A caricature of him was made, dressed as a street porter, carrying a large bale of spices on his back, with the inscription, "Admirez La Force."], de Chaulnes, and d'Antin; the Marechal d'Estrees, the Princes de ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to the earldom of Stirling, a Scotch peerage; and, as he believed that he was a direct descendant of the last Lord Stirling, the young man went to England, and laid claim to the estate and title. He was successful in proving his direct descent from the earls of Stirling; but the House of Lords, who gave the final decision in the case, ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... the young lady the justice to state that, though her future husband was no great things as a 'man,' as she afterwards discovered, he was the heir to a peerage and great wealth. Both he and she, like most of my collaborators in this world, have long since passed into ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... a terror, especially when he had been drinking. His belief in his peerage was as absolute as Colonel Sellers' in his millions. All he wanted was money enough "to get over there" and "state his case." During the Tichborne trial Mark Twain and I were in London, and one day he ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... Dr. Ryerson addressed a letter of congratulation to Lord Sydenham, on his elevation to the peerage. He again referred to the publication of the Monthly Review, proposed by His Excellency. In regard ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... children of exceptional intelligence, it does not follow that this fact will save them from conclusions quite parallel to those of the common child. Suppose they do penetrate the pretence that there is no intrinsic difference between the Royal Family and the members of the peerage on the one hand, and the average person in any other class on the other; suppose they discover that the whole scale of precedence and honour in their land is a stupendous sham;— what then? Suppose they see quite clearly that all these ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... by two of his Tall Lacqueys. But I speedily let him have a piece of my Mind. "My Lord," says I, going up to him, and thrusting my face full in his, "you will be pleased to know that I am a Gentleman, whose ancestors were ennobled centuries before your rascally grandfather got his peerage for turning against ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... the acceptance in our family of the new order of things. The new dynasty, as was natural, raised Louis to the Peerage and made him a grand officer of the Legion of Honor. The oath once taken, l'Estorade could not be half-hearted in his services, and he has since then made himself very useful in the Chamber. The position he has now attained is one in which he can ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Court. Diana was adored for her spirits, and Meryl was regarded somewhat as a treasure Johannesburg had a right to be proud of. Certain it was that if eventually she followed the example of her American cousins and enriched an English peerage with her wealth, she would hold her own amidst the loveliest and most charming of England's peeresses. At the same time, though many perhaps hoped that she would lead the way for the young South African heiresses, not many had much belief ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... Lord Viscount Ballindine, was twenty-four years of age when he came into possession of the Ballindine property, and succeeded to an Irish peerage as the third viscount; and he is now twenty-six, at this time of O'Connell's trial. The head of the family had for many years back been styled "The O'Kelly", and had enjoyed much more local influence under that denomination than their descendants ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Charles Rinaldo had conveyed, That he for Paris with his squadron steers, To assail, by night, the paynims ill purveyed; And ready and in arms the king appears. He, when his help is needed, comes in aid, With all his peerage, and, beside his peers, Brings Monodantes' son, amid that crew, Of Flordelice the lover chaste ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... insight. Now this "last infirmity of noble minds" is the only part of him that the play really sets before us; and even this we do not see as it was, because it is here severed from the constitutional peerage of his gifts and virtues; all those transcendent qualities which placed him at the summit of Roman intellect and manhood being either withheld from the scene or thrown so far into the background that the proper ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... many; and as to the exotics, 'Oh! well! it was of no use talking about THEM; they must be seen to be believed;' which improved state of circumstances reminded the family of the splendour of that brilliant festival (comprehending the whole British Peerage and Court Calendar) to which they were specially invited, and which indeed had been partly given in their honour; and recollections of what Mr Norris the father had said to the marquess, and of what Mrs Norris the mother ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... curtly. "I am the heir to a peerage, and my grandfather—well, I need not speak of him. Besides, I know the Duke of York, who ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... all; that they had sent to Scotland for two personators of King Richard, Trumpington and another (probably John Maudeleyn) whom they intended to pass off to the people as King Richard—which is in itself a contradiction to the charge of setting up March as King. Cambridge and Scrope pleaded their peerage. A commission was issued, August 5th, 1415, by which their judges were appointed—Thomas Duke of Clarence, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester (brothers of the King), Thomas Earl of Dorset (the King's half-brother), who sat as proxy of Edward Duke of York; Edmund Earl of March, the very man whom they ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... Lady Adeline Departed like the rest of their compeers, The peerage, to a mansion very fine; The Gothic Babel of a thousand years. None than themselves could boast a longer line, Where Time through heroes and through beauties steers; And oaks as olden as their pedigree Told of their Sires—a tomb in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... nomenclature of dahlias is a curious sign of the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Racing Calendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Dioedes of all colours, a very black Othello, and a very fair Desdemona. One beautiful blossom, which seems like a white ground thickly rouged with carmine, is called "the ...
— The Lost Dahlia • Mary Russell Mitford
... would establish his claim to a peerage in the literary land, was arranged for, and it remained only to prepare the manuscript, a task which he regarded as not difficult. He had only to collate the Alta and Tribune letters, edit them, and write such new matter as would be ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... addressed the house, were singularly dignified and graceful; but his matter was not equal to his manner. He reproached Lord Thurlow with his plebeian extraction, and his recent admission into the peerage: particular circumstances caused Lord Thurlow's reply to make a deep impression on the Reminiscent. His lordship had spoken too often, and began to be heard with a civil but visible impatience. Under ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... appreciated, 'first, because he was a gentleman; and secondly, because he was a nobleman.' His Lordship stands in one, at least, of the predicaments here mentioned, and yet he has had justice, or somewhat more, done him. He towers above his fellows by all the height of the peerage. If the poet lends a grace to the nobleman, the nobleman pays it back to the poet with interest. What a fine addition is ten thousand a year and a title to the flaunting pretensions of a modern rhapsodist! His name so accompanied becomes the mouth well: it is repeated thousands ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... SALISBURY, in his article in the National Review for November, makes fun of Mr. FREDERIC HARRISON's assertion that the Government could, at a pinch, secure a majority in the Upper Chamber by elevating five hundred Sweeps (which Lord S. calls the "Black Peerage") to the House of Lords, with the assent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... the individual really is, by examining sisters and brothers; and in the second place, there will be less danger of a childless marriage, since it is already proved that the individual comes of a fertile stock. Francis Galton showed clearly the havoc wrought in the English peerage, by marriages with heiresses (an heiress there being nearly always an only child). Such women were childless in a much larger ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... his spare time was passed in her company, and the quaint pair wandered in the woods like happy boy and girl. Then, when the indomitable man had raised himself to be head of the State, and was offered a peerage, he declined; but he begged that his wife might be created countess in her own right. Could anything be more graceful and courtly? "You are the superior," the first man in England seemed to say; "and I am content to rejoice in your honours without rivalling them." All the fanciful ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... According to the "Times," October 13th, 1899, "for nearly forty years he was synonymous with the Board in the opinion of all who were brought into close relation with it." He was made a baronet in 1883; he retired from his post a few years later, and was raised to the peerage in 1893. His friendship with Mr. Darwin was of many years' standing, and opportunities of meeting were more frequent in the last ten years of Mr. Darwin's life, owing to Lord Farrer's marriage with Miss Wedgwood, a niece of Mrs. Darwin's, and the subsequent marriage of his son ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... great step was the appointment of the two commissions, thirty-one on either side. On the English were the two archbishops; for Scotland there was no clerical element. It was noticed that for England all the members not official were from the peerage, while in Scotland there seemed to be a desire to represent the peerage, the landed commoners, and the burgesses or city interest, in just proportions. At an early stage in the daily business, the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... this? Being a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any other stirring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he touch the goal. "A peerage or Westminster Abbey!" cried Nelson in his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives; not for any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about their business ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have slain eighteen of the enemy. At Shirramuir, when Clanranald fell, Glengarry tossed his bonnet in the air, crying in Gaelic, 'Revenge! Revenge! Revenge to- day, and mourning to-morrow.' He then led a charge, and drove the regular British troops in rout. He received a warrant of a peerage from the ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... say—that if it hadn't been for Wolf, and all the changes this year—changes in me, too—I wouldn't have loved you all my life. But there's no place that you could take me, as Wolf Sheridan's divorced wife, that would seem worth while to me, when I got there—not if it was in the peerage!" ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... minutes by a bellows and will then sustain six or eight persons—forming a kind of boat which it is almost impossible to overturn. A trial was to be made of its efficacy.—Sir Thomas Wilde has been made Lord Chancellor and raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Truro of Bowes, in the County of Middlesex.—Sir Robert Peel, Bart., has been returned to Parliament for the borough of Tamworth made vacant by the death of his father. It is stated that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the author of Ten Thousand a Year, was given to boasting, at the Bar mess, of his intimacy with members of the peerage. One day he was saying that, while dining lately at the Duke of Leeds, he was surprised at finding no fish of any kind was served. "That is easily accounted for," said Thesiger; "they had ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... pages of one of your contemporaries several deeply interesting letters telling of "the Courtesy of the CAVENDISH," I think it will be pleasing to your readers to learn that I have a fund of anecdote concerning the politeness—the true politeness—of many other members of the Peerage. Perhaps you will permit me to give you a few instances of what I may ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... Sir William Roger and others were instantly hanged over the bridge at Lauder. Cochran was now brought out, his hands bound with a rope, and thus conducted to the bridge, and hanged above his fellows."] Later scions of the family prospered, and in 1641, Sir William Cochrane was raised to the peerage, as Lord Cochrane of Cowden, by Charles I. For his adherence to the royal cause this nobleman was fined 5000l. by the Long Parliament in 1654; and, in recompense for his loyalty, he was made first Earl of Dundonald by Charles ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... highest rank of his profession, that office seemed to fall to him by right of universal acknowledgment; and on a vacancy in the Common Pleas, he was promoted to the chief-justiceship in 1799, and at the same time raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. It is an instance of the dutiful and affectionate nature, which long connexion with the world and the pride of success—the two strongest temptations to heartlessness—could not extinguish, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... towns and villages of our land. This work furnishes such a mass of authentic information in regard to all the principal families in the kingdom as has never before been attempted to be brought together. It relates to the untitled families of rank, as the "Peerage and Baronetage" does to the titled, and forms, in fact, a peerage of the untitled aristocracy. It embraces the whole of the landed interest, and is indispensable to ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... doors, he was reading them, sometimes running his fingers through his yellow hair, or pulling his beard, and growling to himself when he was puzzled or met with what he did not like. Eustace's favourite study, meanwhile, was "Burke's Peerage," and his questions nearly drove me wild by their absurdity; and Dora rolled on the floor with my Spitz dog, for she loathed the doll I gave her, and made me more afraid of her than of either of ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... impossible that the English could ever consent in the Treaty of Union, to admit a greater number to have places and votes in the Upper House of Parliament, but all the Scotch peerage is virtually there by representation. And those who are not elected have every dignity and right of the peerage, except the privilege of sitting in the House of Lords and some others ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... thoughts to days comparatively modern, for when Admiral Collingwood was raised to the peerage of Great Britain, it was by the title of "Baron Collingwood of Caldburn and Hethpoole, in the county of Northumberland." The brave Admiral was fond of planting an oak tree whenever he found an opportunity, to secure the continuance of those wooden walls which in his hands, and in ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... critical. He thinks that the fall of the French Monarchy is likely to produce social changes here, for "no one looks on, seeing his neighbour mending, without asking himself if he cannot mend in the same way." He is convinced that "the hour of the hereditary peerage and eldest sonship and immense properties has struck"; he thinks that a five years' continuance of these institutions is "long enough, certainly, for patience, already at death's door, to have to die in." He pities ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... with such words as these: Lady Rosamund This-or-that; Rosamund, Countess of Thus-and-so; the Honourable Rosamund Such-a-one. She lingered fondly over the baptismal "Rosamund"; what word could match more fitly with a title, or harmonize more completely with the grand old names of the peerage? Once she wrote on the extreme lower corner of the sheet: Mrs. W. F. Bates. "Oh, pshaw!" she exclaimed, and tore the corner off and ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... some equity case of great magnitude and difficulty. Some time afterwards be might be seen hastening to the Privy Council—and by about two or three o'clock at the bar of the House of Lords, in the midst of an admirable reply in some great appeal or peerage case. When the House broke up, Sir William Follett would doff the full-bottomed wig in which alone Queen's counsel are allowed to appear before the House of Lords, and, resuming his short wig, reappear in either—or by turns in both—the Courts of Nisi Prius, where he had left trials pending, having ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... secure, courted the favor of the king's mistress. The Cardinal of Lorraine, in particular, distinguished himself by the servility which he displayed. For two years he put himself to infinite trouble to be at the table of Diana.[555] After her elevation to the peerage, he addressed to her a letter, still extant, in which he assured her that henceforth his interest and hers were inseparable.[556] To give yet greater firmness to the bond uniting them, the Guises brought about a marriage between their third brother, the Duke of Aumale, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... made readable from his peculiar conformation of body, his bear-like manners, his oddities, and his early struggles. You devour the life of Gifford, not because he was a poet, but because he was a shoemaker; and that of Byron, more on account of his vices, his peerage, and his domestic unhappiness, than for the sake of his poetry. And in Waller, too, you feel some supplemental interest, because he united what are usually thought the incompatible characters of a poet and a political plotter, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... quarters. We like those whom we love to be fortunate. Everybody rejoices in the good luck of a popular character; and soon it was generally understood that Ferdinand Armine had become next in the entail to thirty thousand a year and a peerage. Moreover, he was not long to wait for his inheritance. The usurers pricked up their ears, and such numerous proffers of accommodation and assistance were made to the fortunate Mr. Armine, that he really found it quite impossible ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... to me of your natural nearness to people of the working class, and I firmly believe that you are further from them—for any such purpose as this in question—than many a man who counts kindred among the peerage. You have a great deal of spiritual pride, and it will increase as your mind matures. You think you are mature; tell me in ten years (if I am alive, old woman that I am!) how you look back on your present self. Walter Egremont, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... supercilious, and exclusive; one red riband matched against another, one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball, in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character, and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles. But those times have passed away, and, for the honour of common sense, they have passed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal manner in which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr. Grossmith goes on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our servants. They don't know how to dust the piano, but they can play it. Everybody plays the piano, from the Peerage to the School Board. Then look how music has crept into our homes and social circles. Besides the piano, the mother and daughters play the banjo, the son plays the first fiddle, and the father the second ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... fro a good deal, and revolved on his axis, according to pattern given. And set (what chiefly induces us to name him here) his not reverent enough Subordinate, Lord Charles Hay, our old Fontenoy friend, into angry impatient quizzing of him;—and by and by into Court-Martial for such quizzing. [Peerage Books,? Tweeddale.] Court-Martial, which was much puzzled by the case; and could decide nothing, but only adjourn and adjourn;—as we will now do, not mentioning Lord Loudon farther, or the numerous other instances at all. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... without being convinced of this buoyancy of spirit, quickness of fancy, and blitheness of heart. It even vents its exuberance in bubbles of levity and elaborate trifling, so that all but the very light-hearted are fain to say: Something too much of this. Compared with our standard humorists—the peerage, or Upper House, who sit sublimely aloft, like 'Jove in his chair, of the sky my lord mayor'—Southey may be but a dull commoner, one of the third or fourth estate. But for all that, he has a comfortable fund of the vis comica, upon ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... Fairfax, Esq., of Bagshot, in the county of Surrey, who died in 1783, aged 77, having served in the army previous to 1745. It is understood that his family was descended from the Fairfaxes of Walton, in Yorkshire, the main branch of which were created Viscounts Fairfax of Emly, in the peerage of Ireland (now extinct), and a younger branch Barons Fairfax of Cameron, in the peerage of Scotland. Of the last-named was the great Lord Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the Parliament, 1645-50, whose title is now held by the eleventh Lord ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... pleasant relations with General Jackson, George M. Dallas, and most of the leading men of his own times. We close this short notice with a quotation from Charles J. Ingersoll: 'A purer, sweeter, or superior spirit seldom has departed. He belonged to a peerage of which there are very few members.' We doubt not this important record will obtain ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... attainder was taken off his father, which circumstance has furnished some people with an opportunity to say, that the princess was fond of, and would have married, the Earl of Surry. I shall transcribe the act of repeal as I find it in Collins's Peerage of England, which has something ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... she cried, 'and I will tell thee: few, Few, but all brave, all of one mind with him; For I was near him when the savage yells Of Uther's peerage died, and Arthur sat Crowned on the dais, and all his warriors cried, "Be thou the King, and we will work thy will Who love thee," Then the King in low deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so straight vows to ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... characterised the successful courtiers of the generation which preceded them and of that which followed them. Only one of those whom we have named was made a peer; and he was content with the lowest degree of the peerage. As to money, none of them could, in that age, justly be considered as rapacious. Some of them would, even in our time, deserve the praise of eminent disinterestedness. Their fidelity to the State was incorruptible. Their private morals were without stain. Their ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... assembled choristers a homily on the efficacy of the Love panacea. "My holiest wisdom's hoard," she says, "now I make known to the world. I believe not in property, nor money, nor godliness, nor hearth and high place, nor pomp and peerage, nor contract and custom, but in Love. Let that only prevail; and ye shall be blest in weal or woe." Here the repudiations still smack of Bakoonin; but the saviour is no longer the volition of the full-grown spirit of Man, the Free Willer of Necessity, sword in hand, but simply ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... in spite of her flouting, her birth assured her a social position from which she could be thrown by nothing less than outrageous immorality or a Bolshevist revolution. That Lackaday, to whom the British Peerage, in the ordinary way, was as closed a book as the Talmud, realized her high estate I was perfectly aware. Dear and garrulous Lady Verity-Stewart had given him at dinner the whole family history—she ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... of their independence and sovereignty. Superstition marked every stage of the measure as happening upon some date adverse to the Stuarts. On the fourth of November the first Article of the Union was approved; on a fourth of November was William of Orange born. On the eighth of January the Peerage was renounced; on an eighth of January was the warrant for the Murder at Glencoe signed. The ratification of the Article of Union was on the sixteenth of January. On a sixteenth of January was the sentence of Charles the First pronounced. The dissolution of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... distinguished by careful research. Perhaps his best effort is represented by "The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties," published in the same year as "The New Zealanders." With a colleague he edited "The Pictorial History of England," in four volumes. Amongst his other works are "A Romance of the Peerage," "Spencer and his Poetry," "A History of Commerce," "The English of Shakespeare," and "Bacon, his Writings and Philosophy." He had a flowing and cultured style, and he embellished his work with many references to the ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... month the king offered him a peerage if he would take command of the troops for America; and he answered, 'Your majesty must know that I cannot bring myself to fight the Americans, who are not only of my own race, but to whose former kindness I am also much obliged.' By the last mail, also, accounts have come of vast desertions ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... of the entries in Burke's "Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage," I find that upwards of 24,000 ladies are of sufficient rank to be included by name ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster
... 'Guthrie:' William Guthrie, a literary hack. See Boswell. He wrote an absurd History of the Peerage. ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... Indian penal law. After his return to England, and especially after the publication of his History of England from The Accession of James II., honors and appointments of all kinds were showered upon him. In 1857 he was raised to the peerage as Baron ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... parents came down, and paid her enormously to let him go. Now she's got through all that money, and she boasts she's going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything about it. She's going to make sure of a peerage this time. Oh, she's odious! She's greedy, she's vulgar, she's false! And of course"—the girl's eyes grew wide and scared—"there may be other things much worse. ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... existence. Instead was a gentleman, a man of pleasure, with a five-pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver at various convenient points of his person. At any rate as good as a Dook, if not precisely in the peerage. Involuntarily at the thought of his funds Hoopdriver's right hand left the handle and sought his breast pocket, to be immediately recalled by a violent swoop of the machine towards the cemetery. Whirroo! Just missed that half-brick! ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells |
