"Peerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were a Norman family of distinction, but in later days were notorious rather than famous. The old peerage having died out in the Middle Ages, a member of a cadet branch, by shameless and persevering begging, induced Charles I to grant him a barony. This title only survived a few generations, and the fifth and last bearer of it was known as 'the wicked' ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... 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 ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... privileged orders, and no nation, not even America, having more healthful practices or wiser notions on this point than themselves. The experience of the last fifteen years has shown the difficulty of creating an independent peerage in France, notwithstanding the efforts of the government, sustained by the example and wishes of England, have been steadily directed to that object. Still they have the traditions and prestige of a monarchy. Under such circumstances, I see no difficulty in carrying out the idea of Lafayette. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and, after an election in which he had spent the last of his money, he was "counted out" in favor of a rather hod character named O'GLOORAL. Thus practically taught to understand the political genius of a Republic, which, as gloriously contrasted with any effete monarchy ruled by a Peerage, looks for its own governing class to the Steerage, Mr. WILLIAM ADAMS subsided impecuniously into plain BILL ADAMS and a book-keepership in dry goods; and was ultimately blurred into BLADAMS and employment as a copyist by Mr. DIBBLE, to whom his experience of spending every cent he had in the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... 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 to the latter ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... 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 and to public meetings for discussing local ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... was also impressed with Russell, and appointed him to an office in the court, and three years afterwards, Henry VIII. becoming king, Russell was entrusted with many important duties, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Russell. He enjoyed the king's favor throughout his long reign, and was made one of the councillors of his son, Edward VI., besides holding other high offices, and when the youthful prince ascended the throne ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... malicious story obtained a wide currency is not wonderful; that it is a truthful anecdote the writer of this book would not like to pledge his credit. The case of Sir John Campbell and Lady Strathedon, was a notable instance of a lawyer and his wife bearing different names. Raised to the peerage, with the title of Baroness Stratheden, the first Lord Abinger's eldest daughter was indebted to her husband for an honor that made him her social inferior. Many readers will remember a droll story of a misapprehension caused by her ladyship's title. During an official journey, Sir ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... ratified the Peace upon Oath in a great chamber of the Palace... It was pretended that the Clergy would not suffer this to be done in a Church or Chapel where neglect of reverence of the Holy Sacrament should give scandal."—(Collins' Peerage, Four ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... office; and her nephew was sent out with Lord Albemarle to Spain. A more remarkable relative was Clayton, Bishop of Clogher, who evidently knew the value of her patronage, for a more importunate suitor, and a more persevering sycophant, never kissed hands. Finally, she obtained a peerage for her husband, a distinction in which, of course, she herself shared, but which probably she desired merely to throw some eclat round ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... if the children of the marriage would rank as princes, and she said that she saw nothing to prevent this. He also asked if he would be raised higher in the peerage, and might look to being made a prince at last, and styled Highness as soon as ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... Gladstone is mentioned, who educated his party till it captured its opponents' place by first disguising and then adopting their measures. That was in its way as brilliant party leadership as the century has seen, and it placed an alien adventurer in the British peerage and enshrined his name in the grateful memory of a great party that vainly looks for Disraeli's successor. [Applause.] I do not forget a younger statesman, never to be forgotten henceforth by Irishmen, who revived an impoverished and exhausted ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... choice of a 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 ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... circumstance its law, every man his own nature; mine is not that of an angel. When peace is made, we shall see." On another occasion, on this same question of preparing the Additional Act, and with reference to the institution of an hereditary peerage, he yielded to the excursive rapidity of his mind, taking the subject by turns under different aspects, and giving unlimited vent to contradictory observations and opinions. "Hereditary peerage," said he, "is ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from London steamed into the station at Helstonleigh, eight minutes behind time, and came to a standstill. Amongst the passengers who alighted, was a gentleman of middle age, as it is called—in point of fact, he had entered his fiftieth year, as the peerage would have told any curious inquirer. As he stepped out of a first-class carriage, several eyes were drawn towards him, for he was of notable height, towering above every one; even above Roland Yorke, who was of good height himself, and stood on the platform ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... must be acknowledged that the general order of viceroys and secretaries had not tended much to remove the conception. They were chiefly men of advanced life, with their habits formed by intercourse with the most exclusive class in existence, the English peerage, or rendered rigid by the dry formalities of official life. But I was young, had seen a good deal of that rough work of the world which gives pliancy, if not polish, to all characters; and I was, besides, really delighted with the animation, pleasantry, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "fittest" are not able to perpetuate their type. Ritchie, in his "Darwinism and Politics" ("Darwinism and Politics" pages 9, 22, London, 1889.) reminds us of Darwin's remark that the institution of the peerage might be defended on the ground that peers, owing to the prestige they enjoy, are enabled to select as wives "the most beautiful and charming women out of the lower ranks." ("Life and Letters of Charles Darwin", II. page 385.) But, says Galton, it is as often ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... other day, writers who vindicated our hereditary House of Lords against a certain Parliament Act commonly did so on the ground that since the Reform Bill of 1832, by inclusion of all that was eminent in politics, war and commerce, the Peerage had been so changed as to know itself no longer for the same thing. That ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... vertues and good parts of his ancestors concentred in him; which his lordship hath not been wanting to cultivate and improve by study and travell; which make his titles shine more bright. He is an honour to the peerage, and a glory and a blessing to his country: but his reall worth best speakes him, and it praises ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... the British Ministry, in its notion of a life-peerage, shows an entire misunderstanding of what makes people desire the peerage. It is not for the immediate personal distinction; but because it removes the peer and his consanguinity from the common rank of men, and makes a separate order of ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reform in the representation. But the revolutionary changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club, the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active correspondence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... bit about them, I assure you," he said to her; "but I have the 'Peerage.' If you would like to see that, I will send it you ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... 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 suppose (for I never saw ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... severe, and many men going out for a life of pleasure would find little difficulty in fulfilling them. The stumbling-block to most aspirants would be in the two first clauses, for one need only glance over the peerage to find to his astonishment how few really representatives of ancient families are possessed of good incomes. The large incomes are enjoyed by the self-made men who have been raised to the peerage of late years, but though Australians would ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... laws and British government, and of exemption from French tenure of property." While such matters were under the consideration of the imperial authorities, Sir Guy Carleton, once more governor-general of Canada, and lately raised to the peerage as Lord Dorchester, established, in 1788, five new districts for the express object of providing for the temporary government of the territory where the Loyalists had settled. These districts were known as Luneburg, Mecklenburg, Nassau and Hesse, in the western ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... 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. ["1st May, 1760, Major-General Lord Charles Hay died" (Gentleman's ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... essayist, and politician, Edward Bulwer Lytton was born in London on May 25, 1805. His father was General Earle Bulwer. He assumed his mother's family name on her death in 1843, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Lytton in 1866. At seventeen Lytton published a volume entitled, "Ismael, and Other Poems." An unhappy marriage in 1827 was followed by extraordinary literary activity, and during the next ten years he produced twelve novels, two poems, a play, "England and the English," ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... enviable position, both social and financial, in ante-bellum Baltimore. They were related to the This Family and the That Family, which, as every Southerner knew, entitled them to membership in that enormous peerage which largely populated the Confederacy. This was their first experience with the charming old custom of having babies—Mr. Button was naturally nervous. He hoped it would be a boy so that he could be sent to ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... he married Miss Emily Sellwood, whom he had long known at Somersby, the daughter of a lawyer, and niece of Sir John Franklin. In 1855 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford and in 1884, being then in his seventy-fifth year, he was raised to the peerage under the title of Baron Tennyson of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... it all unperturbed. It was just what he knew she could and would do; and he foresaw for Byng, if he wanted it, a peerage in the not distant future. Alice Tynemouth was no gossip, and she was not malicious. She had a good, if wayward, heart, was full of sentiment, and was a constant and helpful friend. He, therefore, accepted her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... verse essays seem to have been particularly affected by this order of the peerage; for, somewhat later, we have one, "On Unnatural Flights in Poetry," by the Earl ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... iced champagne and flattery do? Singly, they are strong impulses; combined, their power is irresistible. I now heard for the first time that our great leader had been elevated to the peerage by the title of Lord Wellington, and I sincerely believe—however now I may smile at the confession—that, at the moment, I felt more elation at the circumstance than he did. The glorious sensation of being in any ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... organ, and distributed gratuitously five thousand copies daily. In 1832 they had established a central propagandism in Paris, and had their missionaries in most of the departments of France. They attacked the hereditary peerage, and it fell; they seemed to be numerous and strong, and I believed for a moment in their complete success. They called their doctrine a religion, their ministers priests, and their organization a church; and as such they claimed to be recognized ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... I called with Lord Ernest Hamilton upon Sir Bernard Burke, the Ulster King-at-Arms, and the editor or author of many other well-known publications, and especially of the "Peerage," sometimes irreverently spoken ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... plain to me! This would account for everything. I hobbled up and got down the peerage. I turned to the Hartelford title, and noted the brothers—the Hon'bles—John Sinclair, Charles Henry, and Robert Edgar. This last must be "Bobby" Then I read the usual things—"Educated at Eton and Christchurch, etc., etc." "Left the Guards ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... makes his reports to and receives his instructions from the Secretary of State for India, who represents that part of the empire both in the ministry and in parliament. The present viceroy is the Right Honorable George Nathaniel Curzon, who was raised to the peerage in October, 1898, as Baron Curzon of Kedleston. He is the eldest son of Lord Scarsdale, was born Jan. 11, 1859, was educated at Eton and Oxford; selected journalism as his profession; became correspondent ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... fears, the doubts and perplexities, which troubled this time. For although it is acknowledged, and has been taught by all philosophers from King Lemuel and Lao-Kiun downward, that no greater prize can be gained by any man than the love of a good woman, which is better than a Peerage—better than a Bonanza mine—better than Name and Fame, Kudos and the newspaper paragraph, and is arrived at by much less exertion, being indeed the special gift of the gods to those they love; yet all women perfectly understand the ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... English language is spoken or written, as one of the great masters of literary composition. This was the verdict pronounced by the English nation at large; and its great political and literary leaders expressed and confirmed it, when they gave him fortune and fame, elevated him to the peerage, bestowed on him stars and titles, and buried him with august solemnity among those illustrious men who gave to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... with mere boys; he had known well-born women to marry grooms and chauffeurs; a Peer of his acquaintance had linked himself to a cabman's daughter and stuck to her; chorus girls of course perpetually married into the Peerage; human passions—although he could not understand it—ran as wild as the roots of eucalyptus trees planted high within reach of water. So he could not rule out as impossible a sudden affection ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... with its royal functions and celebrations at Copenhagen, a peerage was offered to the poet. He "did not want to alter his plain Mr," and he must have known that, whether he accepted or refused, the chorus of blame would be louder than that of applause. Scott had desired "such grinning honour as Sir Walter hath"; ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... much difference of opinion among the genealogists and family historians regarding Alexander's two wives. Both Edmonston in his Baronagium Genealogicum, and Douglas in his Peerage say that Alexander's first wife was Agnes, sixth daughter of Colin, first Earl of Argyll. This we shall prove to be absolutely impossible within the ordinary course of the laws of nature. Colin, first Earl of Argyll, succeeded as a minor in 1453, his uncle, Sir Colin Campbell of Glenurchy, having ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... his peerage for voting for the Union, he had his patent of nobility read out at a dinner-party, and it commenced, 'George, of the United Kingdom ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... not an earl's daughter. Photography, reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries, clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise—let me reciprocate your bluntness—I should ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... the leisure of a bank-holiday I have counted the list and find it contains no fewer than fifty-two high distinctions, one for every week of the year. These were won not by striking genius or brilliant talent. Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, to preserve a name which the crowning honour of the peerage did not displace in the public mind, was by nature and daily habit constitutionally industrious. After Eton he joined his father's banking business. In his diary under date Christmas Day, 1852, being the nineteenth year of his age, he gives an account of how he spends his day. It is too long to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... haughty strife, Or each atone his guilty love with life. But of his wish'd return the care resign, Be future vengeance to the powers divine. My sentence hear: with stern distaste avow'd, To their own districts drive the suitor-crowd; When next the morning warms the purple east, Convoke the peerage, and the gods attest; The sorrows of your inmost soul relate; And form sure plans to save the sinking state. Should second love a pleasing flame inspire, And the chaste queen connubial rights require; Dismiss'd with honour, let her hence repair To great Icarius, whose paternal care Will ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... American commercial community. From 1806-1835 he represented various constituencies in parliament where he strongly opposed reform. In 1834 he became president of the Board of Trade and master of the mint in Sir Robert Peel's first administration, and the following year was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashburton. His business capacity and intimate acquaintance with American customs and institutions caused his appointment in 1842 as commissioner to the United States to negotiate the settlement of the north-eastern boundary question and other matters in dispute between the two countries, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... entertaining of General Washington, and the quickest proposal of marriage on record. Almost the nicest thing about Newburyport, however, and one of the nicest things I ever heard, is the story of Timothy Dexter, who grew very rich, nominated himself for the peerage, and assumed the title of "Lord." He was considered a half-witted sort of fellow, who inherited a little money and didn't know what business to engage in. "Charter a ship," said a practical joker whom he consulted. ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... to pretend to take interest in social and political reform. A few remain, and these are amongst the most valuable of our members. At times, when an undergraduate of force of character and high social position, the heir to a peerage for example, is for the moment an ardent Socialist, the Fabian Society becomes, in a certain set or college, the fashionable organisation. On the whole it is true that Socialists are born and not made, and very few of the hundreds who join at ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... prevailed over all fatigue—I mean that of Captain Nugent's having voted against us upon the second division. The question has not been distinctly stated in any of the papers, as far as I have seen. It was a proposal of Fox's, that the restrictions, particularly that of peerage, should continue only for a limited time; by which means, we should have been placed in this sort of situation, that if, at the expiration of that term, the King should be so far recovered, as to afford hopes even of an almost immediate recovery, the Regent would be able, ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... just been nominated captain-general of the musketeers?—an appointment more valuable than a peerage; for it gives precedence over ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... descended from any English king can prove such descent, though he can prove it only through a long and complicated web of female successions. But we may be sure that in no other case can such a pedigree be proved by the kind of proof which lawyers would require to make out the title to an estate or a peerage. The actual forefathers of the modern Englishman may chance to have been, not true-born Angles or Saxons, but Britons, Scots, in later days Frenchmen, Flemings, men of any other nation who learned to speak English and took to themselves ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... since nothing can be more agreeable, for those who are in a situation to look forward to such an advantage, than to see themselves elevated into, as Lafayette expresses, so many "little legitimacies." The peerage, with its exclusive and hereditary benefits, is the aim of all the nobility of Europe, and wishes of this sort make easy converts to any philosophy that may ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Humbert, and soon established itself in that town. A British army, full four thousand strong, was assembled to act against the invader, at the head of which was General Lake, afterward Lord Lake,—elevated to the peerage in reward of services performed in India, and one of the most ruthless of those harsh and brutal proconsuls employed by England to destroy the spirit of the people of Ireland. The two armies met at Castlebar, the French numbering only eight hundred men, with whom ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Moyne's are concerned, is horribly untrue. The ancestors of both of us commanded regiments of the volunteers who achieved the only Home Rule Parliament which ever sat in Ireland. My own great grandfather afterwards exchanged his right to legislate in Dublin for the peerage which I now enjoy. But Moyne and I were no doubt in a minority in that assembly. Babberly's forefathers may possibly have bled and died for the Union; but I do not think he can be sure about this. His father lived in ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Artists of Great Britain. When he crossed the ocean to make his home near West, he took with him his Boston-born son, John Singleton, Jr., who became in 1827, the year that the Port Folio suspended, Lord Chancellor of England, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Lyndhurst. To Lyndhurst, as the greatest of orators, Lord Lytton ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... 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
... my house if I didn't. I went, thinking I could reason with him; but it was impossible. When I told him we must be very careful, for I was afraid of what might happen, he made fun of my fears, and encouraged me. He knew that they'd never dare to punish him; he's allied to half the peerage and he did not ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... she offered him knighthood, which he declined. Wotton was twice married. By his first wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Rudstone, he had three sons: Edward, knighted by Elizabeth, and afterwards raised to the peerage as Baron Wotton by James I.; and James and John, who were also made knights by Elizabeth. His second wife was Eleanora, daughter of Sir William Finch of Eastwell in Kent, and widow of Robert Morton, Esq., of the same county, by whom he had a son, Henry, the poet ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... something in the air which had changed his luck. That dinner at the King's Arms with his friends had been Henchard's Austerlitz: he had had his successes since, but his course had not been upward. He was not to be numbered among the aldermen—that Peerage of burghers—as he had expected to be, and the consciousness of ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... 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 Francis ordered a duplicate of it from the same coach-builder. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... applied to chiefs of conquest, and to subjects holding court office; higher than muraji; inferior title in Temmu's peerage ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the grandson of the old lord at Corsica in 1794, the only claimant, that had hitherto stood between little George and the immediate succession to the peerage, was removed; and the increased importance which this event conferred upon them was felt not only by Mrs. Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the winter of 1797, his mother having chanced, one day, to read part of a speech spoken in ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... was read from Lord BEAVERBROOK, in which the great financier declared that, in arriving at the peerage at the age of thirty-seven, he had found his inability to read HOMER freely in the original no handicap or hindrance. He pointed out the interesting fact that Lord NORTHCLIFFE, who reached a similar elevation at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various
... little joy would moove desire to have more." This clever young person had been "sworn a nymph," which prevented her getting married for some years. Waiting for that auspicious date a lover was offering his addresses to her, and as Lady Wroth's Arcadia is an Arcadia with a peerage, we are informed that this sworn nymph's lover was "the third sonne ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... that of the Portland peerage, in which fidelity, heroism, chivalry and romance are blended and interwoven in the annals of the noble families of England. Who that has been to Welbeck Abbey, that magnificent palace in the heart of Sherwood Forest, with its legends of Robin ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... II. died, and was succeeded by his brother the Duke of York, as James II. The new King rewarded his favorite, Colonel Churchill, with a Scotch peerage and the command of a regiment of guards, James's two daughters, the princesses Mary and Anne, now became great personages. But from mutual jealousy they did not live together very harmoniously. Mary, the elder daughter, was much the superior of her sister, and her ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... fifteen in all. Even tiny Moses was said to be a portrait of some baby of distinction, born conveniently at the time. The picture was a great success. Popular taste had been cunningly measured and fitted. This ingenious interleaving of the Bible and the Peerage found a host of admirers. There were some malcontents, of course: ladies whose claims to be ranked among court beauties had been summarily passed over by the painter; for he has rather an invidious task before him who undertakes to decide who are the fifteen most beautiful of English women of quality. ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Gradually, with prolonged peace, the hereditary element choked and swamped the nominated element. The abbots disappeared, the lords multiplied. The peer ceased to be the leader of a shire, and sank into a mere idle landowner. Wealth alone grew at last to be a title to the peerage. The House of Lords became a House of Landlords. And the English people submitted to the claim of irresponsible wealth or irresponsible acres to exercise a veto upon national legislation. The anomaly, ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... elocution seldom fails of rising to preferment, and acquiring an estate even while he is a young man. I do not know any profession in London where a person makes his fortune so soon as in the law, if he be an eminent pleader. Several of them have of late years been advanced to the peerage; as Finch, Somers, Cowper, Harcourt, Trevor, Parker, Lechmere, King, Raymond, &c., scarce any of them much exceeding forty years of age when ...
— London in 1731 • Don Manoel Gonzales
... the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these: "Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? She was ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... was afterwards raised to the peerage, and who since died while on his way home to take his seat in the House of Lords, took Mr. Dickson's place as Minister of Defence. I remember quite well dining with him one night in Melbourne when he asked me what ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... Assembly elections: House of Lords - no elections (note - in 1999, as provided by the House of Lords Act, elections were held in the House of Lords to determine the 92 hereditary peers who would remain there; pending further reforms, elections are held only as vacancies in the hereditary peerage arise); House of Commons - last held 7 June 2001 (next to be held by NA May 2006) election results: House of Commons - percent of vote by party - Labor 42.1%, Conservative and Unionist 32.7%, Liberal Democrats ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... successfully as the advance, and before the end of the month of June the last man of the expedition had departed from Annesley Bay. The larger body returned to India, while the Commander-in-chief sailed in the Feroze for England. A peerage, a Grand Cross of the Bath, and a pension were conferred upon Sir Robert Napier; and two Knight Commanderships and 27 Companionships of the same order were bestowed on other officers; while 15 colonelcies, 18 Lieutenant-Colonelcies, and 13 majorities were ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Library of Reference; comprising an English Dictionary and Grammar, Universal Gazetteer, Classical Dictionary, Chronology, Law Dictionary, Synopsis of the Peerage, Useful ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... present but his grandmother and father, and my husband and self; they were married in my Lord Duke's lodging in Whitehall, and given by the King, who came privately without any train. [Footnote: According to Collins' Peerage, Mary, second daughter of James Duke of Ormond, married William Cavendish, ninth Duke of Devonshire, at Kilkenny in Ireland, on the 27th of October, 1662. Lady Fanshawe's statement proves ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... throngs, A heritage designed To teach the world to spurn the wrongs Once threatened all mankind:— To his posterity belongs The peerage ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Fortune has baulked Nature! Look at the features, figure, even to the hands—distinction all over—ugly distinction! Now, if you'd only an estate and a mansion, and a park, and a title, how you could play the exclusive, maintain the rights of your class, train your tenantry in habits of respect to the peerage, oppose at every step the advancing power of the people, support your rotten order, and be ready for its sake to wade knee-deep in churls' blood; as it is, you've no power; you can do nothing; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... therefore, being allowed to take us by storm without let or hindrance, now advanced aft, when their ringleader, a plausible scoundrel who described himself as the 'Marquis de Pomme-Rose,' or some other similar shoddy title belonging to the black peerage of Hayti, to which I did not give heed at the time, beyond in my own mind thinking it ridiculous and that it was probably a name made up for the occasion, this man came up to Captain Alphonse with a smile on his black face and told a wonderful story which he had calculated ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... 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 ...
— Stories of New Jersey • Frank Richard Stockton
... Humphrey slain at Boroughbridge, became Earl of Northampton, an Ufford, Earl of Suffolk, a Clinton Earl of Huntingdon, a Hastings Earl of Pembroke, and Henry of Grosmont, the Earl of Lancaster's first born, Earl of Derby. A new rank was added to the English peerage when the king's little son, Earl of Chester in 1333, was made Duke of Cornwall in 1337. The old feuds seemed dead and with them the old disorder. But Edward was ambitious of military glory, and it was natural ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... Prince.' If not fatal, it is a great obstacle to the cause of the Naples man. He claims as his mother, Donna Maria Stewart, 'of the family of the Barons of San Marzo.' If Marzo means 'March,' the Earl of March was a title in the Lennox family. The only Mary Stewart in that family known to Douglas's 'Peerage' was younger than James de la Cloche, and died, the wife of the Earl of Arran, in 1667, at the age of eighteen. She may have had some outlying cousin Mary, but nothing is known of such a possible mother of de la Cloche. Again, the testator begs Charles II. to ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... assenting peerage ceased, And in the dome prepared the genial feast. Disrobed, their vests apart in order lay, Then all with speed succinct the victims slay: With sheep and shaggy goats the porkers bled, And the proud steer was on the marble spread. With fire prepared, they deal the morsels round, Wine, rosy-bright, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... you have in me, secretly, an obliged friend who could be of use to Monsieur de Nucingen in such a case, by supporting his claim to the peerage he is seeking?" ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... under-secretaries, and general Committee-ism, and Red Tape-ism, while every hundred thousand pounds bestowed on these necessary institutions turns out in the end to be a mere drop in the sea of incessant demand, though the donors may possibly purchase a knighthood, a baronetcy, or even a peerage, in return for their gifts! And the churches!—my God!—as Madame Roland said of Liberty, what crimes are committed in ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... with effect: Tom is always ready with a tart reply to his sarcasm, or a cut at his consequence. Tom is the eldest son of one of the most respectable whig families in the kingdom, whose ancestors have frequently refused a peerage, from an inherent democratical but constitutional jealousy of the crown. Independence and Tom were nursery friends, and his generous, noble-hearted conduct renders him an universal favorite with the school. Then, after holidays, Tom always returns with such a rich collection ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... is expecting too much! I have not read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested everyone's family announcements. I don't pretend to be the Peerage, the Clergy List, and the London Directory rolled into one. I remembered YOUR family all the more vividly, no doubt, because of the pretty and unusual old Welsh names, 'Olwen' and 'Iolo Gwyn Ford,' which fixed themselves on my memory by their mere beauty. Everything about Wales always ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... suffering and disaster, which drew their humble contributions from the struggling poor and middle classes, left him unmoved and his check book unopened. In an age when huge gifts on behalf of charity was the fashionable road to the peerage, his attitude was all the more noticeable. He would give a thousand pounds for a piece of Sevres china which took his fancy; he would not give a thousand farthings to ease the sufferings of his fellows. Yet there were few found to criticize ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... its branches, whence Linnaeus gave to the sort known as the plantain the Latin name of Musa paradisiaca. If a plant was cultivated in Eden by the grand old gardener and his wife, as Lord Tennyson democratically styled them (before his elevation to the peerage), we may fairly conclude that it possesses ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... make a good show.—Again, you know the difficulties of the political situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The King's idea—and France does him scant justice—is to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need years—and millions.—Noblesse oblige. The Duc de Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, does not repudiate his debt; but he cannot—Now, ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... and what resounds In Fable or Romance of Uthers Son 580 Begirt with British and Armoric Knights; And all who since, Baptiz'd 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 fell By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond Compare of mortal prowess, yet observ'd Thir dread Commander: he above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent 590 Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost All her Original brightness, nor ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... publication to provoke censure, and leaves it to shift for itself for fear of scandal. We do not like Sir Walter's gratuitous servility: we like Lord Byron's preposterous liberalism little better. He may affect the principles of equality, but he resumes his privilege of peerage, upon occasion. His Lordship has made great offers of service to the Greeks—money and horses. He is at present in Cephalonia, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... promotions were subsequently published in the Gazette. Of these, the more prominent officers who received such recognition of their distinguished services were as follows: The Sirdar was raised to the peerage as Lord Kitchener of Khartoum. In addition thereto the dignity G.C.B. was conferred upon the Sirdar, and Sir Francis Grenfell. Major-Generals W. F. Gatacre, A. Hunter, and H. M. L. Rundle were created ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... 6th of this 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 ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... propagandists of this civilization remained permanently in Japan, where they received a courteous welcome, being promoted to positions of trust and admitted to the ranks of the nobility. Thus a book (the Seishi-roku), published in 814, which has been aptly termed the "peerage of Japan," shows that, at that time, nearly one-third of the Japanese nobility traced their descent to Chinese or Korean ancestors in something like equal proportions. The numbers are, China, 162 families; ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... would soon crowd out the more earnest workers. Here is a student with the thirty or more volumes of the "New England Historic Genealogical Register" piled before him, flanked on one side by the huge volumes of Burke's "Peerage" and on the other by Walford's "County Families." There are many readers of this class, the library's department of Genealogy and Heraldry being well filled. There is a lady here and there at the tables working with a male ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... is looked upon as the oracle of the peerage in the science of political economy, accuses railroads of injuring shipping, and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. But railways can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles of transportation; this ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... brewers, colliery-owners, &c.), 85 landowners, 64 merchants and shopkeepers, 37 army and navy men, 33 journalists and authors, 28 financiers, 23 professors, teachers, &c., 18 Civil servants, 18 newspaper proprietors and publishers, 16 heirs to the peerage, 67 of miscellaneous occupations and professions, and 50 working men. Thus the bulk of the present House of Commons consists of rent, profit, and interest mongers and their hirelings and hangers-on. The exploited masses of the people are only ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... before, but had heard of him often during the last three or four months since the Englishman "blew into" Lucky Star City. He was a boaster as well as a waster, no doubt; for according to himself, he knew "everybody at home," from the King down the whole gamut of the British peerage. Also he "claimed" to be an Oxford man, and it was that which, in this emergency, had ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... our 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 ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... pirate at the table is called the Duke, for no apparent reason as he is a shabby rogue. We must not run our finger down the peerage in hope of finding him, or think that he owns a palace on the Strand. He has only one leg, with a timber below the knee. He wears a long cloak so that the actor's rusticated leg can be folded out of sight. The Duke has a great red nose—grog ...
— Wappin' Wharf - A Frightful Comedy of Pirates • Charles S. Brooks
... once had a very handsome fortune, but it was soon run out, and he was obliged to sell his commission in the Guards. Now he lives upon the world; which as Shakespeare says, is his oyster; and he has wit and sharpness enough to open it. Moreover, he has some chance of falling into a peerage; that prospect, and his amusing qualities, added to his being the most fashionable man about town, keeps his head above water. I believe Lord Windermear, who is his cousin, ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... 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 Rohan, de Poix, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... the King to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the resolution which created ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... warmly encouraged in taking this course by no less a person than Lady Brambledown herself, whose perverse pleasure it was to exhibit herself to society as an uncompromising Radical, a reviler of the Peerage, a teller of scandalous Royal anecdotes, and a worshipper of the memory ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... may be inflated in three or four 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 Sir Robert's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... of the family of the Earl of Kellie—to whom Miss Anne Gordon was married in the year 1771. A younger brother, named Methven, ten years later married Joanna, a sister of Miss Gordon. It was never contemplated that these two brothers would ever come near to the peerage of their family—there being at one time seventeen persons between them and the family titles; but in the year 1797 the baronet of Cambo became Earl of Kellie, and two years later the title came to the husband of Anne Gordon. In short, "these two daughters ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... Lindsay Crawfurd, twenty-second Earl of Crawfurd and sixth Earl of Lindsay, died without issue, and his vast estates descended to his sister, Lady Mary Crawfurd. After the death of the earl various claims were advanced to the peerage, one of them being preferred by a person of the name of John Crawfurd, who came from Dungannon, in the north of Ireland. When this claimant arrived at Ayr, in January 1809, he gave himself out as a descendant of the Hon. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... record-office, like some; nor yet an antiquarian gallery of costumes and armour, like others; nor a mere war-gazette and report of killed and wounded from time to time; least of all not a "Debrett's Peerage," and catalogue of kings and queens (whose names are given, while their souls are ignored), but a true spiritual history of England—a picture of the spirits of our old forefathers, who worked, and fought, and sorrowed, and died for us; on whose accumulated labours we now here stand. That I call ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... with her at her first ball, and been violently smitten with her; he had called more than once at Highmore, and his attentions were directly encouraged by Mr. Bassett. Now Mr. Rutland was heir to a peerage, and also to ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... the duke's nephew and heir, having his suspicious of the fact excited, commenced proceedings against the duchess for bigamy. She was tried before her peers in Westminster hall, and found guilty of the offence, in April 1776; but by claiming the privilege of peerage, she was discharged on payment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... stamina, not only they fell, but, in falling, they caused the earl to reel much more than any commoner would have done. Now, on the other hand, a kinsman of Lord Carlisle, viz., Lord Byron, because he brought real genius and power to the effort, found a vast auxiliary advantage in a peerage and a very ancient descent. On these double wings he soared into a region of public interest, far higher than ever he would have reached by poetic power alone. Not only all his rubbish—which in quantity is great—passed for jewels, but also what are incontestably jewels have been, ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... first conquistadores in America, perished, as the monk chronicles point out, rapidly by their own crimes; and very few of our nobility can trace their names back to the authentic Battle Abbey roll. The great majority of the peers have sprung from, and all have intermarried with, the Commons; and the peerage has been from the first, and has become more and more as centuries have rolled on, the prize of success ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... moment to introduce Sandy to the reader, for he cannot be allowed to slip into this tale by a side-door. If you will consult the Peerage you will find that to Edward Cospatrick, fifteenth Baron Clanroyden, there was born in the year 1882, as his second son, Ludovick Gustavus Arbuthnot, commonly called the Honourable, etc. The said ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Theirs was one of the aristocratic houses of the neighbourhood, and themselves a younger branch of an old county family which dated from the days of Henry the First. The head of that house, Mr Roberts of Glassenbury, would almost have thought it a condescension to accept a peerage. The room in which the girls sat was handsomely furnished according to the tastes of the time. A curtain of rich shot silk—"changeable sarcenet" was the name by which they knew it—screened off the window end ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... of their respective personal estates, together with what he had an expectation of from his godmother, would make such a noble fortune, and give him such an interest, as might entitle him to hope for a peerage. Nothing less would ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... certainly formidable; and the chief matter of surprise now is, that the Whigs should have suffered the Regent to accept the office under such conditions. They prevented him from creating any peerage, or granting any office in reversion, or giving any office, pension, or salary, except during the royal pleasure, or disposing of any part of the royal estate. They took from him also the whole household, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... was appointed to the chief justiceship of the Common Pleas, on the resignation of Chief Justice Eyre; and in the same year he was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Eldon. In 1801, he was made Lord Chancellor, which high office he retained till the year 1827, with the exception of the short period during which the Whigs were in office, in 1806. His lordship was raised to the dignity of an earl at the coronation of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... Scotch pedlars, and Italian whores, Were all made lords or lords' progenitors. Beggars and bastards by this new creation Much multiplied the peerage of the nation; Who will be all, ere one short age runs o'er, As true-born lords as those we ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... me. Perhaps I ought not to have tried it; but I think you should blame those who lured me into extravagance and then deserted me. I've had a terrible, terrible experience! Do you know that? And I was within an ace of becoming an ornament of the British peerage. ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... fact is," said Trefusis, "the idea of emigration is a dangerous one for us. Familiarize the workman with it, and some day he may come to see what a capital thing it would be to pack off me, and you, with the peerage, and the whole tribe of unprofitable proprietors such as we are, to St. Helena; making us a handsome present of the island by way of indemnity! We are such a restless, unhappy lot, that I doubt ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw |
