The Dukes (6 page)

That station has not entirely disappeared from our system of
hierarchies was demonstrated as recently as 1963 when the Queen
granted to Mr Grosvenor,
heir presumptive
to his brother the 4th
Duke of Westminster, the rank, style and precedence of the son of a
duke, although he was no such thing. A secondary preoccupation for the dukes has been the antiquity of
their ancestry, reaching a summit of caprice in the nineteenth century
(although the Dukes of Norfolk were already getting into trouble for
boasting about their ancestry some 400 years before). It became
fashionable for all dukes to be descended from companions of the
Conqueror, so they employed subservient genealogists to manufacture
family trees which proved such descent. Unhappy with their English
surnames, they sought to claim a romantic origin for which there was
no real evidence. Thus the Duke of Bedford tried to show that his
name Russell was derived from a Norman called "de Rosel", and
Seymour, Duke of Somerset, demonstrated that his name was an
anglicisation of "St Maur". The Duke of Leinster, whose family was
old enough as it was, said a Florentine family called "Gherardini"
was the origin of Fitzgerald, the Duke of Manchester that "Monte
Acuto" was the ancestor of Montagu. This practice naturally
brought genealogy into contempt, since deliberate invention was
not excluded as a means to establishing these pedigrees. In fact,
only a few of the English dukes can irrefutably trace their lines to the
twelfth century, such as Westminster (the Grosvenors), Leinster (the
Fitzgeralds), Beaufort (the Somersets), and, through two female
digressions, Northumberland (the Percys). Some of the Scottish
dukes, like Argyll (the Campbells) and Atholl (the Murrays), are
undeniably older still, though shadowy. Nowadays, just as most dukes
pay scant attention to who walks first into or out of a room, so many
of them know no more about their ancestry than what they can find
in Debrett or Burke.

All this is trivial compared with their real monument, achieved
almost without trying, which has been to enrich the country's artistic
heritage. Dukes have had taste, and the money with which to indulge
it; if they lacked taste, they had the money to employ someone with
taste to act on their behalf. They paid for the best architects to build
their houses, the best painters to paint their portraits. By their
patronage, they encouraged the development of the great British
architects and painters; with their purchases, they brought to this
country the best foreign works of art, from china to furniture to
paintings and sculpture. One can argue for weeks whether they
should
have had so much money; most of them now would say they
should not. The point is that they
did,
and the country as a whole
is the beneficiary. At Boughton, Woburn, Chatsworth, Goodwood,
and so on, there are incomparable treasures, which no other country
can boast, because only here are such treasures used for the purpose
for which they were bought, as decor to a home, instead of being
ranged against the walls in a museum.

Since Lloyd George first began to bleed the rich, they have, as
well as saving their own skins, tried to protect these collections from
dispersal or disappearance abroad. The Dukes of Manchester and
Newcastle sold everything and left, but they are not typical. The
others have adjusted themselves to each new piece of legislation and so
far have successfully kept the collections more or less intact. Until
recently, it was possible to pass on to one's heir a tax-free inheritance,
provided one lived for seven years after the date of the transfer. It
has been said that one noble lord died a few weeks too soon, and
his family had to leave him in a cold attic room until the time was
opportune for them to announce his death officially. Now, with new
laws coming into operation, even that ruse will no longer work. There
is every possibility that Capital Transfer Tax and Wealth Tax will
combine to break up the estates and send our artistic heritage abroad.
No one in Britain will be tempted to buy a picture if he knows he will
have to pay for it over and over again each year, and not even the
dukes will be able to keep those that they have inherited. Perhaps
there will soon come a day when there will be nothing left to see at
Woburn Abbey and no point in visiting Goodwood. The dukes are
not being acquiescent, however. In the van is Lord March, who will
one day be Duke of Richmond, constantly emphasising to the public
that it is not for himself that he wants the art treasures to remain at
Goodwood (living in a remote wing of the house, he hardly sees them),
but for the country. He once emptied one whole room to show
visitors what might happen when everything was sold abroad.

We may be approaching the end of ducal estates. But not the end
of dukes. While it is more or less certain that no new dukedoms will
be created, only an Act of Parliament can remove those that already
exist. Not even the Queen has the power to declare a dukedom
extinct, except by attainder for high treason, and only one candidate,
the Duke of Montrose, (see Chapter 14) has come anywhere near
making himself so eligible. The crown is the fountain of all honour,
and once a dukedom has been created, it can only descend according
to limitation of the patent.

Before we embark upon an account of the separate ducal families,
a word about the complexities of peerage law for those readers who,
like myself, are not naturally familiar with such terms as
special
remainder
or with the seemingly arbitrary use of courtesy titles.

When most titles were created, it was usually stipulated that the
dignity would be inherited in
tail male,
that is with succession to the
heirs male of the body of the grantee. This means in effect that the
dukedom is inherited by a son, or nephew, or male cousin, or even
uncle, as long as he can be traced back in male line to the first duke
to hold the title, making him a male descendant of that duke's body.
Sometimes the title is limited to
heirs general,
which means that it can
descend through the female line. This is especially true of Scottish
earldoms, and accounts for the separation of the dukedom and
earldom of Sutherland in 1963, when the dukedom went to the
heir
male,
and the earldom to the
heir general,
now Countess of
Sutherland in her own right. She is still the heir "of the body" of the
original Earl of Sutherland. Thirdly, a
special remainder
can be
specified, enabling the title to pass not to a blood descendant, an heir
"of the body", but to someone nominated by the grantee. Thus the 1st
Duke of Newcastle named his son-in-law, Lord Lincoln, from whom
the present Duke is descended, and the new Earl of Northumberland
in the Seymour family named his son-in-law, Hugh Smithson,
ancestor of the present Duke of Northumberland.
A special remainder
regulated the descent of the dukedom of Fife, enabling the 1st Duke's
daughter to inherit the title in this century. In the case of the Duke of
Marlborough, the patent is a most complicated document, listing the
male descendants of each of his daughters in succession; the effect
was to enable one of his daughters to succeed him, and the son of
another daughter to succeed as 3rd Duke.

One more thing. The patent always rules that the heirs, whether
male, general,
or
special,
must be "lawfully begotten", two words
which have barred many an illegitimate son from succession, and
without which we should probably still have a Duke of Bolton now,
and would definitely have a different Duke of Somerset from the man
presently living at Maiden Bradley.

There is one very special case which is worth mentioning, although
it impinges upon a dukedom only by implication.
[2]
The earldom of
Devon was created for Edward Courtenay in 1553, with limitation to
heir male,
but not
of the body.
The title was extinct three years later,
but in 1831 it was successfully claimed by a man whose descent was
from an ancestor living 200 years
before
the creation of 1553, and
who was, quite correctly, a male
heir
but not a
descendant
of the 1st
Earl. The 17th Earl of Devon is alive today, and benefits from this
unique entail.
²⁵

The reader will have to bear in mind the use of "courtesy titles" -
the Duke of Beaufort may be referred to as Marquess of Worcester, or
the Duke of Marlborough as Marquess of Blandford. A duke
normally has many subsidiary titles; he is usually, in descending scale,
Marquess of this, Earl of that, Viscount of another, and Baron of
something else. His eldest son is allowed to use as his style of address
the secondary title vested in his father, and
his
eldest son may take his
grandfather's
third
title. Thus the Duke of Bedford's son is called
Lord Tavistock, and his grandson Lord Howland. But neither son nor
grandson are
in fact
peers; they cannot sit in the House of Lords,
and there is nothing to prevent their standing for election to the
House of Commons. The Duke of Buccleuch was in the House of
Commons as an M.P. when he was known as Earl of Dalkeith in his
father's lifetime. He was not
really
an earl, but was able to use his
father's earldom "by courtesy" of the sovereign as a mere name.

Conversely, and here we go back to that fascinating topic of rank,
the eldest son of a duke is
always
ranked as a marquess, whether or
not his father holds a marquessate which he can use as his name. The
son of the Duke of Grafton is called Earl of Euston, but is ranked as a
marquess. And the son of the Duke of Somerset who, uniquely among
the dukes, has only one subsidiary title at the bottom of the scale -
Baron Seymour - is called Lord Seymour yet has the precedence of a
marquess above all 199 Earls, 132 Viscounts and 493 barons.