What with Harry and Meghan's titles being in the news and me having visited my old school at the weekend, which was in the grounds belonging to the Marquess of Anglesey, I got to thinking about peerages in general, again.
While there are numerous dukedoms, there are only two duchies - Lancaster and Cornwall- belonging to the monarch and the Prince of Wales respectively. Even those lands are not exclusively in the counties to which they relate (and Lancaster is a city, not a county, but Lancashire is nevertheless a county palatine). None of the other dukedoms pertain to duchies - Norfolk, for example, is a dukedom, not a duchy. The monarch, even if female, is the Duke of Lancaster and not the Duchess of Lancaster, the title duchess being that pertaining to the wife of a duke.
The rest of the more senior peerages (dukedoms, marquessates and earldoms) seem a bit inconsistent, as some of them appertain to counties (Norfolk, Somerset, Sussex, etc.), but in the main they centre on a single town or city (Edinburgh, Cambridge, etc.). A couple, at least, pertain to the family name of an ancestor - e,g, Beaufort and Schomberg. A real mish-mash.
A number of places, understandably, keep getting missed off the list of possible names for dukedoms or earldoms, such as Docklands, Huddersfield, Doncaster, Accrington, etc. Not surprising really - who wants to be the Earl of Accrington, the Duke of Docklands or indeed the Earl of Jaywick Sands? I had included Hull in my list, but discovered that there had indeed been a Duke of Kingston Upon Hull at one time.
I just wish we had a town called Hazzard in the UK and for someone to choose it as a dukedom, although that would be lost on anyone under a certain age.
1 comment:
As a life-long resident of 'ull I had no idea there had ever been a duke thereof. It's a piece of useless information I will cherish :)
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