Peerage of England

• 1. Introduction

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  The Peerage of England is a system of hereditary titles that stretches back to the year 1264, when the first barons were created, and carries forward through centuries of royal grants, political upheaval, and constitutional change. Today, as of September 2025, exactly 93 people hold English peerages: 11 dukes, one marquess, 26 earls, three viscounts, and 52 barons. What does it mean to be one of them? Where do these titles come from, and why do some of the oldest ones pass not just through sons but through daughters? And what happened in 1707 that closed this particular registry of nobility forever? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. The Five Ranks

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  Duke sits at the apex of the English peerage, and the oldest dukedom still in existence today is the Duke of Cornwall, created in 1337. Beneath duke comes marquess, then earl, viscount, and baron, in that descending order. The five ranks are not interchangeable honors. Each carried distinct legal privileges and social expectations across the centuries they were active.

  The oldest surviving English barony is the Baron de Ros, created in 1264, the same year as the Baron le Despencer. Three more baronies followed within a generation: the Baron Mowbray in 1283, the Baron Hastings, the Baron Furnivall, the Baron FitzWalter, and the Baron Segrave all in 1295. The sheer age of these titles is striking. Some have been held by a single family's line for more than seven hundred years.

  One important boundary the source draws is between peers and those who might be confused with them. Baronets hold hereditary titles but are not peers and are not entitled to sit in the House of Lords. Knights, dames, and holders of non-hereditary orders, decorations, and medals fall outside the peerage entirely.

• 3. Succession and Gender

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  Many of the newer English peerages descend only in the male line, but the older ones follow a different rule. Particularly among the older baronies, titles can pass through female heirs. The Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, created in 1313, and the Baroness Dacre, created in 1321, are two examples of baronies that have descended through or to women. The Baroness Berners, created in 1455, and the Baroness Braye, created in 1529, show the same pattern persisting across different centuries.

  For a long time, being female meant holding a title but not a seat. English peeresses obtained their first seats in the House of Lords only under the Peerage Act 1963. From that date until the House of Lords Act 1999, all Peers of England could sit in the Lords. The 1963 act was a turning point that the older gender-transmissible baronies had been waiting centuries to fully realize.

• 4. The 1707 Closure

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  The Act of Union in 1707 drew a hard line. From that year onward, no new peerages could be created in England, and no new peerages could be created in Scotland either. The two separate systems were closed simultaneously, replaced by a single Peerage of Great Britain. The Peerage of England is therefore a fixed and finite list, not a living system that can take in new members.

  There are five peerages in the United Kingdom in total. The Peerage of England and the Peerage of Scotland gave way to Great Britain's unified system after 1707, and later arrangements added further layers. A peer holding titles in more than one of these systems is not uncommon. The Duke of Richmond, created in 1675, also holds the Duke of Gordon in the Peerage of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Lennox in the Peerage of Scotland, as well as the Duke of Aubigny in the Peerage of France.

  The 1707 cutoff is why the youngest English peerage creations cluster so close to that date. The Baron Hervey, the Baron Conway, the Baron Gower, and the Baron Guernsey were all created in 1703, just four years before the door closed.

• 5. Stacked and Shared Titles

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  A single person can hold multiple English titles simultaneously, and the source uses color coding to make this legible. Peers known by a higher title in one of the other peerages are shown in blue. Peers with more than one title of the same rank within the Peerage of England appear in orange.

  Some combinations are particularly elaborate. The Viscount St Davids in the Peerage of the United Kingdom holds, simultaneously, the Baron Strange created in 1299, the Baron Hungerford created in 1426, and the Baron de Moleyns created in 1445, all three within the Peerage of England. Similarly, the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry in the Peerage of Scotland holds the English earldom of Doncaster, created in 1663.

  The Marquess of Winchester, created in 1551, is the sole surviving marquess who holds no higher English title, making it the sole listing in the marquessate section that stands alone. Most other marquessates in the current list are courtesy titles held by the heirs to English dukes: the Marquess of Tavistock is held by the heir to the Duke of Bedford, the Marquess of Hartington by the heir to the Duke of Devonshire, the Marquess of Blandford by the heir to the Duke of Marlborough, and the Marquess of Granby by the heir to the Duke of Rutland.

• 6. The Duke of Cornwall

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  Of all eleven English dukedoms, the Duke of Cornwall, created in 1337, carries the most constitutionally distinct profile. It is usually held by the Prince of Wales as the heir to the British throne, and in the Peerage of Scotland, the same person carries the title Duke of Rothesay. No other English dukedom is tied by convention to the line of succession in this way.

  The Duke of Norfolk, created in 1483, is the oldest non-royal English dukedom still surviving. The Duke of Marlborough, created in 1702, and the Duke of Rutland, created in 1703, are the youngest, both created just a few years before the 1707 closure made further English dukedoms impossible. The gap between Norfolk in 1483 and Rutland in 1703 spans more than two centuries of English history, from the reign of Richard III through the reign of Anne.