United States or Lithuania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He found, however, very few to agree with him; his amendment was rejected by 176 to 34; and the minister's proposal was adopted in all its details. Mr. Pitt touched lightly on the next article, which limited the royal prerogative of creating Peers by a provision that the King should never confer any fresh Irish peerage till three peerages should have become extinct.
Edward Osborne, the founder of the Dukedom of Leeds, was apprentice to William Hewet, a rich clothworker on London Bridge, whose only daughter he courageously rescued from drowning, by leaping into the Thames after her, and eventually married. Among other peerages founded by trade are those of Fitzwilliam, Leigh, Petre, Cowper, Darnley, Hill, and Carrington.
There was no apparent reason why Sir John Villiers should be ennobled, and his peerages were looked upon as a glaring piece of jobbery. The Court also, at this time, was becoming unpopular. Buckingham was filling it with licentious gallants and with ladies of a type to match them. At Whitehall, there was a constant round of dissipation and libertinism.
Some of them, at least, notably Bernstorff and Robethon, meddled in English politics, and most of them desired high office, lucrative appointments, peerages, and other grants. It is certain that they must have known that they were barred from such delights by an Act of 1700 which carefully guarded against foreigners acquiring any share in the government of this country.
With the exception of a few baronets and knights, and nine lords by courtesy Hartington, Windsor, Woodstock, Mordaunt, Granby, Scudamore, Fitzharding, Hyde, and Berkeley sons of peers and heirs to peerages all were of the people, a sort of gloomy and silent crowd. When the noise made by the trampling of feet had ceased, the Crier of the Black Rod, standing by the door, exclaimed: "Oyez!"
The Duke of Marlborough was not overborne in a similar and more glorious career by a detestable Cabal! and if Oxford and Bolingbroke did remove him, from the most patriot motives, they, good men! used no corruption! Twelve Peerages showered at once, to convert the House of Lords, were no bribes; nor was a shilling issued for secret services; nor would a member of either House have received it!
His father could make him but a slender allowance; and when he assumed the gown of a barrister, the future Chancellor, like Erskine in after years, was spurred to industry by the voices of his wife and children. Whilst he was still an undergraduate of the university, he fell in love with Rebecca Clark, daughter of a pious man, of whose vocation the modern peerages are ashamed.
We assert that the English nobles are not only not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community. Mr Sadler concludes that they are sterile, merely because peerages often become extinct. Is this the proper way of ascertaining the point? Is it thus that he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and fulness of which he descants so largely?
That one or two instances of life peerages were to be found in the annals of the Plantagenet kings was not denied, though none exactly similar in character.
In such instances," he contended, "it would be most desirable to grant peerages for life only. Such a proceeding would, he was convinced, by no means disincline others in different circumstances to accept hereditary titles, nor indispose the ministry to confer them.
Word Of The Day