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All history shows it; and it would be absurd if it weren't so; for the mass of peers have got their peerages by conspicuous abilities of one sort or another, as barristers, or soldiers, or politicians, or diplomatists, and they would naturally hand on their powers to their different descendants.
They will in future have no other rank than that of their respective peerages; but the Duc du Maine alone, for the fidelity he has always manifested towards the King, will retain his rank for his life, although his issue, if he should have any, will not inherit it. Madame d'Orleans was in the greatest despair, and came to Paris in such a condition as moved my pity for her.
The public offices were heavily burdened with lucrative sinecures, which were used in the factional contests to buy support in Parliament, as were also peerages, contracts, and money bribes.
W. Betham, with that optimism which is characteristic of compilers of peerages, thinks "that he was esteemed one of the most accomplished persons of the time, being a gentleman, not only of fine learning, but famed for his piety and exemplary life." Dorothy thinks otherwise, and writes of him as "the vainest, impertinent, self-conceited, learned coxcomb that ever yet I saw."
His Holiness not deeming it fit to consent to the proposition, Sir Ferdinand quitted his capital in a huff, and, returning to England, laid claim to the peerages of Tewkesbury and Armine.
"As I say, I don't know how the succession runs in this particular instance. There are, as you are aware, several peeresses in their own rights twenty-four or five, at least. Some are very ancient peerages. I know that three Furnivale and Fauconberg and Conyers go right back to the thirteenth century; three others Beaumont, Darcy da Knayth, and Zorch of Haryngworth date from the fourteenth.
The time will come when history will do justice to the Whigs of England, and will faithfully relate how much they did and suffered for Ireland; how, for the sake of Ireland, they quitted office in 1807; how, for the sake of Ireland, they remained out of office more than twenty years, braving the frowns of the Court, braving the hisses of the multitude, renouncing power, and patronage, and salaries, and peerages, and garters, and yet not obtaining in return even a little fleeting popularity.
He had added house to house, and field to field; and at last bought Minchampstead Park and ten thousand acres, for two-thirds its real value, from that enthusiastic sportsman Lord Peu de Cervelle, whose family had come in with the Conqueror, and gone out with George IV. So, at least, they always said; but it was remarkable that their name could never be traced farther back than the dissolution of the monasteries: and Calumnious Dryasdusts would sometimes insolently father their title on James I. and one of his batches of bought peerages.
Then it would merely revive a question that was already under discussion in middle Victorian times, to create non-hereditary peerages in the three kingdoms.
The numbers of the house of lords, in the first parliament of this reign, were seventy-eight temporal peers. The numbers in the first parliament of Charles were ninety-seven. Consequently James, during that period, created nineteen new peerages above those that expired. The house of commons, in the first parliament of this reign, consisted of four hundred and sixty-seven members.
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