Resentment caused by choice of names of Peerage titles

[dpth...@gmail.com]

In previous topics we discussed at least one instance of a person's choice of Peerage title angering someone else: the Grenvilles taking the ducal title of Buckingham in spite of the resentment of the Hobert Earls of Buckinghamshire.

I want to bring another to readers' attention. When Sir Robert Walpole's long administration finally fell in 1742, he was created an earl, and took the title "Earl of Orford". It has never been clear why he chose that name for his title. Indeed the editors of the Yale edition of the Horace Walpole Correspondence say "Sir Robert's choice of Orford as his title has not been explained".

Sir Robert had no known connection to the town of Orford, nor any connection to the previous Earl of Orford, Edward Russell, who died in 1727. I suspect that he just liked the sound of the name, and he did have a connection to a house of that name. He had at one time been Paymaster of Chelsea Hospital, and one of the perquisites of that post was that he was able to live in a house called "Orford House". (Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, is known to have owned a house in Chelsea, but I do not know for sure whether it was the same house.)

See this page for a citation showing that Sir Robert once lived at Orford House, Chelsea Hospital.

https://www.soane.org/features/walpoles-desk-monks-parlour


Walpole's choice of the Orford name was unpopular with some of his enemies. Horace Walpole wrote to Mann on 9 February 1742:

"Tomorrow our earl goes to Richmond Park, en retiré; comes on Thursday to take his seat in the Lords, and returns thither again. Sandys is very angry at his taking the title of Orford, which belonged to his wife’s great-uncle. You know a step of that nature cost the great Lord Strafford his head, at the prosecution of a less bloody-minded man than Sandys." (see here.)

Sandys was a great political enemy of Sir Robert and was one of those opponents who was appointed to office after Sir Robert fell. His wife was Laetitia Tipping, whose mother, Anne Cheeke, was a maternal niece of Edward Russell, Earl of Orford.

Horace's mention of Strafford's choice of title is explained by the Editors:

"[Sir Thomas Wentworth, 1628 Baron and Viscount Wentworth, 1640 Baron of Raby and Earl of Strafford] took the title of Raby because of his descent from the Nevill family who in Queen Elizabeth's time had forfeited the possession of Raby Castle, Durham, which in 1640 belonged to Sir Henry Vane (1589-1655), Kt, 1611. Vane's bitter enmity to Strafford was a contributing factor in Strafford's downfall and execution."

[S. S.]

Perhaps Walpole picked it more so as a deliberate jibe (bearing in mind the family connection to that title) and partly as reference to Orford House?

S.S.

[dpth...@gmail.com]

On the other hand, when the 2nd Lord Conway was raised to an earldom in 1750, he chose "Hertford" as a title which had been in the Seymour family.

The Duke of Grafton wrote to the Duke of Newcastle 13 May 1750 O.S.: "As Hertford has been in the Seymours and neither of the branches of the Somerset family lay claim to it, it would be most agreeable to Lord Conway."

In fact this earldom had become extinct earlier that very year on the death of the 7th Duke of Somerset. While the Dukedom devolved on a cousin, the Earldom of Hertford then became extinct. However, Conway first obtained the consent of the heir to the Dukedom of Somerset:


Walpole to Mann, 2 August 1750

"My cousin Lord Conway is made Earl of Hertford, as a branch of the Somersets: Sir Edward Seymour gave his approbation handsomely. He has not yet got the dukedom himself, as there is started up a Dr. Seymour* who claims it, but will be able to make nothing out."


*"Not Dr John Seymour (then deceased), but his son Berkeley Seymour (d.1777) who claimed descent from the second son of the Protector's second marriage, on the basis of an aunt's testimony. The claim was dropped, and the Attorney-General on 23 Nov O.S. authorized the writ of summons, which was dated 16 Jan. 1751 O.S."