Heir for Viscount Tarbat

[Patricia Light]

According to DPB I  noticed that Viscount Tarbat (son & heir of 5th Earl of Cromartie) & his wife Julia Black had a son & heir HON RODERICK CHRISTOPHER DUNCAN JOHN in 2022. That is one that we missed.

[marquess]

Thanks for posting, this is a virtually bullet proof earldom with its extensive special remainders,would that more peerages were like this.

[S. S.]

I did always wonder as to why the Earldom of Cromartie had such an extensive remainder, other than the fact given the title's previous holders' history. When you look at the condensed and simplified form of the remainder from Wikipedia, it is indeed bulletproof: 

1. to her second surviving son Lord Francis Leveson-Gower, and the heirs male of his body;
2. to each of her younger sons and the heirs male of their bodies (however, she had no further sons);
3. to the said Lord Francis Leveson-Gower and the heirs of his body (meaning that the titles could descend through female lines);
4. to each of her younger sons in priority of birth and the heirs of their bodies;
5. to her daughter Lady Florence and the heirs of her body; and
6. to each of her daughters in priority of birth and the heirs of their bodies.

[Richard R]

Extract from Valentine Heywood’s British Titles 2^nd edn (1953). An excellent work which I cannot recommend highly enough:

‘FEMALE SUCCESSION TO AN EARLDOM

In England this quality of descent through females when there are no male heirs is confied, with one exception, to certain ancient baronies by writ. The one exception is the modern Earldom of Cromartie, with which go the Viscountcy of Tarbat and the Baronies of Castlehaven and Macleod. These honours were conferred in 1861 by Queen Victoria on Anne, Duchess of Sutherland, heiress of an ancient Scottish family named Mackenzie. Similar dignities had been held by this family in the eighteenth century, but were forfeited by the third Earl for participation in the Jacobite rising of ’45, and subsequently the male line became extinct.

Under  the patent granted by Queen Victoria these honours were to devolve, after the Duchess’s death, on her second surviving son and his issue. That son, Lord Francis Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, did in fact succeed his mother, but he in turn had no son but left two daughters. The patent in question is a complicated one, and though it is that under it female succession whenever necessary was contemplated and intended, there was doubt whether the position resulting from Lord Cromartie’s death was not equivalent to the abeyance of a barony by writ. Eventually, on the advice of the Crown lawyers, Queen Victoria settled the problem by issuing Letters Patent awarding the peerages to the elder daughter, the present [in 1953] Countess.

Apart from the old baronies by writ I believe this is the only case in the English or United Kingdom peerages where succession (apart from special remainders…) can go to females in default of male heirs. I should not like to put it stronger than “I believe”, for surprises not infrequently turn up in peerage claims, and it may be that there are other cases among the older creations in the higher ranks where a similar right of descent might be established if circumstances led to it being put to the test.’

[marquess]

The remainder to the earldom of Cromartie is very convulted, they would have been better off copying the remainder of the Barony of Lucas of Crudwell, which has the addition of, to female heirs without division; hence no abeyances. It is most unfortunate that this type of remainder was not duplicated in other peerages; it is superior to a barony by Writ and most certainly better than the remainder to the earldom of Cromartie.

[S. S.]

marquess, the problem with having the Earldom of Cromartie and other titles be with remainder to heirs without division as the Barony of Lucas of Crudwell is that it would readily become subsumed with the Dukedom of Sutherland upon the death of the original grantee. The whole point of the remainder initial remainder to the 2nd surviving son was to keep it from being subsumed into the senior line.

S.S.

[S. S.]

Also, as for convoluted remainders are concerned, the Earldom of Selkirk [S[ truly has one of the most bizarre of all remainders ever created. 

S.S.

[bx...@yahoo.com]

Why can the monarchy be inherited by a female (i.e., Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II) even when there are male relations (both of their fathers had other brothers), and yet most peerages can't be inherited by a female even if there are no other male relations?

Brooke

[sven_me...@web.de]

because there is no justice in that system

[Peter FitzGerald]

One reason is that there has to be a monarch, whereas there does not have to be an heir to a peerage: it is perfectly acceptable for a peerage to become extinct.

The system of male-preference primogeniture which governed the British monarchy until the Succession to the Crown Act developed over centuries precisely to deal with the situation of needing a monarch in the absence of male heirs. It was not initially clearly defined. William the Conqueror was succeeded by two of his sons in turn, William II and Henry I (bypassing his eldest son, Robert Curthose, who succeeded instead as Duke of Normandy until losing even that territory to Henry I). But on Henry I's death in 1135, there were no remaining male-line heirs of William the Conqueror. The uncertainty over who had the right to succeed led to the Anarchy: should the new monarch be the Empress Matilda, Henry I's only surviving child, who had what we would consider the genealogically senior claim but who was a woman; or should it instead be Stephen of Blois, who had a genealogically junior claim (he was the son of one of the daughters of William the Conqueror) but who was a man? Stephen's claim relied on the idea that it was possible for the Crown to pass through a woman (in his case, his mother), but not to a woman. In the event, Matilda was never universally recognised as monarch (and only ever styled herself "Lady of the English", rather than "Queen"), but the Crown ended up passing to her son, Henry II.

The Crown stayed in the male line of the Plantagenets for some time after that, and when Henry IV usurped Richard II in 1399, he bypassed Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, the senior descendant (but through a female line) of Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence, elder brother of Henry IV's father, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. (Both Lionel and and John were sons of Edward III.) That came back to bite the Lancastrian line because the Yorkist line (descendants of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, a younger brother of Lionel and John) married into the Mortimer line: through this marriage, although their male-line Plantagenet descent was junior to that of the Lancastrians, they had acquired a more senior female-line descent. This was relied on by Richard, Duke of York, and subsequently by his son, who became Edward IV, when challenging and then usurping Henry VI in the Wars of the Roses. But still, at that stage no one was necessarily arguing that a woman could become monarch herself, merely that a claim to the throne could pass through her.

The unambiguous system which existed until the recent legislation did not clearly establish itself until the 16th century, when Mary I and then Elizabeth I acceded upon Edward VI's death leaving Henry VIII with no remaining male heirs. Elizabeth I was then succeeded relatively uncontroversially by James I, again relying on female-line descent (through Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII, who had married into the Stewart Kings of Scots; and again through Mary, Queen of Scots, who had married into a junior Stewart/Stuart line). It has succeeded in ensuring that an heir always exists, and has avoided issues like the throne passing to a distant line due to the male-line extinction of the main branch, as happened e.g. in France on the death of Henry III in 1589.

On the contrary, what most commentators do not seem to realise is that hereditary peerages were (except in rare cases, like the Dukedom of Marlborough) effectively designed to have at least a high risk of becoming extinct. Monarchs (and governments once the constitutional monarchy developed) have always wanted to be able to create peers, but also have good reason for not wanting the number of peers to keep on increasing unmanageably. Limiting descent to heirs male ensures that the Peerage is continually thinned out by extinction. I don't know how many hereditary peers there would now be if every peerage had been created with limitation to heirs general without division, but I would guess many thousands.

Of course, we are not in that position now, as no new hereditary peerages are being created. One might say "well, then, now that extinctions are no longer desirable, why not allow titles to survive by passing to female heirs?". But all that does is continue to limit peerages to those in the already established noble families. If it is a laudable aim to preserve the numbers of the Peerage through generations to come, wouldn't it make much more sense instead to resume the creation of hereditary peerages, once again establishing the Peerage as something to which everyone can aspire, rather than simply making it easier for existing noble families to extend their status as such?

[José L. Cabrera]

Spain is the only country in wich the law was modified so that the first-born woman inherited the titles of nobility even ahedad of her male brothers (before, the women inhereted in the absence of a man). This change caused a real war between brothers and the modification of many lines. The Spanish Constitutional Court first, and the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the preference of the man was not discriminatory since it did not affect fundamental rights. However, the pressure of two influential newspapers, whose directors were married to possible "heiresses" forced the government to modify the secular law, even retroactively to favor these two ladies. I honestly do not recommend this route for the British nobility, as it will destroy the entire balance of their honors system.

[marquess]

Malcolm I agree with you re the creation of new hereditary peerages and it being something that everyone can aspire to. I think Jullian Fellows expressed a similar view, saying that the sytem of honours was stuck in 1964.  One feels that the current monarch may well be the only sovereign to never create an hereditary peerage (Lady Jane Grey aside)

[S. S.]

Well, did not Charles III create Prince William as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester on 3 April 2023? Strictly speaking, one does not inherit either in the traditional sense of hereditary peerages, but I guess one can consider the latter as a hereditary peerage creation. 

S.S.

[colinp]

But the Principality of Wales and the Earldom of Chester are not hereditary so I can't see that they can be considered hereditary peerage creations.  If Prince William were to die the titles would revert to the Crown and would have to be created afresh for Prince George.  Prince George wouldn't inherit them. 

[bx...@yahoo.com]

Both of Charles III parents lived well into their 90's, Technically, it's  possible that he could end up creating a hereditary peerage for at least one of  his grandchildren upon marriage.  That is assuming he would even be so inclined.

Brooke

[malcolm davies]

Marquess,

                  I would need to check,but I don't think any peerages were created in the reign of Edward V.I can think of one created in the reign of Edward VIII-the Marquess of Willingdon.

[malcolm davies]

The other argument for male succession only is the universal practice of children taking as their surname their father's surname-not their mothers.We have just seen this in the case of the Royal Family.Although the House name is in fact Windsor,in reality the King is the first monarch of the house of Oldenburg.

There have been cases where the female surname has been adopted because of the inheritance of large estates, where the male line held limited property.Even then, the most usual cause was to adopt a multiple surname,not the female surname alone.

Until relatively recently,the fact that females could not generally succeed was accepted as custom without criticism.It is only since the 1970's that the demand for females to have the same rights has accelerated.L G Pine in his book was critical of peerages by writ descending to females, because of the doubt over whether their creation was ever intended.He pointed out that the purpose of ennoblement was that the service of the person so created deserved recognition in the form of the title continuing for their sons and their male issue until exhausted.That purpose is necessarily curtailed if the peer has a different surname.

My final comment is that in some cases it is a little difficult to accept that female succession was desired by the person for whom the peerage was created.My example is Earl Kitchener of Khartoum.He never married and obtained a special remainder that the peerage be inherited by his brothers.It is doubtful that if a remainder to females had been offered to him,he would have taken it up.

[Windemere]

The upshot of all of this is that the dynastic name will no longer signify agnatic (paternal line) descent. In the future we'll have the Windsor-Wettins ( York and Gloucester) and the Windsor-Oldenburgs ( Cambridge and Sussex ). But this isn't a brand new innovation. The original male-line Russian Romanov Dynasty died out with Czar Peter II, the son of Peter the Great. Czar Peter III, from whom the latter Romanovs descended, was a female-line grandson of Peter the Great. His paternal line was Holstein-Gottorp (Ironically, also a branch of Oldenburg).  Yet the Romanov dynastic name was retained.

Something similar happened with the Hapsburg Dynasty when Maria Theresa became Empress. The male-line of the original Hapsburg Dynasty had died out, and Maria Theresa was the daughter of the last emperor of the original line. She married a husband from the House of Lorraine (who became Holy Roman Emperor, as a woman could not hold this position). Yet the dynastic name of Hapsburg was retained by all of her male descendants, who are actually now Hapsburg-Lothringens.

I think that the Houses of Oranje (Netherlands) and Nassau (Luxembourg) have also passed through female lines when the original agnatic (male) lines died out. And it's anyone's guess what the future dynastic name will be in Sweden when the present king's daughter inherits, or what it will be in Denmark when Queen Margrethe's son ( a paternal Monpezat) inherits. I think in the years to come the  dynastic surname will denote royal descent, and the historic traditions that accompany it, but won't any longer denote what we ordinarily think of as dynasties.

[Windemere]

Sorry. I ought to have stated that the Windsor-Wettins would be the Kents and Gloucesters, and the Windsor-Oldenburgs will be the Cambridges, Sussexes, and Edinburgh/Wessexes.

[malcolm davies]

Windermere-agreed.

I dare say the Spanish royal house will continue to refer to themselves as Bourbons when the current heir Infanta Leonor marries and has children(unless she marries a Bourbon).I wonder what will happen if she marries a Hapsburg?

Ditto the Swedes.

And I can't see Queen Catherina Amalia referring to herself as being an Amsberg.

[Isabelle Maltais]

Hello, Did Viscount and Viscountess Tarbat have other kids?

Thank you in advance, 

Isabelle.

[Richard R]

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