their sovereign status under the new empire. Only one, however, the grand duke of Luxemburg, is now both sovereign and independent. Besides the sovereign dukes in Germany there are certain “mediatized” ducal houses, e.g. that of Ratibor, which share with the dispossessed families of the Italian sovereign duchies certain royal privileges, notably that of equality of blood (Ebenbürtigkeit). In Italy, where titles of nobility give no precedence at court, that of duke (duca) has lost nearly all even of its social significance owing to lavish creations by the popes and minor sovereigns, and to the fact that the title often passes by purchase with a particular estate. Political significance it has none. Some great Italian nobles are dukes, notably the heads of the great Roman ducal families, but not all Italian dukes are great nobles.
In France the title duke at one time implied vast territorial power, as with the dukes of Burgundy, Normandy, Aquitaine and Brittany, who asserted a practical independence against the crown, though it was not till the 12th century that the title duke was definitely regarded as superior to others. At first (in the 10th and 11th centuries) it had no defined significance, and even a baron of the higher nobility called himself in charters duke, count or even marquis, indifferently. In any case the strengthening of the royal power gradually sapped the significance of the title, until on the eve of the Revolution it implied no more than high rank and probably territorial wealth.
There were, under the ancien régime, three classes of dukes in France: (1) dukes who were peers (see Peerage) and had a seat in the parlement of Paris; (2) hereditary dukes who were not peers; (3) “brevet” dukes, created for life only. The French duke ranks in Spain with the “grandee” (q.v.), and vice versa. In republican France the already existing titles are officially recognized, but they are now no more than the badges of distinguished ancestry. Besides the descendants of the feudal aristocracy there are in France certain ducal families dating from Napoleon I.’s creation of 1806 (e.g. ducs d’Albufera, de Montebello, de Feltre), from Louis Philippe (duc d’Isly, and duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier), and from Napoleon III. (Malakoff, Magenta, Morny).
In England the title of duke was unknown till the 14th century, though in Saxon times the title ealdorman, afterwards exchanged for “earl,” was sometimes rendered in Latin as dux,[1] and the English kings till John’s time styled themselves dukes of Normandy, and dukes of Aquitaine even later. In 1337 King Edward III. erected the county of Cornwall into a duchy for his son Edward the Black Prince, who was thus the first English duke. The second was Henry, earl of Lancaster, Derby, Lincoln and Leicester, who was created duke of Lancaster in 1351. In Scotland the title of duke was first bestowed in 1398 by Robert III. on his eldest son David, who was made duke of Rothesay, and on his brother, who became duke of Albany.
British dukes rank next to princes and princesses of the blood royal, the two archbishops of Canterbury and York, the lord Chancellor, &c., but beyond this precedence they have no special privileges which are not shared by peers of lower rank (see Peerage). Though their full style as proclaimed by the herald is “most high, potent and noble prince,” and they are included in the Almanach de Gotha, they are not recognized as the equals in blood of the crowned or mediatized dukes of the continent, and the daughter of an English duke marrying a foreign royal prince can only take his title by courtesy, or where, under the “house-laws” of certain families, a family council sanctions the match. The eldest son of an English duke takes as a rule by courtesy the second title of his father, and ranks, with or without the title, as a marquess. The other sons and daughters bear the titles “Lord” and “Lady” before their Christian names, also by courtesy. A duke in the British peerage, if not royal, is addressed as “Your Grace” and is styled “the Most Noble.” (See Archduke, Grand Duke, and, for the ducal coronet, Crown and Coronet.) (W. A. P.)
DUKE OF EXETER’S DAUGHTER, a nickname applied to a 15th-century instrument of torture resembling the rack (q.v.). Blackstone says (Commentaries, ii. sec. 326): “The trial by rack is utterly unknown to the law of England, though once when the dukes of Exeter and Suffolk, and other ministers of Henry VI., had laid a design to introduce the civil (i.e. Roman) law into the kingdom as the rule of government, for a beginning thereof they erected a rack for torture, which was called in derision the duke of Exeter’s daughter, and still remains in the Tower of London, where it was used as an engine of state, not of law, more than once in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. But when, upon the assassination of Villiers, duke of Buckingham, by Felton, it was proposed in the privy council to put the assassin to the rack, in order to discover his accomplices, the judges being consulted, declared unanimously that no such proceeding was allowable by the laws of England.”
DUKER, CARL ANDREAS (1670–1752), German classical scholar and jurist, was born at Unna in Westphalia. He studied at the university of Franeker under Jacob Perizonius. In 1700 he was appointed teacher of history and eloquence at the Herborn gymnasium, in 1704 vice-principal of the school at the Hague, and in 1716 he succeeded (with Drakenborch as colleague) to the professorship formerly held by Peter Burmann at Utrecht. After eighteen years’ tenure he resigned his post, and lived in retirement at Ysselstein and Vianen. His health finally broke down under excessive study, and he died, almost blind, at the house of a relative in Meiderich near Duisburg, on the 5th of November 1752. His chief classical works were editions of Florus (1722) and Thucydides (1731, considered his best). He brought out the 2nd edition of Perizonius’s Origines Babylonicae et Aegyptiacae (1736) and his commentary on Pomponius Mela (1736–1737). Duker was also an authority on ancient law, and published Opuscula varia de latinitate veterum jurisconsultorum (1711), and a revision of the Leges Atticae of S. Petit (1741).
See C. Saxe, Onomasticon litterarium, vi. 267; articles in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie and in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyklopadie.
DUKERIES, THE, a name given to a district in the N.W. of Nottinghamshire, England; included within the ancient Sherwood Forest (q.v.). The name is taken from the existence of several adjacent demesnes of noblemen, and the character of the Forest is to some extent preserved here. On the north is the Sheffield-Retford branch of the Great Central railway, serving the town of Worksop, connecting at Retford with the Great Northern railway, while on the south the Great Central railway serves the small market town of Ollerton, and connects with the Great Northern at Dukeries Junction. The following demesnes are comprised in the district. Worksop Manor formerly belonged to the dukes of Norfolk. Welbeck Abbey is the seat of the dukes of Portland, to whom it came from the Cavendish family (dukes of Newcastle); the mansion is mainly classic in style, dating from the early 17th century, but with many subsequent additions; the fifth duke of Portland (d. 1879) built the curious series of subterranean corridors and chambers beneath the grounds. Clumber House, the seat of the dukes of Newcastle, is beautifully placed above a lake in a fine park. Thoresby House is the seat of the earls Manvers, to whom it came on the extinction of the dukedom of Kingston; part of this demesne is a splendid tract of wild woodland.
DUKES, LEOPOLD (1810–1891), Hungarian critic of Jewish literature. He spent about twenty years in England, and from his researches in the Bodleian library and the British Museum (which contain two of the most valuable Hebrew libraries in the world) Dukes was able to complete the work of Zunz (q.v.). The most popular work of Dukes was his Rabbinische Blumenlese (1844), in which he collected the rabbinic proverbs and illustrated them from the gnomic literatures of other peoples. Dukes made many contributions to philology, but his best work was connected with the medieval Hebrew poetry, especially Ibn Gabirol. (I. A.)
DUKINFIELD, a municipal borough of Cheshire, England, within the parliamentary borough of Stalybridge, 6 m. E. of
- ↑ So Ego Haroldus dux, Ego Tostinus dux, in a charter of Edward the Confessor (1060), Hist. MSS. Comm. 12th rep. app. pt. ix. p. 581.
