the utter absence of meaning now attaching to territorial titles. There is a Duke of Devonshire and an Earl of Devon, as there is a Duke of Buckingham and an Earl of Buckinghamshire. Titles of this sort could not obviously have co-existed while earls and dukes had authority over the counties from which they were called. It may be observed that the dukes of Devonshire, though they can show some four centuries of descent, are of a quite modern nobility compared with the Courtnays, whose chief bears the humbler title of Earl of Devon. The earl indeed represents an imperial line.
The Duke of Marlborough has precedence next after the Duke of Devonshire. It does not clearly appear for what reason Lord Churchill chose the title of Earl of Marlborough when offered a couple of steps in the peerage by William III. Charles I. had previously ennobled an eminent lawyer by the style of Baron Ley, of Ley, Co. Devon, and (in the year following, 1626) Earl of Marlborough. But the Churchills appear to have been in no wise connected with this family, whose title had become extinct before the Revolution.
Among other dukedoms, that of Portland is worth noting. The founder of the English branch of the Bentincks was made Earl of Portland by the Dutch master he served so well; and the earl's son was made a duke by George I. It is sad (or pleasing, as the reader chooses) to think that their descendants and successors forgot their Whiggism, and that one of them became a Tory prime minister of the most pronounced type. The present duke, as everybody knows, is a pillar of the Ottoman cause, and has relieved the wants of the Turks with a munificence altogether princely.
Possibly it is a tendency of ducal families to become Tory, however Whig may have been their beginnings. Certainly one cannot forget that his Grace of Manchester, albeit an honored member of the Conservative party, does actually descend from one of "the five[1] members" whom Charles I. so intensely longed to hang.
"Duke of Newcastle," again, has been the style and title of three very different politicians in three successive centuries. He of the Cavendish line, better known as the "Marquis," was governor of Charles II. when that hopeful scion of royalty was called Prince of Wales; and there is a most pathetic letter extant from the little Royal Highness to his governor, begging that he may be excused taking more physic. Whether the marquis complied with the petition deponent knoweth not. Mr. Carlyle has described Montrose as the "hero-cavalier" of his day, but the famous Marquis of Newcastle was an equally noble embodiment of the best qualities to be found in the Royalist party. Abrupt in deed is the descent, in the moral scale, from the Cavalier to the Whig Newcastle, from the chivalrous servant of the Stuarts to that curious politician who may be said to have been not a jobber but jobbery itself. The late Duke of Newcastle was, of course, of the same family as George II.'s remarkable minister, but a man of an altogether different stamp—one of those thoughtful, honorable statesmen, whose one fault is over-caution—a peculiar product of our Parliamentary life. The careers of the two dukes had, however, one circumstance in common. The one and the other managed to be politically associated with the most extraordinary character of the day. The name of the one Newcastle is not more closely bound up with that of Chatham than that of the other is bound up with the name of Mr. Gladstone.
The Northumberland title is suggestive of Harry Hotspur, and Otterbourne and Shrewsbury fights. But the Percies were more than once dispossessed of their earldom, which was held for a short time during the period of the Roses by a Neville, brother of the "kingmaker," Warwick. In the next century, John Dudley, who already enjoyed the old title of the Nevilles, being Earl of Warwick, further obtained of Edward VI.'s government a grant of the Percy estates (once more forfeited to the crown) and the title of Duke of Northumberland. Lord Guildford Dudley, husband of the Lady Jane, was his fourth son. The Percies soon recovered their old title and lands, but the male line, in which alone the former descended, became extinct in Charles II.'s time, when the king took an early opportunity of making one of his natural children Duke of Northumberland. The youth selected for the honor was one of his Majesty's three sons by Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, the other two being made Dukes of Southampton and Grafton respectively. He of Grafton alone counts a descendant at the present day.
The actual Duke of Northumberland is a Smithson, but represents the house of Percy in the female line.
- ↑ We commonly speak of "the five members," forgetful that those champions (and well-nigh martyrs) of English liberty were six in number. There were, in truth, five members of the House of Commons and one peer, Lord Kimbolton, whom the king wished to arrest. Lord Kimbolton was ancestor of the Dukes of Manchester.
