Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2022 February 3

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

February 3

British aristocracy vs Continental nobility

How did the British aristocracy (peers and their families) compared to continental nobility (either the reigning dukes and princes or the mediatized nobility with no power)? For example, would a member of the Howard or Berkeley family whose lines stretches back 900 years and whose family heads have have titles of earls and dukes for hundreds of years be considered of equal rank to a non-reigning member of the noble family of County of Neipperg post German mediatisation. 128.193.154.158 (talk) 16:12, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Generally speaking, there is a similarity in ranking between, say, various countries titles of nobility, for example a British Duke is equivalent to a French Duc is equivalent to a German Herzog, while a British Earl is equivalent to a French Comte is equivalent to a German Graf, etc. However, there are not always clean parallels. The British system has always been simpler; there are many continental ranks that don't have clean equivalents in the British one (historically, for example, the rank of marquess was thought of a weird by the Medieval English, with Henry IV quipping "the name of marquess is a strange name in this realm" when asked to grant the title to someone). Even in Britain, there are different systems; Scotland (for example) doesn't have Barons, they have Lords of Parliament. They also traditionally didn't have Earls, they had Mormaers; which often get aligned to Earls in the English system, but were ranked more equivalently to Dukes within Scotland when it had an independent monarchy. You also have situations, like in German, which just had more finer gradations of titles; you've got Herzog, but also Erzherzog, you've not only got Grafs, but you also have freigraf and landgraf and burggraf and markgraf and pfalzgraf. You've got the rank furst, which has no English equivalent at all (usually translated a "Prince", but entirely distinct from "Prinz", which is the equivalent of the English "Prince"), and you've got kurfurst. And that doesn't even get into the Slavic titles of places like Russia and Poland (like Boyar and Voivode) that have no common history with the Western European ones, or Turkish ones (like Bey). The best I can recommend to get some handle on these by equivalent rank is to check out Imperial, royal and noble ranks, especially the infobox on the right, which seems to delineate similar titles into their own boxes. There's also a section of that article titled "Corresponding titles of nobility between languages" that may be helpful. --Jayron32 17:23, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I understand the parallels in ranks across languages but what was the social understanding of this and with the families of British peers. For example, was the daughter of a British duke like the Duke of Norfolk (the oldest non-royal Dukedom) equal to the daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Altenburg (a sovereign duke of the German Empire) or the daughter of Duke of Croÿ (a non-reigning duke). Were they considered equal in the marriage market? 128.193.154.158 (talk) 17:57, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

It sort-of depends on which perspective we're taking. morganatic marriage is not a concept in the British Isles, who have always been a bit less precious about these things. Thus, there was never a problem there of people marrying "above" or "below" their rank. As noted in that article, in German speaking Europe, they were a bit more strict about it. I don't have any more direct information on this thing, but perhaps the morganatic marriage article will have some leads you can follow through its references. --Jayron32 18:44, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I did find this article which may be relevant, at least tangentially, to your question. --Jayron32 18:49, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Another possible thread would be to look for examples of British non-royal peers marrying continental nobility. If you take, for example, List of dukes in the peerages of Britain and Ireland, it's not really a large list; maybe a few hundred throughout history, and one can look for actual examples. In my memory, I can't think of a time when a non-Royal British duke ever married someone outside the British isles (unlike Kings and their progeny, who were much more cosmopolitan in their marriage options). Like, from your example of the Duke of Norfolk, literally every one of them married an Englishwoman. --Jayron32 18:56, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

The lack of particularity over bloodlines by the British aristocracy is illustrated by the fad for marrying fabulously wealthy American heiresses to stave off financial ruin, known as "million dollar duchesses" (owning huge areas of British farmland ceased to be profitable once the American prairies had been ploughed-up). Our List of American heiresses includes quiet a few examples. Alansplodge (talk) 21:33, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

For me at least, Jayron's very long link resolves to a much shorter one [1]. —Tamfang (talk) 03:48, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

I believe Prince Charles, Prince of Wales would be translated as Prinz Karl, Fürst von Wallis. —Tamfang (talk) 03:51, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

That is correct. English does not distinguish between "Prince as a ruler of a Principality" and "Prince as a member of the Royal family" whereas German treats those as different concepts. --Jayron32 13:20, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Related to a social aspect, if not exactly about marriage: Both the UK and Germany have/had an Order of precedence or a ranking of the different levels of royalty and nobility (within one system) in relation to each other. This was actually regularly used for things like lining people up to process into the dining room at a dinner party (top ranks go first). Internationally there was also a Precedence among European monarchies. However, I’m drawing a blank on finding an order of precedence that specified places for nobility from another system – for example if you have a Herzog to dinner, do you seat him above the Duke or not. This late Victorian discussion hints (similar to the other answers here) that perhaps this wasn’t something that was easily codified. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 16:45, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

This likely may have been something that was established on an ad hoc basis and negotiated "behind the scenes". There is likely someone in a household who would be in charge of protocol and would have established explicitly, perhaps through consultation with all parties involved, what the expectations would be. I believe (but am not 100% sure) that this would fall under the duties of a Chamberlain. --Jayron32 16:52, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

There's an anecdote about a Crown Prince of Prussia (iirc) objecting to being seated below the King of Hawaii. The host, the Prince of Wales, remarked, "Either he's a King or he's a common-or-garden n——r and doesn't belong here at all." —Tamfang (talk) 02:55, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

It's a good story, but this reddit post reply says that it fist appeared in writing in 1931, and that although the Crown Prince of Germany (and Prussia) did meet the Prince of Wales and King Kalākaua in London in July 1881, they were not at events which required a formal order of precedence and contemporary press reports suggest that they treated each other cordially. Additionally, Edward seems to have held rather enlightened views on race, stating in India in 1875 that "because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute" and also complained about Indians being described with the N-word. Alansplodge (talk) 09:25, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Interesting, this apocryphal story seems to have snuck into our article on Kalākaua's 1881 world tour. Removed now. Also the German Crown Prince is the future Frederick III, German Emperor not Wilhelm II. Also to answer the OP's question, Princess Marie Amelie of Baden married the Duke of Hamilton and her daughter Lady Mary Victoria Douglas-Hamilton married the Prince of Monaco, so rare but it has happened. KAVEBEAR (talk) 09:00, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Ah yes, Frederick III, quite so. This makes the story even more unlikely because Frederick was also a liberal who was outspoken in the defence of the German Jewish community and had pledged not to make war when he came to the throne. Alansplodge (talk) 15:31, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't know about Victorian Britain, but in the continent the mediatized German nobility (such as the Neipperg) were considered equal to sovereigns. The British dukes had no such status. If a king married a Countess of Neipperg, the marriage was considered equal and their offspring would inherit the throne. If a king married a British countess or a Princess of Bagration (a member of the royal house that can be traced to the late antiquity, and kings from times immemorial), the marriage was considered morganatic and their offspring would be excluded from succession. See Princess Tatiana Constantinovna of Russia and Catherine Dolgorukova (a patrilineal descendent of Rurik through Yaroslav the Wise) for some examples. As a result of such arrangements, almost all European royalty was ethnically German by 1914. Ghirla^-трёп- 11:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

I wouldn't say ethnically German. They had ancestral connections to German nobility. They were ethnically whatever they self-identified as; Elizabeth II has a lot of German ancestry, but she is ethnically English or British. As noted at Ethnic group, "An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups." (bold mine) Ancestry is one possible source of ethnic identification, but it is not exclusively or mandatorily so. --Jayron32 13:16, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

To return to the original question: "How did the British aristocracy (peers and their families) compare to continental nobility (either the reigning dukes and princes, or the mediatized nobility with no power)?" My immediate thought was, along with C. E. M. Joad, "it depends on what you mean by power." In my draft article (will I ever finish it?) Draft:Knights for the body, I have been attempting (among other issues) to define/discover when the baronial basis of English aristocracy—dating back to medieval manorial courts etc.,—relinquished its actual justicial power in the shires, and deferred to an increasingly centralised system where the monarch and his/her central courts came to be seen as the final arbiter of justice in the realm. Who was a knight? And who could make a knight? It's a huge and unwieldy topic, but (I think) by around the time of Henry VIII and certainly James I (r. 1603-1625) the influence/ability of individual members of the aristocracy to dispense arbitrary justice in their own lands was waning fast; and by the time of English Civil Wars it had almost disappeared. It was only with Charles I (r. 1625-1649) that the monarchy came to provide a standing army at its own expense; and the final extinction of English/British feudal power came with the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 under Charles II (r. 1660-1685).

So, apart from their right to a seat in the House of Lords (and thus a say in making the laws of the country), the English (perhaps less the Scots and Irish) aristocracy had effectively relinquished its power by the middle of the 17th century. (This is a hot topic for professional historians, obviously.) Their place in dispensing power (partly as e.g. circuit judges and especially local magistrates, Justices of the peace) was increasingly taken by the 'lesser nobility', the descendants of the Esquires and Knights of the Body of the royal household/royal affinity, the landed gentry, the 'Squirearchy'.

In contrast, I suspect, the absolute (or at least relative) power of the rulers (and their less powerful relatives - cf. the Almanach de Gotha) of the German states continued until at least the mediatisation c. 1800 described above; the revolutions of 1848 began the slow process of democratization; and it wasn't until the unification of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire after 1870 as modern Germany that its aristocracy underwent significant change. I would go so far as to say that it wasn't until the end of the First World War and the collapse of the Russian, Austrian and German empires that the aristocracies of Britain and Germany found themselves on an equally dispossessed footing. MinorProphet (talk) 05:08, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Mr Lloyd George and his Guardians

In the book Fifty Caricatures by Max Beerbohm (William Heinemann, London, 1913) is one intituled "Mr Lloyd George and his Guardians". You can see a copy here. I recognise Rufus Isaacs reading an order paper to Lloyd George's left, but cannot place the other chap. Can anyone help identify him? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 18:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

It's Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman, see David Lloyd George: The architect of change, 1863-1912 (p. 226). I suspect that the National Insurance Act 1911 must be the context. Alansplodge (talk) 21:18, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

@Alansplodge: Ah thank you - I thought I'd seen it before. It's actually facing page 227, not on page 226) DuncanHill (talk) 21:39, 3 February 2022 (UTC)