I've reached the end of my original Of Wimseys and Wellesleys series on titles and forms of address in the British aristocracy, but thought I'd continue to blog about related topics as they occur to me and I have time.
Today I'm going to talk about entailed property, which almost any lord or duke will have as part of his inheritance. Though it's not limited to men with titles, as fans of Pride & Prejudice well know. I haven't made a careful study of how entails work, so I'm open to correction, but here's my understanding:
Entails were designed as a way to keep a family's real property in one piece down through the generations by tying it to each generation's senior legitimate male representative. In a sense, a lord or duke doesn't own his entailed lands so much as hold them in trust for his son, grandson, and so on after him. He can't sell entailed land, and he can't bequeath it outside the line of succession.
If entailed land brings in a profit, through rents, farming, mining, or whatever, that money does belong to the current possessor (we'll call him Lord Stark, because I've got Game of Thrones on my brain). He can spend it or save it as he chooses. If he has a large family, he'd be prudent to set some of his income aside to help provide for his daughters and younger sons.
It's only entailed property that has to go to the firstborn legitimate son. Lord Stark, assuming he's of sufficient importance, probably owns a lot more than just his entailed estate with the family castle on it. He has money that he's inherited or earned from his land and investments, and he has non-entailed real estate he's inherited or bought down through the years. He can leave that property to anybody, pretty much, related or not, just as you or I can will our estates as we wish.
The system worked well enough when there was a straight line of succession and the family maintained enough wealth to provide for daughters and younger children. But, as Pride and Prejudice teaches us, that was by no means always the case. Entails could impoverish daughters and enrich distant cousins. They could make families land rich and cash poor, up to their ears in debt but unable to clear the slate by selling their land. All of which was terrible for the families...but a boon for writers in search of conflict.
Showing posts with label inheritance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inheritance. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Of Wimseys and Wellesleys: No Title for You!
Today I'm going to focus on the critical role of legitimacy in determining who can and can't inherit a title.
Legitimacy in this case cannot be conferred retroactively, and is based on one's parents' marital status at one's birth, not conception. If a duke marries his pregnant mistress as she's going into labor, the child (if a son!) can inherit as long as the vicar completes the ceremony before the birth. If they marry when the infant is a few hours old, that baby is out of luck. This is one of the most common fictional errors with respect to titles and inheritance--a peer legitimizing a bastard son or grandson. Couldn't happen. The law made no provision for it.
A case in point is Wellington's oldest brother Richard. As a young man, he took up with a French actress, with whom he had five children...and only afterward married her. The fact that he eventually married their mother did nothing whatsoever to confer legitimacy upon those children. It probably made them more socially acceptable--both of the daughters made reasonably good marriages, one to a baron, the other first to a baronet and second to the younger son of a duke. But there was no way the eldest son could inherit his father's titles. Once illegitimate, always illegitimate.
Richard Wellesley held two titles: that of Earl of Mornington, which he'd inherited from his father, and Marquess Wellesley, granted for his services as Governor-General of India at the end of the 18th century. Upon his death, the latter title became extinct, since he had no legitimate sons to pass it on to. But since the Mornington title came from his father, it did not die out but went to Richard's brother, William, second oldest of the family, and then to his son and grandson. At that point, in 1863, William's direct male line died out, and the earldom passed to the descendants of the third Wellesley brother, Wellington himself. And there it remains to this day--as mentioned a few weeks ago, the eldest son of the eldest son of the present Duke of Wellington uses Earl of Mornington as his courtesy title.
Legitimacy in this case cannot be conferred retroactively, and is based on one's parents' marital status at one's birth, not conception. If a duke marries his pregnant mistress as she's going into labor, the child (if a son!) can inherit as long as the vicar completes the ceremony before the birth. If they marry when the infant is a few hours old, that baby is out of luck. This is one of the most common fictional errors with respect to titles and inheritance--a peer legitimizing a bastard son or grandson. Couldn't happen. The law made no provision for it.
A case in point is Wellington's oldest brother Richard. As a young man, he took up with a French actress, with whom he had five children...and only afterward married her. The fact that he eventually married their mother did nothing whatsoever to confer legitimacy upon those children. It probably made them more socially acceptable--both of the daughters made reasonably good marriages, one to a baron, the other first to a baronet and second to the younger son of a duke. But there was no way the eldest son could inherit his father's titles. Once illegitimate, always illegitimate.
Richard Wellesley held two titles: that of Earl of Mornington, which he'd inherited from his father, and Marquess Wellesley, granted for his services as Governor-General of India at the end of the 18th century. Upon his death, the latter title became extinct, since he had no legitimate sons to pass it on to. But since the Mornington title came from his father, it did not die out but went to Richard's brother, William, second oldest of the family, and then to his son and grandson. At that point, in 1863, William's direct male line died out, and the earldom passed to the descendants of the third Wellesley brother, Wellington himself. And there it remains to this day--as mentioned a few weeks ago, the eldest son of the eldest son of the present Duke of Wellington uses Earl of Mornington as his courtesy title.
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