"Peerage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to settle there, will not feel that they are leaving home. I can only hope that the Canadians and Anzacs think as well of us as we do of them. We do not like to praise our friends in their hearing, so I will say no more than this: I am told that a new kind of peerage, very haughty and very self-important, has arisen in South London. Its members are those house-holders who have been privileged to have Anzac soldiers billeted on them. It is private ties of this kind, invisible to the constitutional lawyer ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... obliged to make a good show.—Again, you know the difficulties of the political situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The King's idea—and France does him scant justice—is to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need years—and millions.—Noblesse oblige. The Duc de Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, does not repudiate his ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... a delicate Louis XVI. desk, on which lay a Bible, a Peerage, a telephone-book, a telephone, a lamp and much distinguished stationery. Between the tasselled folds of plushy curtains that pleated themselves with the grandeur of painted curtains in a theatre, he glanced out at the lights of Devonshire Square, from which not a sound came. Then ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... is secur'd: if he be wrongfully accus'd, he has his action of slander; and 'tis at the poet's peril if he transgress the law. But they will tell us that all kind of satire, tho' never so well deserv'd by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into contempt. Is then the peerage of England anything dishonored, when a peer suffers for his treason? If he be libel'd or any way defam'd, he has his scandalum magnatum[20] to punish the offender. They who use this kind of argument seem ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... realised by the merchants of the Staple; they were often in a position to aid the exchequer of the mother-country; and one of them named Fermour was, from some patriotic act in money-matters, raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Pomfret. We are told that a great revenue was derived to the crown from the customs' duty here levied on wool; that which passed into the Netherlands alone amounting to 50,000 crowns per annum—an enormous sum in those days. Modern Vandalism has done for this building ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... become one of the club. He played at whist, and only smiled, after his sort, when his partner revoked, and he lost like a gentleman. His talk was brisk, and hard, and caustic—that of a Philistine who had seen the world and knew it. He had the Peerage by rote, and knew something out-of-the-way, amusing or damnable about every person of note you could name; and his shrewd gossip had a bouquet its own, and a fine cynical flavour, which secretly awed and delighted the young fellows. ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... no longer. Hereditary tenures are established in all civilised countries, and are accompanied in most with hereditary authority. Sir William Temple considers our constitution as defective, that there is not an unalienable estate in land connected with a peerage[1247]; and Lord Bacon mentions as a proof that the Turks are Barbarians, their want of Stirpes, as he calls them, or hereditary rank[1248]. Do not let your mind, when it is freed from the supposed necessity of a rigorous entail, be entangled with contrary objections, and ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... British and Armoric knights; And all who since, baptized or infidel, Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, Damasco, or Marocco or Trebisond, Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, When Charlemain with all his peerage ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... equal to Swift's celebrated remark on William III.'s motto—Recepit, non rapuit—"that the receiver was as bad as the thief." Very dry and pithy too was Clerk's legal opinion given to a claimant of the Annandale peerage, who, when pressing the employment of some obvious forgeries, was warned that if he persevered, nae doot he might be a peer, but it would be a peer ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... of industry have generally a touch of greatness in them and no nobleman of the peerage clings more to his tinsel than do nature's noblemen to simplicity of life. Mr. Brassey with his millions never could be induced to increase his establishment his pride and pleasure were in the guidance of industry and the accomplishment of great works. But in the hands of the heirs of these men colossal ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... has been a wonderful work doing here; and it is thought that the crown will be taken off her head by a strong handling of the Parliament; and really, when I think of the bishops sitting high in the peerage, like owls and rooks in the bartisans of an old tower, I have my fears that they can bode her no good. I have seen them in the House of Lords, clothed in their idolatrous robes; and when I looked at them so proudly placed at the right hand of the king's throne, and ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... Kellie—to whom Miss Anne Gordon was married in the year 1771. A younger brother, named Methven, ten years later married Joanna, a sister of Miss Gordon. It was never contemplated that these two brothers would ever come near to the peerage of their family—there being at one time seventeen persons between them and the family titles; but in the year 1797 the baronet of Cambo became Earl of Kellie, and two years later the title came ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... battlements. She based upon his immovable confidence in respect to it an inquiry into the structure of English society, and she made him tell her what a lord was, and a commoner, and how the royal family differed from both. She asked him how he came to be a lord, and when he said that it was a peerage of George the Third's creation, she remembered that George III. was the one we took up arms against. She found that Lord Lioncourt knew of our revolution generally, but was ignorant of such particulars as the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Surrender ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... person; and will even concede that the thought of her becoming my kinswoman rouses in me an inevitable distaste, no less attributable to the discord of her features than to the source of her eligibility to disfigure the peerage—that being her father's lucrative transactions in Pork, which I find indigestible in ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... blood alone The sine qua non for a flyer? The breed of his dam is a myth unknown, And we've doubts respecting his sire. Yet few (if any) those proud names are, On the pages of peerage or stud, In whose 'scutcheon lurks no sinister bar, No taint ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... by this time as angry against the Pretender as any of her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she not only brought back my lord to the Church of England, but procured the English peerage for him, which the junior branch of our family at present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would not rest until her husband slept at Lambeth, my papa used laughing to say. However, the bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected a great monument over him; ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to perpetrate a fraud. If a French novel describe two or three swindlers, assuming the garb of members of the old Parliament of Paris in execution of their design, is this an attack on the Parliament of Paris? Is the "Beaux' Stratagem" an attack on our army and peerage? The argument, however, may be retorted; for had a Frenchman been the author of the story, it is more than probable that he would have introduced some attack upon the Inquisition, and quite certain that the characters brought forward would have deviated from the strict propriety they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... saying: 'Oh, but you're as bad as that sort of person who can't be made to realise that the oldest peerage in Ireland counts for nothing in comparison with an oil-king's millions and being able to entertain the right set.... And besides, really Mr McKeith, there's no difference at all between us. You talk such a lot about YOUR grandfather ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... of his course. England was full of Constitutionality and Freethinking; Tolands, Collinses, Wollastons, Bolingbrokes, still living; very free indeed. England, one is astonished to see, has its royal-republican ways of doing; something Roman in it, from Peerage down to Plebs; strange and curious to the eye of M. de Voltaire. Sciences flourishing; Newton still alive, white with fourscore years, the venerable hoary man; Locke's Gospel of Common Sense in full vogue, or even done into verse, by incomparable Mr. Pope, for the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... accession of James VII. Claverhouse was raised to the peerage, by the title of Lord Viscount Dundee. He was major-general, and second in command of the royal forces, when the Prince of Orange landed, and earnestly entreated King James to be allowed to march against him, offering to stake his head on the successful result of the enterprize. There is ...
— Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers and Other Poems • W.E. Aytoun
... but there is nothing remarkable in the account of Watt's character; and it is an absurd piece of French impertinence in Arago to say, that England has not yet learnt to appreciate men like Watt, because he was not made a peer; which, were our peerage an institution like that of France, would have ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... should be free to declare, that if it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever my dislikes may be, my fears are not upon that quarter. The question, on the influence of a Court, and of a Peerage, is not, which of the two dangers is the most eligible, but which is the most imminent. He is but a poor observer, who has not seen, that the generality of Peers, far from supporting themselves in a state of independent greatness, are but too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... of the House of Coombe was not a title to be found in Burke or Debrett. It was a fine irony of the Head's own and having been accepted by his acquaintances was not infrequently used by them in their light moments in the same spirit. The peerage recorded him as a Marquis and ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "Justice will no doubt be done; but the question does not lie between you and me, but between me and Alured. It is, as I said, a peerage question—and will be decided by the peers. Incidentally, that enquiry will prove what is your position and rank, as well as what may or may not be ours. Any further points depend upon my father's will, ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could have got together so brilliant and select an assembly. There were only twenty, but every man was a man of note. Politics were represented by the Home Secretary, Sir Philip Roden, and the First Lord of the Treasury; the peerage by the Duke of Leicester and the Earl of Lathon. There were two judges, and a half a dozen Q.C.'s, the most popular novelist of the day, and the most renowned physician. A prince might have entertained such a company ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... concessions in favour of themselves by bringing the process of legislation to a stand: the sovereign, in that case, must either submit to the terms of the refractory nobles, or by prerogative create a new peerage from the plebean ranks. Such, on a minute scale and in a simple form, was the course adopted by the king in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... instance Lords Fingal and Kenmare, should be sought. The legal attainments of the Irish Chancellor, the Earl of Clare, and the parliamentary and commercial connections of the Speaker, Foster, entitle their opinions to great weight. Foster may perhaps be won over by the offer of an English peerage. The Irish Bar, as also Lords Shannon and Ely, will probably oppose a Union. Some persons will object to the admission of Catholics even to the United Parliament, though that measure cannot do harm. The Scottish Catholics should have the same privileges accorded ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... number of hours for the sale of drink. In 1873 he relinquished the home secretaryship, at Gladstone's request, to become lord president of the council, and was almost simultaneously raised to the peerage as Baron Aberdare. The defeat of the Liberal government in the following year terminated Lord Aberdare's official political life, and he subsequently devoted himself to social, educational and economic questions. In 1876 he was elected F.R.S.; from 1878 to 1892 he was president of the Royal Historical ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... take the trouble to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I favoured my comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told him ours was the greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, that we were enormously wealthy, related to all the peerage descended from the ancient kings, &c.; and, to my surprise, in the course of our conversation, I found that my interlocutor knew a great deal more about Ireland than I did. When, for instance, I spoke of ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... time was a man whom I will call MacLean. That was not his name, but it will do as well as if it were. MacLean belonged to an old Scottish family, and had brought a suit before the House of Lords in which he claimed a certain peerage to which great estates and many titles were attached. He failed through being unable to prove the marriage of one of his ancestors. We had made a small strike of gold on one of the terraces of the Blyde River, but this was ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... their expense; to be kind, simple, unpretending, because these qualities are more available than haughtiness; to be specimens of perfect manhood;—all these advantages in consequence of their position. If the peerage were a mere name, it would be nothing to envy; but it is so much more than a name; it enables men to be really so superior. The poor, the lower classes, might bear this well enough; but the classes that come next to the nobility,—the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... explanation are here necessary. The Fongereues family re-entered France with the allied armies, and immediately obtained the favor of the king. The old Marquis was elevated to the peerage, and Magdalena felt that her ambitious projects were on the eve of fulfilment. The Vicomte de Talizac easily obtained proof of the death of Simon Fougere; his wife and children had disappeared, and probably ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... and blood could wait, to infer two classes of nebulae; one that were stars; and another that were not stars, nor ever were meant to be stars. Yet that was premature: he found at last, that, though not raised to the peerage of stars, finally they would be so: they were the matter of stars; and by gradual condensation would become suns, whose atmosphere, by a similar process of condensing, would become planets, capable of brilliant literati and philosophers, in several ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... looked upon as the oracle of the peerage in the science of political economy, accuses railroads of injuring shipping, and it is certainly true that the most perfect means of attaining an object must always limit the use of a less perfect means. But railways can only injure shipping by drawing from it articles ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... of the English peerage, records of titled families, reports of the Court of Chancery in hundreds of testamentary cases, scrap-books full of newspaper clippings concerning American claimants to British fortunes, lists of family estates in ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... in 1709, at Hagley, in Worcestershire. He was educated at Eton and at Christchurch, Oxford, entered Parliament, became a Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1757 he withdrew from politics, was raised to the peerage, and spent the last eighteen years of his life in lettered ease. In 1760 Lord Lyttelton first published these "Dialogues of the Dead," which were revised for a fourth edition in 1765, and in 1767 he published in four volumes ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... much difference of opinion among the genealogists and family historians regarding Alexander's two wives. Both Edmonston in his Baronagium Genealogicum, and Douglas in his Peerage say that Alexander's first wife was Agnes, sixth daughter of Colin, first Earl of Argyll. This we shall prove to be absolutely impossible within the ordinary course of the laws of nature. Colin, ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... closely resembling the professionals in a hunt or cricket club. The circle was a very exclusive one, however; the number limited to thirty-one members, "one black ball excluding;" and it used to be remarked, that it was easier to get into the Peerage or the Privy Council than ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... K—, dining at Provost S—'s, and being the only peer present, one of the company gave a toast, "The Duke of Buccleugh." So the peerage went round till it came to Lord K—, who said he would give them a peer, which, although not toasted, was of more use than the whole. His lordship gave "The Pier of Leith."—Chambers's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... Lambton after Lambton had lived and reigned like a petty prince. There John George was born in August 1792. His father had been a Whig, a consistent friend of Charles James {6} Fox, at a time when opposition to the government, owing to the wars with France, meant social ostracism; and he had refused a peerage. The son had enjoyed the usual advantages of the young Englishman in his position. He had been educated at Eton and at the university of Cambridge. Three years in a crack cavalry regiment at a time when all England ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... name announced, "Lord Colquhoun," a distinguished judge who had lately been raised to the peerage, and whom we often met at dinners; then "Miss Rowena Colquhoun;" and then, in the midst, we fancied, of an unusual stir at the entrance door—"Miss Francesca Van Buren Monroe." I involuntarily touched the Reverend Ronald's shoulder in my astonishment, while Salemina lifted her tortoiseshell ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... near and far, At last he found an ancient tar Who served with RODNEY and his crew Against the French in 'Eighty-two, (That gained the peerage). He gave him fifty pounds a year, His rum, his baccy, and his beer; And had a comfortable den Rigged up in what, by ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... horse-riding nomads. The orthodox Duke of Sung, dressed in his little brief authority as Protector, had the temerity to "send for" the ruler of Ts'u to attend his first durbar. (It must be remembered that the "king" in his own dominions was only "viscount" in the orthodox peerage of ruling princes.) The result was that the King unceremoniously took his would-be protector into custody at the durbar, and put in a claim to be Protector himself. During the military operations connected with this political manoeuvre, the Duke of Sung was guilty ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... impossible. When I told him we must be very careful, for I was afraid of what might happen, he made fun of my fears, and encouraged me. He knew that they'd never dare to punish him; he's allied to half the peerage and he did not ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... cast from his station by the changes and misfortunes of the day—like parts of a fine building thrown down by an earthquake, and turned to viler purposes—sought the midnight road as their only means of support: nay, though there were even some names afterwards restored to the peerage, which are supposed to have been well known amongst the august body of traffickers in powder and lead: yet Wilton could not but feel grieved that any one in whom he felt an interest should be tempted ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... by this love of fairies, has blundered, in his usual way, on an absurd compromise between the real and the ideal. A conjuror is to come that very night. When explanations have gone so far, the Duke at last makes his entry. The stage directions tell us that "in the present state of the peerage it is necessary to explain that the Duke, though an ass, is a gentleman." His thoughts are the most casual on earth. He is always being reminded of something or somebody which has nothing to do with the case. As for instance, "I saw the place you're putting up . . . Mr. Smith. Very good work. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... repeatedly elected to Parliament; he was appointed legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India, in which position he acquired the knowledge that appears in his essays on Clive and Hastings; he became Secretary for War, and was elevated to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley. It was said of him at that time that he was "the only man whom England ever made a lord for ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... investigating the great world, and she was certainly posing as my informant. She affected a cynical coarseness. She developed a theory on the governance of England, beautifully frank and simple. "Give 'um all a peerage when they get twenty thousand a year," she ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... antiquity, though of no particular distinction. One Robert Pierrepont, who was born in 1584, the son of Sir Henry by Frances, sister of William, first Earl of Devonshire, was the first of the family upon whom a peerage was bestowed. He was created in 1627 Baron Pierrepont of Holme Pierrepont and Viscount Newark, and in the following year was elevated to the dignity of Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, Co. York. A zealous royalist, he was in 1643 appointed Lieutenant-General of the King's forces in ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... of the dock with a reptilian smoothness. He had persuaded a number of tradesmen and hotel-keepers that he was an English peer. He had even complained to one shopkeeper of the smallness of a wallet, as he needed something larger to hold the title-deeds relating to the peerage. In another case, a young man, staying in a house, had stolen, along with other things, his hostess's false teeth, her best dress and a great quantity of underclothing. A parcel of clothing had been recovered from a second-hand shop and was shown to the lady when in the witness-box. She took ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... reclined under the shadow of its branches, whence Linnaeus gave to the sort known as the plantain the Latin name of Musa paradisiaca. If a plant was cultivated in Eden by the grand old gardener and his wife, as Lord Tennyson democratically styled them (before his elevation to the peerage), we may fairly conclude that it possesses a ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... also one of several cousins to whom a life interest in the Stoneleigh property in Warwickshire was left, after the extinction of the earlier Leigh peerage, but he compromised his claim to the succession in his lifetime. He married a niece of Sir Montague Cholmeley of Lincolnshire. He was a man of considerable natural power, with much of the wit of his uncle, the Master of Balliol, and wrote clever epigrams and riddles, some of which, ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... as he will still be remembered long after his elevation to the peerage, first struck the public imagination by his advice to the railwaymen, who, when they asked what would happen if they persisted in striking, received the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... are to be chosen to represent the peerage of Scotland in parliament, and forty five members to sit in ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... or to sip an ice at Howell and James's. He must have whole mattresses stuffed with the blonde or raven or auburn tresses of England's fairest daughters. When the female English aristocracy read the title of People I have Met, I can fancy the whole female peerage of Willis's time in a shudder; and the melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart-stricken baroness trembling as each gets the volume, and asks of her guilty conscience, "Gracious goodness, is the monster going to show ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... however, do the young lady the justice to state that, though her future husband was no great things as a 'man,' as she afterwards discovered, he was the heir to a peerage and great wealth. Both he and she, like most of my collaborators in this world, have long since passed ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... and poured out accusations of treason against Cecil. I cannot but disbelieve this story; the evidence all goes to prove that he still regarded Cecil, among the crowd of his enemies, as at least half his friend. On May 13, Cecil was raised to the peerage, as a sign of ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Pendennis's rich memory was stored with thousands of these delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen's willing ear with unfailing eloquence. He knew the name and pedigree of everybody in the Peerage, and everybody's relations. "My dear boy," he would say, with a mournful earnestness and veracity, "you cannot begin your genealogical studies too early; I wish to Heavens you would read in Debrett every day. ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... suppose, must be my doom?" said Lord Menteith. "Yet I wish they had spared me the halter, were it but for the dignity of the peerage." ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Smythe, Esq., Farmer of the Customs to Queen Elizabeth, the younger son of an ancient Wiltshire family, and ancestor of the Viscounts Strangford; and that his eldest brother was raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount Fanshawe, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born at Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside their frogs, laces, bagwigs; and go about in English costume, or ride rising in their stirrups,—in the most headlong manner; nothing but insubordination, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... had made a splendid matrimonial alliance,—so splendid that its history was at the time known to all the aristocracy of the county, and had not been altogether forgotten by any of those who keep themselves well instructed in the details of the peerage. Griselda Grantly had married Lord Dumbello, the eldest son of the Marquis of Hartletop,—than whom no English nobleman was more puissant, if broad acres, many castles, high title, and stars and ribbons are any sign of puissance,—and she was now, herself, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... marked the course of the Pegnitz, we know as little as we know the origin of the name Nuernberg. It is true that the chronicles of later days are only too ready to furnish us with information; but the information is not always reliable. The chronicles, like our own peerage, are apt to contain too vivid efforts of imaginative fiction. The chroniclers, unharassed by facts or documents, with minds "not by geography prejudiced, or warped by history," can not unfortunately always be believed. It is, for instance, quite possible that ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... Corsair? The worst of Lord Fawn was the undoubted fact that he was not himself a great man. He could, no doubt, make his wife a peeress; but he was poor, encumbered with a host of sisters, dull as a blue-book, and possessed of little beyond his peerage to recommend him. If she could only find a peer, unmarried, with a dash of the Corsair about him! In the meantime, what was she to ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... pioneer English plant, but by negotiations as to company formations, hearings before Parliamentary committees, and particularly by distinguished visitors, including all the foremost scientific men in England, and a great many well-known members of the peerage. Edison was fortunate in being represented by a man with so much address, intimate knowledge of the subject, and powers of explanation. As one of the leading English papers said at the time, with equal humor and truth: 'There is but one Edison, and ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... scarcely L380 a-year, you will perceive that our establishment cannot have been a magnificent one; yet, I do assure you, we were more comfortable than a great many lords, and happier, I dare say, than the whole peerage ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... he was nearly thirty; in ten years he would be a middle-aged man; and, alas! for he felt in him manifold resources, sufficient were he to live for five hundred years. Must he marry Agnes? He might if she was a peeress in her own right! Or should he win a peerage for himself by some great poem, or by some great political treachery? No, no; he wanted nothing better than to live always strong and joyous in this corner of fair England; and to be always loved by girls, and to be always talked of by them about their tea-tables. Oh, for a cup of tea ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... pictures. But Valentine was warmly encouraged in taking this course by no less a person than Lady Brambledown herself, whose perverse pleasure it was to exhibit herself to society as an uncompromising Radical, a reviler of the Peerage, a teller of scandalous Royal anecdotes, and a worshipper of the memory ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... it, mind, from herself!—were not her only motives. 'But for that Cosway,' she said (I spare you the epithet which she put before your name), 'with my money and position, I might have married a needy lord, and sunned myself in my old age in the full blaze of the peerage.' Do you understand how she hated you, now? Enough of the subject! The moral of it, my dear Cosway, is to leave this place, and try what change of scene will do for you. I have time to spare; and I will go abroad with you. ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... he once was; the masses are coming up; and the wealthy and the noble are more considerate. It is a great folly and a wickedness to think that the nobility of England are weak, vicious, unfeeling, proud, and self-indulgent. Some of the noblest characters of England are to be found in the peerage—men who "fear God and work righteousness." Their homes are often centres of diffusive blessedness; and were the nobility of England what too many here suppose them, the state could not last a twelvemonth. The queen is popular, and is clearly a woman of great tact. She would do at a crisis. ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... the honour of his acquaintance. Now, I had seen my uncle cheat, but I had never imitated his example; when the man of fashion cheated, and made a jest of his earnings and my scruples—when I saw him courted, flattered, honoured, and his acts unsuspected, because his connections embraced half the peerage, the temptation grew strong, but I still resisted it. However, my father always said I was born to be a good-for-nothing, and I could not escape my destiny. And now I suddenly fell in love—you don't know what that is yet—so much the better for you. The girl ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the usual diplomatic exchange between the two governments on the subject prefacing a lengthy communication sent by Lord Grey—the new title of the British Foreign Secretary upon his promotion to the peerage—on October 10, 1916. Therein he repeated that the blacklist was promulgated in pursuance of the Trading with the Enemy Act (a war measure explained in a previous volume), and was a piece of purely municipal ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... and Italian whores, Were all made lords or lords' progenitors. Beggars and bastards by this new creation Much multiplied the peerage of the nation; Who will be all, ere one short age runs o'er, As true-born lords as those ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... handsome fortune, but it was soon run out, and he was obliged to sell his commission in the Guards. Now he lives upon the world; which as Shakespeare says, is his oyster; and he has wit and sharpness enough to open it. Moreover, he has some chance of falling into a peerage; that prospect, and his amusing qualities, added to his being the most fashionable man about town, keeps his head above water. I believe Lord Windermear, who is his ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... yielded; and the number of electors was raised to one hundred and eighty thousand, but extended only to those who paid a direct tax of two hundred francs. A bill was also passed in the Chamber of Deputies abolishing hereditary peerage, though opposed by Guizot, Thiers, and Berryer. Of course the opposition in the upper house was great, and thirty-six new peers were ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... prominent man of the peerage in the Parliament declared himself in favor of resistance. . . . I have seen at the dinners we then attended almost every idea put forward, which, soon afterwards, produced such startling effects."[4247] ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... nine tenths of what families the others may have had, that only one man in England (Lord de Ros) can at the present day prove male descent further back than the eleventh century, must appreciate the absurdity of our compatriots’ pretensions. Burke’s Peerage is acknowledged to be the most “faked” volume in the English language, but the descents it attributes are like mathematical demonstrations compared to the “trees” that members of these new ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... had been at school with Ripon's father, had given him a position in the legation at Paris; but when the Radicals overthrew Rourke's government, Ripon lost his place. And Ripon could not but think it hard that he, Geoffrey Ripon, by all right and law Earl of Brompton, Viscount Mapledurham in the peerage of Ireland, etc., etc., should that afternoon have been fined ten shillings and costs for poaching on what had ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... control over the composition of that body. The situation was much as if a modern nation were ruled by a virtual autocrat assisted by a House of Peers. The senators and their families formed a "senatorial order." So far as the Romans had such a thing as a peerage under the empire, it is to be found in the senatorial order. And as a title may now be either hereditary or conferred by the sovereign as the "fount of honour," so, under the Roman emperors, the right to belong to the senatorial order might ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... Cruchotines by talking to Eugenie of the Marquis de Froidfond, whose ancient and ruined family might be restored if the heiress would give him back his estates through marriage. Madame des Grassins rang the changes on the peerage and the title of marquise, until, mistaking Eugenie's disdainful smile for acquiescence, she went about proclaiming that the marriage with "Monsieur Cruchot" was not nearly as certain as ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Browne's early recollections, both at school and at college, had been connected with young Woodville, whom, by a few questions, he now ascertained to be the same with the owner of this fair domain. He had been raised to the peerage by the decease of his father a few months before, and, as the General learned from the landlord, the term of mourning being ended, was now taking possession of his paternal estate, in the jovial season of merry autumn, accompanied by a select party ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... had succeeded his grandfather in 1377, reaped the whirlwind of Edward's sowing, not so much in the consequences of the war as in the fruits of his peerage policy. The fourteenth century which nationalized the Commons, isolated the Lords; and the baronage shrank into the peerage. The word "peer" is not of English origin, nor has it any real English meaning. Its etymological meaning of "equal" ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... over the thorny brakes of Paris, his breathless chases as a petitioner, his attempts to win over fools; the schemes laid only to fail through the influence of some frivolous woman; the meetings with men of business who expected their capital to bring them places and a peerage, as well as large interest. Then the hopes rising in a towering wave only to break in foam on the shoal; the wonders wrought in reconciling adverse interests which, after working together for a week, fell asunder; the annoyance, a thousand times repeated, of seeing a dunce ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... crests as definitely belong to the family are ever engraved on notepaper, cards, or any new style of place cards. Several stationers maintain special departments where crests are looked up and authenticated and such families as are found in Fairbairn's Crests, Burke's Peerage, Almanche de Gotha, the Armoire General, are utilized to help in the establishment of the armorial bearing of American families. Of course, the College of Heraldry is always available where the American family can trace its ancestors to ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... that the fact that it is by a peer will bring us all crowding to his doors? You may, of course, take it as a reflection on the peerage. You may be supposed to think it such a miraculous thing that a peer should be able to write a play that you may be expected to go and see it as you would go to Barnum's to see a two-headed man ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... is a long cry from England; and letters might be forged. I've known such things to be done. Fetch me a big red volume you'll find on the third shelf from the floor, at the left of the south window. You can't miss it. It's 'Burke's Peerage.'" ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... had been raised to the peerage and Lord Crewe had succeeded him at the India Office was anything done to meet the demand of the Western-educated classes for a larger share in the administrative work of the country or to redress the very reasonable grievances ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... and appointed him one of his cabinet ministers. On the 20th of March, Monsieur de Serizy did not go to Ghent. He informed Napoleon that he remained faithful to the house of Bourbon; would not accept his peerage during the Hundred Days, and passed that period ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... of nineteen—three years ago. She got him to promise to marry her; and the parents came down, and paid her enormously to let him go. Now she's got through all that money, and she boasts she's going to marry young Dunstable before his parents know anything about it. She's going to make sure of a peerage this time. Oh, she's odious! She's greedy, she's vulgar, she's false! And of course"—the girl's eyes grew wide and scared—"there may be other things much ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... During the Revolutionary period, the property was saved from confiscation by a clever straddle. The owner stayed in France, and supported the Revolution, while the son emigrated with the Bourbons. The peerage was created just a hundred years ago by Louis XVIII, in reward for the refusal of the Panisses to follow Napoleon a second time after ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... strange pranks with the map of Europe, so it is not surprising that a strawberry, subtly bestowed in a place well adapted to the exercise of its fell skill, should be able to convulse a section of the British peerage. ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... except on the hypothesis of insanity; or to understand that there is such a thing as political morality, derive double piquancy from the profound conviction that he is an ornament to society, and from the pious aspirations which he utters with the utmost simplicity. Bubb wriggled himself into a peerage, and differed from innumerable competitors only by superior frankness. He is the fitting representative of an era from which political faith has disappeared, as Walpole is its fitting satirist. All political virtue, it is said, was confined, in Walpole's opinion, to Conway and the Marquis ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... the wrong place, and the daughters because he may be personal about them, as the time before. ERNEST is annoyed that there should be this speech at all when there is such a much better one coming, and BROCKLEHURST foresees the degradation of the peerage. All are thinking of themselves alone save CRICHTON, who knows his master's weakness, and fears he may stick in the middle. LORD LOAM, however, advances cheerfully to his doom. He sees ERNEST'S stool, and artfully stands ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie
... 1874 occurred during my second year at Oxford. The City of Oxford was contested by Harcourt, Cardwell, and the local brewer. Harcourt and Cardwell were returned; but immediately afterwards Cardwell was raised to the peerage, and a bye-election ensued. I can vividly recall the gratification which I felt when the Liberal candidate—J. D. Lewis—warmly pressed my hand, and, looking at my rosette, hoped that he might count on my vote and interest. Not for the ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... when he took away a box containing the charter, and it was not till forty years after that it was traced to its hiding-place, restored to its rightful owners, and safely deposited in the Gask charter chest. The Oliphants obtained large estates in different parts of Scotland, and were raised to the Peerage by James II., in 1450, by the title of Lord Oliphant. The fifth Lord, styled in the Gask papers "ane base and unworthy man," squandered away the large estates he inherited not only in Perthshire, but also in Forfarshire, Kincardine, Caithness, and ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... place, Harry," he said. "I'm not proud—the boys at Winchester College say I'm proud: but I'm not proud. I am simply Francis James Viscount Castlewood in the peerage of Ireland. I might have been (do you know that?) Francis James Marquis and Earl of Esmond in that of England. The late lord refused the title which was offered to him by my godfather, his late Majesty. You should know that—you ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... most graciously received by Sir Samuel Semaphore and his lady, and their lovely daughters. Oh, the most splendid women that ever were built! The youngest is now, I believe, the prime ornament of the Scottish Peerage; and I never can forget the pleasure I so frequently experienced in those days in the society of this delightful family. The same evening I returned to the Pen. On my way I fell in with three officers in white jackets, and broad—brimmed ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... slain eighteen of the enemy. At Shirramuir, when Clanranald fell, Glengarry tossed his bonnet in the air, crying in Gaelic, 'Revenge! Revenge! Revenge to- day, and mourning to-morrow.' He then led a charge, and drove the regular British troops in rout. He received a warrant of a peerage from ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... well defined as elegantly skittish; She loves a Lord as only a Republican can do; And quite the best of titles she's persuaded are the British, And well she knows the Peerage, for she reads it through ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... rescinded, could the minister advise the King to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured? If Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was the only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown from conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr. Dundas was the only important member of the administration who was deeply committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little was to be apprehended. Since he had presided ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... order in the state was the Nobility. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that this word bears on the Continent exactly the same meaning as in England. Where all the children of a nobleman are nobles, a strict class is created. An English peerage, descending only to the eldest son, is more in the nature of an office. The French noblesse in the latter years of the old monarchy comprised nearly all persons living otherwise than by their daily toil, together with the higher part of the legal profession. While ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Information, established for the purpose of bringing about a reform in the representation. But the revolutionary changes in France had quickened their ideas, and had given them a taste for stronger and more rapid measures. They now openly "resolved" that England was "a prey to an arbitrary King, a senile Peerage, a corrupt House of Commons, and a rapacious and intolerant Clergy." A third club, the Corresponding Society, was younger and more violent, with branches and affiliations all over England on the Jacobins' plan, and in active correspondence with that famous institution. The middle and lower classes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... himself for months had leaped suddenly into a sweet and passionate flame. He had seen the sun of a woman's wondrous beauty, and long followed it afar. Miriam Gale was the success of the season. It was understood that she had the entire unattached British peerage at her feet. Nevertheless, her head had touched John Arniston's shoulder to-night. He had kissed her hair. "A queen's crown of yellow gold," was what he said to himself as he walked along, the evening traffic of the Strand humming and surging about him. Because her lips had ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... two boroughs then. But the Minister was afraid, the feeling was so very strong. They offered him something in the Colonies, but your father would not hear of it—that would have been a banishment, you know. They would have given your father a peerage to make it up, but he would not accept it, and broke with the party. Except in that way—which, you know, was connected with the reputation of the family—I don't think, considering his great wealth, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... political change. As the excitement subsided, the kindly feeling, which never had been extinguished, began more palpably to revive. Before the epoch of agitation approached, we were a peaceful and a happy people. The peerage, the gentry, the yeomen, and the peasantry—all classes were bound together with the links of respect and of affection. The old hereditary attachment between the orders had not been broken. The poor man was proud of the noble, because the noble bore a name conspicuous in the annals of his country; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some renown—an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave his son a peerage. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... dictionary of their own as are clergymen, race-horses, or artists in ferro-concrete, who all, I am assured, have their own "Who's Who"? Have not the medical men their Directory, the lawyers their List, the peers their Peerage? There are books which record the names and the particulars of musicians, schoolmasters, stockbrokers, saints and bookmakers, and I dare say there is an average adjuster's almanac. A peer, a horse, dog, cat, and even a white ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... Buckhurst—afterwards Earl of Dorset and lord-treasurer—was then fifty-one years of age. A man of large culture-poet, dramatist, diplomatist-bred to the bar; afterwards elevated to the peerage; endowed with high character and strong intellect; ready with tongue and pen; handsome of person, and with a fascinating address, he was as fit a person to send on a mission of expostulation as any man to be found in England. But the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... paragraph, the phrase "belted Earl," is used advisedly. At the period of which Sir WALTER SCOTT wrote (vide any of his novels) it will be found that members of this rank of the Peerage are all spoken of as belted. For some time the fashion fell out of use. The belt was appropriately revived by the late Earl of BEACONSFIELD, and is now quite a common thing with the aristocracy. The Earl of SELBORNE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... back in his chair and his eyes twinkled. "I doubt whether it is true of Charles I.," he said; "but it certainly isn't true of his son and heir, for Charles II. used the peerage more or less as a sort of foundling hospital for ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... then ceased to blame him for the course he had pursued. Sir William Penn had already received numerous rewards and honours for the services he had rendered to his sovereign, and he had every reason to believe that he would have been raised to the peerage. His son William had, however, refused to accept any title, and he had therefore declined the honour for himself. He was now, however, at the early age of forty-nine, struck by a mortal disease, and he had begun to estimate more truly ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston
... on Lord HARTINGTON's succession to the Peerage have very much narrowed the freedom previously enjoyed by the Member for West Birmingham, and, in a corresponding degree, enlarged the sphere of his responsibilities.... The Statesman who has to act as guide and moderator at St. Stephen's will be careful, no doubt, not to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... not severe, and many men going out for a life of pleasure would find little difficulty in fulfilling them. The stumbling-block to most aspirants would be in the two first clauses, for one need only glance over the peerage to find to his astonishment how few really representatives of ancient families are possessed of good incomes. The large incomes are enjoyed by the self-made men who have been raised to the peerage of late years, but though Australians would object to a poor man, they would not have ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... having from the first determined, if possible, to obtain a good degree, I made a resolute stand against the advances of Lawless (who, in consequence of his father's having, for some reason best known to himself and the Premier, received a peerage, had now become an "honourable") and the "rowing set," amongst whom, by a sort of freemasonry of kindred souls, he had become enrolled immediately on his arrival. After several fruitless attempts to shake my determination, they pronounced ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... wanted more than a Peerage for his work; he had hoped for a position of tremendous power, but the Government made him a Lord and he went ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... attributed to the gallant conduct of the three regiments of Huguenot horse, under the command of the Marquess de Ruvigny (himself a banished Huguenot nobleman) who, in consequence of his services, was raised to the Irish peerage, under the ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... accession to the peerage, the rise of Lumley Ferrers had been less rapid and progressive than he himself could have foreseen. At first, all was sunshine before him; he had contrived to make himself useful to his party; ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... is that of the Portland peerage, in which fidelity, heroism, chivalry and romance are blended and interwoven in the annals of the noble families of England. Who that has been to Welbeck Abbey, that magnificent palace in the heart of Sherwood Forest, with its legends of Robin Hood and his merrie men, with ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... immediately, and to push in between the French ships and the shore at all hazards. "Before this time to-morrow" said he, "I shall have gained a peerage or ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... others—some fifteen in all. Even tiny Moses was said to be a portrait of some baby of distinction, born conveniently at the time. The picture was a great success. Popular taste had been cunningly measured and fitted. This ingenious interleaving of the Bible and the Peerage found a host of admirers. There were some malcontents, of course: ladies whose claims to be ranked among court beauties had been summarily passed over by the painter; for he has rather an invidious task before him who undertakes to decide who are the fifteen most beautiful of English ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... orders of nobility. In this way one speaker said he hoped to shut out those refugees from the twenty thousand French nobility, who might choose to fly to the United States. Another expected to see an equally large number of the peerage arrive from Britain, as soon as the correct principles of government ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... letter is now published for the first time. It will be found to be of very considerable historical curiosity and interest. The resignation of the Great Commoner in 1761, and his acceptance at the same time of a pension and a peerage for his family, were events which astonished his admirers as much as any thing else in his wonderful career. Even now, after the recent publication of all the letters relating to these transactions, it is difficult to put any construction on ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.01 • Various
... princess made some consultation as to who the marquis might be, the princess proposing to send for the Peerage, and the king cross-examining puss in an incredulous way which greatly puzzled him, until at last he bethought himself of exclaiming, in a fierce manner, "I've told you the truth, Mr. King, and if you won't believe me, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... made a fortune of two million pounds during the war. He has given a hundred thousand to the Prince of Wales's Fund, a hundred thousand to the Red Cross, and a hundred thousand to the party funds. Total net profit on the war, one million seven hundred thousand pounds, not counting the peerage which is now bestowed upon him, and which it must be admitted is a just reward for his ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett
... aristocracy. They ruled, and had among their number men who were gentlemen of the grand style, capable of virile passions and striking deeds, incapable, constitutionally and by training, of the prudent foresight of careful tradesmen. Lord Thormanby, who rejoiced in a brand new Union peerage and was a wealthy man, kept race horses. Sir Francis, who, except for the Union peerage, was as big a man as Lord Thormanby, kept race horses too. Lord Thormanby bought a family coach of remarkable proportions. Sir Francis ordered a duplicate of it from the same coach-builder. ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the Restoration, and, consequently, before her spiritual director could have ascended the Episcopal throne. The title of Carbery was at that time an earldom; the earl married again, arid his second countess was also a devout patroness of Taylor. Having no peerage at hand, I do not know by what mode of derivation the modern title of the nineteenth century had descended from the old one of the seventeenth. I presume that some collateral branch of the original family had succeeded to the barony when the limitations of the original ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... evil, every circumstance its law, every man his own nature; mine is not that of an angel. When peace is made, we shall see." On another occasion, on this same question of preparing the Additional Act, and with reference to the institution of an hereditary peerage, he yielded to the excursive rapidity of his mind, taking the subject by turns under different aspects, and giving unlimited vent to contradictory observations and opinions. "Hereditary peerage," said he, "is opposed to the present state of public opinion; ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... 1st January, 1892, I received an intimation that Her Majesty had been graciously pleased to bestow a peerage upon me, and the same day the Secretary of State for India offered me a further extension of my appointment as Commander-in-Chief—an offer I would gladly have accepted, as I knew it had been made with the concurrence of the Viceroy, if I could have taken even a few months' leave ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... past a jest, the whole thing," objected Miss Maitland; "and, now we are together, please tell me, if you can, either of you, who is this man? What are his means? I know 'The Peerage,' 'The Baronetage,' and 'The Landed Gentry,' but not Severne. That is ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... family distinction fascinated M. Roque, the son of an old servant. If the coronet of a count did not come, he would console himself with something else; for Frederick might get a deputyship when M. Dambreuse had been raised to the peerage, and might then be able to assist him in his commercial pursuits, and to obtain for him supplies and grants. He liked the young man personally. In short, he desired to have Frederick for a son-in-law, because for a long time past he had been smitten with this notion, which ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... through a long and complicated web of female successions. But we may be sure that in no other case can such a pedigree be proved by the kind of proof which lawyers would require to make out the title to an estate or a peerage. The actual forefathers of the modern Englishman may chance to have been, not true-born Angles or Saxons, but Britons, Scots, in later days Frenchmen, Flemings, men of any other nation who learned to speak English and took to themselves ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... grew angry, I could not help it, and told him I thought it was shameful to make money wrongfully out of the country at such a time, especially when he did not want it at all. Then he was furious and answered that he did want it, to support the peerage which he was going to get. He said also," she added slowly, "that I was 'an ignorant, interfering vixen,' yes, that is what he called me, a vixen, who had always been a disappointment to him and thwarted his plans. 'However,' he went on, 'as you think so little of my hard-earned money, I'll ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... who paid a small rental, or possessed property of a certain annual value. But with regard to the nature of the Upper House, it was much more difficult to come to a decision. Wentworth proposed that the Queen should establish a colonial peerage to form a small House of Lords, holding their seats by hereditary right; but this idea raised so great an outcry that he made haste to abandon it. Several of the committee were in favour of the scheme, afterwards adopted in Victoria, of making the Upper House elective, while limiting ...
— History of Australia and New Zealand - From 1606 to 1890 • Alexander Sutherland
... with an excess of hospitality; and the most marked attention was offered to the Master of Ravenswood, in particular, by their noble entertainers. The truth was, that Lord Bittlebrains had obtained his peerage by a good deal of plausibility, an art of building up a character for wisdom upon a very trite style of commonplace eloquence, a steady observation of the changes of the times, and the power of rendering certain political services to those who could best reward ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott |
