Nicola here, talking about dukes, as you do if you are an author of historical romance. I’ve live in Britain all my life and I’ve never met a duke. In fact they are the only rank of the peerage I haven’t met. There are currently only 24 of them in existence which in a population of 65 million must make them amongst the rarest creatures in the country on a par with the Scottish wild cat. At times during the UK's history there have been no more than two or three; at others – the mid 1700s – there were as many as forty so even at their height they were an endangered species.
That’s the reality, of course. In stories, particularly in historical romances, they pop up in London, Bath and various country towns and villages with a regularity that is rather fun. If only!
A little while ago, Mary Jo wrote a wonderful blog piece on billionaires, dukes, and hero inflation, looking at the reasons why a billionaire, or duke, or billionaire duke, is so appealing in our fiction. You can read it here. Today though, I’m talking about the fact behind the fiction, which is actually no less entertaining and contains some characters who, if they were fictional, would seem far too bizarre, eccentric and unlikely.
The title of Duke is the rarest honour that the monarch may bestow on a person not of royal blood. There are royal dukes as well, 
of course – the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince William (Duke of Cambridge) and the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent to name but a few.The guy in the photo is the Duke of Cambridge, an earlier one. The first English dukedom was created in 1337 and that was a royal one, the Dukedom of Cornwall. This remains a title held by the heir to the throne. It isn’t the oldest title in the Peerage of England and so some barons and earls consider the dukes to be upstarts, the nouveaux aristocrats. Another interesting fact about dukes is their mode of address. To most of us they are “your grace” but the queen addresses them as “right trusty and entirely beloved cousin.” They call each other “duke” unless they are closely related, when they will use a first name. This could well get tricky when more than one of them is in a room at the same time.
Until the 19th century reforms put a stop to their feudal-style privileges, dukes enjoyed a lifestyle that now seems both incredible and indefensible. They could commit any crime and get away with it because no one had the power to arrest them. They could run up enormous debts and leave them unpaid because no one could enforce payment. They even had their own personal trumpeter.
Back in 1066, William I, as Duke of Normandy, had no desire to create a title in England that was of the same rank as the one he held in France, and it was almost three centuries before the title was introduced. Richard II created six dukes in a day in 1397 but none of them lasted more than a few years. In that turbulent period, four of the titles were forfeit and two, including the Duchess of Norfolk in her own right, became extinct upon death.
Only two of the dukedoms that exist today derive from the pre-Elizabethan era, mainly because few of those who wielded power died a natural death or lived long enough to pass on their titles. (Up until the 19th century the most likely cause of death for a male aristocrat was quoted as being war, duelling or falling off a horse!) The Dukedom of Norfolk was re-created by Richard III in 1483 and is still in existence today. He is the premier duke in the peerage of England with precedence over all the other non-royal dukes. Second in the pecking order is the Duke of Somerset, created in 1547 by the 1st Duke of Somerset and conferred upon himself when he was Lord Protector of England in the reign of Edward VI. Both of these were dukes in the medieval sense of the word, leaders of men, soldiers, military and political players. Other dukedoms of the period have come and gone - Suffolk, for example.
The redoubtable Elizabethan noblewoman Bess of Hardwick was the common ancestress of two dukedoms, those of Devonshire and 
Portland. Her second son became the first Earl of Devonshire (later elevated to a dukedom) and he inherited the estates of Chatsworth and Hardwick from her. Her third son, the ancestor of the Duke of Portland, inherited Welbeck Abbey. The Duke of Devonshire, who, just to confuse matters, holds no land in Devon, still lives at Chatsworth today. Longevity seems to be a matter of luck and the ability to produce a male heir. As for the location of the title, a duke is often associated with an entire county - see Devonshire, or Northumberland or Norfolk or many more, but there is no necessity for him to live there, though he can if he wants, and own a large part of the land into the bargain.Some Dukes have titles that are towns, cities or even villages. A minority do not, hence my Duke of Kestrel in the Bluestocking Brides series. Incidentally, it would be perfectly fine to have a Regency duke called Tempest, Duke of Studley, since Tempest could be a family name used as a first name and Studley is a real place.
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a good time for dukedoms. Charles II created 26 of them including two for his mistresses and six for his illegitimate sons. Four of these still exist including Buccleuch (pronounced buckloo) which was the dukedom given to Charles’ eldest son, James, Duke of Monmouth, upon his marriage. Royal mistress Barbara Villiers, herself granted the title of Duchess of Cleveland in 1670, was also the mother of Charles Fitzroy, later Duke of Southampton, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton, and George Fitzroy, Duke of Northumberland. That is quite a haul of dukedoms for one family!
Of the others: Richmond, St Albans, Bedford, Beaufort, Marlborough, Rutland belong to the peerage of England, Hamilton, Argyll, Atholl, Montrose, Roxburghe, Lennox and Queensberry belong to the peerage of Scotland, Manchester, Northumberland and Brandon belong to the peerage of Great Britain, Leinster and Abercorn to the peerage of Ireland and Wellington, Sutherland, Westminster, Fife and Gordon to the peerage of the United Kingdom. Yes, it's complicated. Plus, if anyone has counted up and come to more than twenty four, some are “double dukes” and hold two titles in one: Richmond and Lennox, for example, and Hamilton and Brandon. The most recent Dukedom to be created was Fife, in 1900, although Winston Churchill was offered a dukedom and graciously declined. As they are only created for exemplary service to the monarch – such as the titles offered to Marlborough or Wellington, for example – there is no great likelihood of lots of new ones.
What are the dukes like? Well, they didn't seem to rate themselves as very charismatic in the 19th century. “How dull! Bless me! We 
are eleven of us, dukes and duchesses, and most dukefully dull we are,” Sarah Spencer wrote in 1841 whilst accompanying Queen Victoria on a visit to Woburn Abbey. Possibly this was true when in the presence of the Queen; out of it, throughout their history, they have been more inclined towards a style of “what we can get away with” bad behaviour. Like the rest of the population there are re dukes who are eccentric and bizarre, dukes behaving badly, dukes who are shy and dukes who are entrepreneurs. Reserve and keeping a low profile is a quality only recently adopted. Back in the Regency day they were perhaps more newsworthy.
Marriage and the preservation of rank have always been a preoccupation of the aristocracy and never more so than at the top of the pile. A duke’s heir was generally expected to marry another duke’s daughter and often he did. In 1829 the Duchess of Baden visited England to find a husband for her daughter. She had her eye on the Duke of Buccleuch but hesitated because he only had three dukedoms and she was worried that a potential fourth son of the marriage would get nothing. She had not realised that the eldest son would get them all anyway. Occasionally an earl’s daughter would break into this exclusive club or, even more scandalously, an untitled lady. Sometimes there were even foreign brides! As a result of this inter-marrying, all the dukes are now related to one another in some degree, a quarter of them a close relationship such as a cousin or uncle or brother-in-law. Of course not all the blood running through ducal veins is blue and not all of it is legitimate either. As many marriages weren’t love matches, some children were not the offspring of their titular fathers. This was tolerated, even welcomed at times since it alleviated the inbreeding. When the Duchess of Gordon proposed that her daughter marry the heir to Lord Cornwallis, his lordship apparently protested because he said there was madness in the Gordon family. The Duchess was happy to reassure him that her daughter “did not have a drop of Gordon blood in her”.
There may well not be any new dukedoms created but equally those in existence cannot be removed except by an act of parliament. Not even the Queen can declare a dukedom extinct except for an act of high treason. For as long as there is an heir, there can be a dukedom. Most of these titles descend “in tail male” with succession to the legitimate male heirs of the original duke to hold the title. If the title is granted to “heirs general” it can descend through the female line. (The lady in the picture is Anne, Duchess of Hamilton.) Thirdly a “special remainder” can be granted, allowing the title to be passed to a nominee. It’s all vastly complicated and in all, 162 separate ducal titles have been created and less than 500 individuals have held them in their 660 plus year history.
What’s a duke to do? Where do they go from here? Only three dukes now retain a seat in the 
House of Lords. Some open their stately homes to the public and/or run high profile events. Some, such as the Duke of Argyll, are in business (in his case whisky distilling.) Life in the modern world is very different for them and their circumstances vary quite dramatically. The Duke of St Albans, for example, no longer has a family seat and although he retains his title of Hereditary Grand Falconer, a Labour government scrapped his entitlement to an annual haunch of venison from Richmond Park a few years ago. He works as an accountant. Meanwhile the new Duke of Westminster really is a billionaire as well as a duke. It must be a lonely business as well as a privileged one being at the top of the peerage. Are the privileges worth it? I imagine most of us would think they probably are.
What do you think? Is it better to be a duke in the present day or the Regency? Should they have duties as well as privileges, and what is it about the character of the duke that appeals in historical fiction?
