Strange titles

[wellinghall]

For parrot_knight and others -

Walter Francis John Montagu Douglas Scott is the 9th Duke of Buccleuch, the 11th Duke of Queensbury, and the 8th Earl of Doncaster.

Michael Fergus Bowes Lyon is, at one and the same time, the 18th Earl of Strathmore and Kingborne, the 16th Earl of Strathmore, the 18th Earl of Kingborne, and the 5th Earl of Strathmore and Kingborne.

Alexander Nelson Hood is the 4th Viscount of Bridport, the 7th Duke of Bronte in Scicily, and the 6th Baron Bridport.

And finally, my favourite. A society hostess approached Debretts for advice on her seating plan. She received the answer, "The Aga Khan is held by his followers to be the direct descendant of God. An English Duke takes precedence."

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Winston Churchill at Yalta. Stalin wore his Soviet Field-Marshal's uniform; Churchill turned up in his Colonel's one. I have always felt that that was as if to say that a British Colonel is the equal of any damn foreign officer however high!

I am also reminded of a historic (and deserved) snub. The most shameful single episode in three thousand years of Italian history was Italy's attack on Greece in 1940. The result was that the Germans had to rescue the Italians from their own folly. When the Greeks were finally overwhelmed, they sent a colonel to offer their surrender to the Germans - and a second lieutenant to offer it to the Italians.

[asklepia.livejournal.com]

Actually it's "Strathmore and Kinghorne".

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

So it is; blame my failing eyesight.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

It comes from the decision to create Claude Bowes-Lyon, the fourteenth earl in the peerage of Scotland, an earl of the United Kingdom as well on the occasion of the coronation of his son-in-law and daughter as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1937. He and his successors have thus held two entirely separate earldoms of Strathmore and Kinghorne.

[arda-unmarred.livejournal.com]

thanks. And there was me thinking that we were witnessing an extreme case of in-breeding among the aristocracy...

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

There are a few other instances - I can think of the duke of Argyll, who holds the same title twice, once as a peer of Scotland, and second as a peer of the United Kingdom.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

And his eldest son's courtesy title is Baron Lyon, not Lord Lyon, to avoid confusion with the Lord Lyon.

[fallingtowers.livejournal.com]

"The Aga Khan is held by his followers to be the direct descendant of God. An English Duke takes precedence."

Quite right too.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I like your icon, BTW :-)

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I regret to inform you that the 9th duke of Buccleuch died in 2007; his son, Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott, is now 10th Duke of Buccleuch and 12th Duke of Queensberry, and 9th Earl of Doncaster. To cap it all, he has the right to petition the crown for the reversal of the attainder on his ancestor in the male line, the duke of Monmouth, beheaded in 1685; in which case, if successful, he would succeed him as 2nd duke of Monmouth and 2nd duke of Orkney.

He has a lot of other titles to be going on with; his grandfather's tombstone in (I think) Melrose Abbey lists all of them. Marquess of Dumfriesshire and Earl of Drumlanrig are there, certainly, which travel with the Queensberry dukedom. (It's possible, if a duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry only has daughters, that the dukedoms will separate and the eldest daughter will inherit the Queensberry dukedom as heir of line, with Buccleuch going to the heir male.)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that; it serves me right for using an outdated reference book (the most recent edition being in Bristol).