The Chamber of Peers of Portugal, alternatively translatable as the House of Lords and formally styled the Chamber of the Most Worthy Peers of the Realm (Portuguese: Câmara dos Pares or Câmara dos Digníssimos Pares do Reino), was the upper house of the Cortes Gerais, the legislature of the Kingdom of Portugal during most of the constitutional monarchy period. Members of the Chamber were Peers of the Realm, appointed directly at the pleasure of the Portuguese monarch.
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Peers of the Realm were disproportionately represented in the Senate. Nine Senators were or became peers of the realm at the time of their membership of the Senate. These were the third and fourth Dukes of Abercorn, Viscount Bangor, Viscount Charlemont, the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, Lord Glentoran, the Marquess of Londonderry, Lord Massereene and Ferrard, and Lord Pirrie. Lord Bangor and Lord Charlemont held Irish titles only; Lord Charlemont had been elected as an Irish Representative Peer and so sat in the House of Lords, Lord Bangor however did not.
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The Lords were literally the peers of the realm. Weber's overarching argument was that with modernity, traditional bureaucratic patrimonial forms of government eventually gave way to modern capitalist bureaucratic rationalism as the main principle of both government and governance.
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The Privy Council is one of the four principal councils of the sovereign. The other three are the courts of law, the Commune Concilium (Common Council, i.e. Parliament) and the Magnum Concilium (Great Council, i.e. the assembly of all the Peers of the Realm).
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Dege & Skinner business was originally based on catering for the needs of the British Army and the Royal Navy, and hence by association the British Royal family. During the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, Dege & Skinner dressed the Peers of the Realm at Westminster Abbey.
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Kitson's father was elevated to the peerage in 1907. Albert Kitson succeeded to the titles of 2nd Baron Airedale of Gledhow and 2nd Baronet Kitson on his father's death on 16 March 1911. As peers of the realm, the Kitsons were invited to the coronation of George V at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911.
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The ceremonial robes and uniform of Peers of the Realm while the Chamber was in session; 1860. It was established before the Liberal Wars. The monarch appointed a number of the highest nobility to the Chamber. It was composed of 90 peerages, who did not have a hereditary right to sit by descent, but were nominated by the monarch.
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The Chamber existed from 1826-1838 and again from 1842-1910, when it was known as the Chamber of Peers of the Realm (Câmara dos Pares do Reino). One of the members was The 1st Duke of Albuquerque (1815-1890). The Chamber met at the São Bento Palace. The successor of the Chamber was the Senate.
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Peers of the Realm have been associated with Australia since early in its history as a British settlement. Many peers served as governors of the Australian colonies (states following Federation), and in the days when the practice of appointing British governors-general was current, the great majority were peers. Australians themselves were previously eligible to receive British Imperial Honours. Such honours, in appropriate cases, included peerages and baronetcies.
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Since 1611, the British Crown has awarded a hereditary title in the form of the baronetcy. Like knights, baronets are accorded the title Sir. Baronets are not peers of the Realm, and have never been entitled to sit in the House of Lords, therefore like knights they remain commoners in the view of the British legal system. However, unlike knights, the title is hereditary and the recipient does not receive an accolade.
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Gaveston was a Gascon of relatively humble origins, with whom the king had developed a particularly close relationship. Among the honours Edward heaped upon Gaveston was the earldom of Cornwall, a title which had previously only been conferred on members of the royal family.Maddicott, 71. The preferential treatment of an upstart like Gaveston, in combination with his behaviour that was seen as arrogant, led to resentment among the established peers of the realm.
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Lady Jane Grey Prevailed on to Accept the Crown by Charles Robert Leslie, 1827. She is depicted here with her husband, Guildford Dudley London, 1553-1554 Synopsis based on Carlo Pepoli's original libretto published in 1836. Act 1 Late at night in a courtyard of the King's palace, a chorus of noblemen and peers of the realm sing of the impending death of the young King Edward. Enrico Gray (Giovanna's father) recounts his visit to Edward's death bed.
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In the United Kingdom, only peers of the realm, a few baronets, senior members of orders of knighthood, and some corporate bodies are granted supporters. Often, these can have local significance or a historical link to the armiger. If the armiger has the title of baron, hereditary knight, or higher, he may display a coronet of rank above the shield. In the United Kingdom, this is shown between the shield and helmet, though it is often above the crest in Continental heraldry.
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Peers of the realm, priests, and citizens of the City of London could also decline the challenge to battle. In any of these cases, the trial's outcome would be determined by a jury. If the battle took place, it would occur in judicial lists, square, after taking oaths against witchcraft and sorcery. If the defendant was defeated but still alive, he was to be hanged on the spot; not even the King could pardon him from the divine judgment against him.
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Françoise was the legal heir to the large and separate duchies of Mercœur and Penthièvre. In 1610, Cesar's father granted him a rank higher than peers of the realm but below princes of the blood (prince du sang). César was involved in many noble intrigues during the reign of his half-brother Louis XIII of France. Implicated in the conspiracy of Chalais against Cardinal Richelieu, he and his brother Alexandre, the Chevalier de Vendôme, were imprisoned in the Château de Vincennes in 1626.
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Michael, p. 164. Oxford, famous for its monarchist sentiment, fell under government suspicion, and on 17 October General Pepper led the dragoons into the city and arrested some leading Jacobites without resistance.Michael, p. 165. Though the main rising in the West had been forestalled, a planned secondary rising in Northumberland went ahead on 6 October 1715, including two peers of the realm, James Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, and William Widdrington, 4th Baron Widdrington, and a future peer, Charles Radclyffe, later de jure 5th Earl of Derwentwater.
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The highest precedence in the realm, attached to a feudal territory, was given to the twelve original pairies, which had originated in the Middle Ages and also had a traditional function in the royal coronation, comparable to the German imperial archoffices. Half of them were Dukes and half of them Counts. Of these, three were ecclesiastical and three were secular. Of these twelve, the prelates all ranked above the secular peers of the realm and three temporal, and the dukes all ranked above the counts.
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The Sovereign is traditionally advised by various counsellors, including the peers of the realm. After the Norman conquest of England, peers were summoned to form the magnum concilium, or Great Council, which was one of the four councils belonging to the Sovereign. The other three were the Privy Council, Parliament (which was called the commune concilium, or Common Council), and judges (who are considered counsellors of the Sovereign on legal matters). A council composed only of peers was often summoned by early English Kings.
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The right to use a title as a legal signature is only permitted to bishops, Peers of the Realm and peers by courtesy. The current Archbishop of Canterbury usually signs as "+Justin Cantuar:". In the English and Welsh order of precedence, the Archbishop of Canterbury is ranked above all individuals in the realm, with the exception of the Sovereign and members of the Royal Family.Whitaker's Almanack, 2008, p43 – (Precedence, England and Wales) Immediately below him is the Lord Chancellor and then the Archbishop of York.
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Peers of the realm, priests, and citizens of the City of London (the last pursuant to their guarantee of ancient liberties under Magna Carta) could also decline the battle if challenged. If the actual battle took place, it would occur in judicial lists, square, following the taking of oaths against witchcraft and sorcery. If the defendant was defeated and still alive, he was to be hanged on the spot. However, if he defeated his opponent, or if he were able to fend off his opponent from sunrise to sunset, he would go free.
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Section 9 preserved privilege of peerage — the right of peers of the realm to be tried by their peers. Section 10 stipulated that offences against the Act which were committed "only by preaching or words" must be prosecuted within six months. Section 11 created a new rule of evidence for cases of treason under this Act (but not other treasons). It required all of the witnesses against the defendant (or at least two of them) to attend court to give evidence against him in person, "if living and within the realm".
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Its two levels of administration were the House of Lords, composed of influential peers of the realm and Lords Spiritual, and the House of Commons, which consisted of representative members of the aristocracy and the middle-class. The House of Commons doubled in size due to the prosperity of the middle-class during that time. Puritans in the House of Commons began demanding more rights, but their demands were ignored.Sir John Neale identified a unified bloc of 43 members, whereas revisionists have suggested that this is an exaggeration.
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The Fairy Queen promises her assistance ("Fare thee well, attractive stranger"). Soon Phyllis arrives, and she and Strephon share a moment of tenderness as they plan their future and possible elopement ("Good- morrow, good lover"; "None shall part us from each other"). A cadre of the peers of the realm arrive in noisy splendour ("Loudly let the trumpet bray") with the Lord Chancellor ("The law is the true embodiment"). They are all smitten with Phyllis, and they have appealed to the Lord Chancellor to decide who will have her hand.
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King Louis IV gave the city and countship of Reims to the archbishop Artaldus in 940. King Louis VII (reigned 1137–1180) gave the title of duke and peer to William of Champagne, archbishop from 1176 to 1202, and the archbishops of Reims took precedence over the other ecclesiastical peers of the realm. By the 10th century Reims had become a centre of intellectual culture. Archbishop Adalberon (in office 969 to 988), seconded by the monk Gerbert (afterwards (from 999 to 1003) Pope Silvester II), founded schools which taught the classical "liberal arts".
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Objecting to the policies of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland), a group of English Parliamentarians invited the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange) to overthrow the King. William's successful invasion with a Dutch fleet and army led to James fleeing to France. In December 1688, peers of the realm appointed William as provisional governor. It was widely acknowledged that such action was constitutional, if the monarch were incapacitated, and they summoned an assembly of many members of parliament.
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In June 1920, he was one of three candidates for the post of Governor-General of Australia presented to the Australian prime minister Billy Hughes, along with Lord Forster and General Seely. In 1921 Lord Donoughmore was elected one of the fifteen Peers of the Realm resident in the South (elected by a constituency of all Southern Ireland peers) to be a member of the Senate of Southern Ireland under the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The Senate convened in 1921 but was boycotted by Irish nationalists. Donoughmore did not attend its first meeting.
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The Privy Council of England was one of the four principal councils of the Sovereign. The other three were the courts of law, the Commune Concilium (Common Council, or Parliament of England) and the Magnum Concilium (Great Council, or the assembly of all the Peers of the Realm). None of these was ever formally abolished, but the Magnum Concilium was not summoned after 1640 and was already considered obsolete then. The Privy Council of Scotland continued in existence along with the Privy Council of England for more than a hundred years after the Union of the Crowns.
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Wright's career as a swindler peaked in the 1890s, when he formed the London and Globe Company which floated a variety of stock and bond issues dealing with mining. Wright called some of these stocks "consols", the term used by the British government for state bond issues that were solid and reliable. He loaded the directorships of his companies with Peers of the Realm; for instance, the Chairman of the London and Globe Company was the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, a former Viceroy of India. This served the purpose both of impressing the public and attracting wealthy investors.
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Members of both the branches, as well as of the branch of the Princes of Furnari, were Peers of the Realm. Throughout the centuries, the House of Notarbartolo established tight familiar and economic relationships with many of the most influential Italian families. Just to mention a few, the family intermarried with the Houses of Alliata, Filangeri, Gravina, Grimaldi, Lancia, Moncada, Obizzi, Paternò, Piccolomini, Spucches, Stagno, Tomasi di Lampedusa, Valguarnera, Ventimiglia. A distinguished representative of the family was the Marquis Emanuele Notarbartolo (1834 - 1893), mayor of Palermo and Director General of the Banco di Sicilia, widely considered as Mafia's first eminent victim in 1893.
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The horseshoe has traditionally been the symbol of Oakham since William the Conqueror gave the estate to Henry de Ferrers, whose family name suggests a connection with iron-working or the farrier occupation. One of his privileges was to claim the forfeit of a horseshoe from anyone of rank visiting his lordship in Oakham. A unique collection of horseshoes presented by royalty and peers of the realm passing through the manor, hangs on the walls of the Hall in Oakham Castle. The acorn exemplifies the former forest, which at one time covered much of the county.
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William III and Mary II reigned together for five years. William reigned on his own following Mary's death in 1694. On 28 December, William took over the provisional government by appointment of the peers of the realm, as was the legal right of the latter in circumstances when the king was incapacitated, and, on the advice of his Whig allies, summoned an assembly of all the surviving members of parliament of Charles II's reign, thus sidelining the Tories of the Loyal Parliament of 1685. This assembly called for a chosen English Convention Parliament, elected on 5 January 1689 NS, which convened on 22 January.
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The eldest son of a baronet who is born in wedlock succeeds to a baronetcy upon his father's death, but will not be officially recognised until his name is recognised by being placed on the Official Roll. With some exceptions granted with special remainder by letters patent, baronetcies descend through the male line. A full list of extant baronets appears in Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, which also published a record of extinct baronetcies. A baronetcy is not a peerage; so baronets, like knights and junior members of peerage families, are commoners and not peers of the realm (in the UK, all people save the sovereign and peers are considered commoners).
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Nottingham, Robert's friend and supporter, enters and the two men discuss Robert's situation and Nottingham's concerns about his wife's behaviour after he has observed her embroidering a blue shawl (Forse in quel cor sensibile, Qui ribelle ognun ti chiama). The two men are interrupted by Cecil demanding that Nottingham attend a meeting of the Peers of the Realm. Scene 2: Sara's Apartments at Nottingham House Sara is alone when Robert enters, declaring her to be faithless because she has married Nottingham while he was in Ireland. She defends herself saying that it was the Queen's idea and that she was forced to do her bidding.
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Catherine Wynne, The Colonial Conan Doyle: British Imperialism, Irish Nationalism, and the Gothic, London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, p. 27. Casement deliberately abstained from attending the launch of the Congo Reform Association at the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool on March 23, 1904 because he did not want his celebrity to be the only reason people joined. The founding manifesto began with an impressive list of names including the African businessman and entrepreneur John Holt, the historian John Morley, the Presbyterian Minister Reverend R. J. Campbell and the Quaker philanthropist W. A. Cadbury of the Cadbury Chocolate Corp. Others included four bishops and a dozen influential peers of the realm.
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Ceremonial horseshoes in Oakham Castle Traditionally, members of royalty and peers of the realm who visited or passed through the town had to pay a forfeit in the form of a horseshoe. This unique custom has been enforced for over 500 years, but nowadays it only happens on special occasions (such as royal visits), when an outsize ceremonial horseshoe, specially made and decorated, is hung in the great hall of the castle. There are now over 200 of these commemorative shoes on its walls. Not all are dated and some of the earliest (which would doubtless have been ordinary horseshoes given without ceremony by exasperated noblemen) may not have survived.
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However, today the monarch is advised by the outgoing Prime Minister as to whom he or she should offer the position to next. The House of Lords is known formally as, "The Right Honourable The Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament Assembled," the Lords Spiritual being bishops of the Church of England and the Lords Temporal being Peers of the Realm. The Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal are considered separate "estates," but they sit, debate and vote together. Since the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the powers of the House of Lords have been very much less than those of the House of Commons.
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As the new Queen Maria II was still a minor, Portugal would need to be led by Regents during her minority. On 30 April, King Pedro IV set the date for the first legislative elections under the new Portuguese Constitution and appointed Peers of the Realm. On 12 May 1826, British envoy Charles Stuart left Rio de Janeiro for Portugal carrying with him the acts signed by the Brazilian Emperor as King of Portugal, including the new Portuguese Constitution and his deed of abdication of the Portuguese Crown. On that same date Carlos Matias Pereira left Rio de Janeiro for Lisbon in another ship carrying a second copy of the same documents.
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Many cases were heard by Lords with no legal education or experience, and this led to public discontent. It was suggested that more judges be appointed to the House of Lords, but it was not desired that their descendants continue to sit by virtue of the peerages they would have inherited had the judges been created hereditary peers. It was therefore suggested that the group of judges admitted to Parliament for the duration of their respective lives be added to the class of hereditary peers of the realm. Life peerages themselves were not unprecedented, though it was unclear whether or not life peers were by virtue of their titles entitled to sit in the House of Lords.
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See Baldwin, David, Elizabeth Woodville: The Mother of the Princes in the Tower at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire. She was the firstborn child of a socially unequal marriage between Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, which briefly scandalised the English court. The Woodvilles, though an old and respectable family, were gentry rather than noble, a landed and wealthy family that had previously produced commissioners of the peace, sheriffs, and MPs, rather than peers of the realm; Elizabeth's mother, in contrast, was the widow of the Duke of Bedford, uncle of King Henry VI of England. In about 1452, Elizabeth Woodville married Sir John Grey of Groby, the heir to the Barony Ferrers of Groby.
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Such a council, having been in disuse for centuries, was revived in 1640, when Charles I summoned all of the peers of the realm using writs issued under the Great Seal. Though such a council has not been summoned since then, and was considered obsolete at the time, each peer is commonly considered a counsellor of the Sovereign, and, according to Sir William Blackstone in 1765, "it is usually looked upon to be the right of each particular peer of the realm, to demand an audience of the King, and to lay before him, with decency and respect, such matters as he shall judge of importance to the public weal."Blackstone, W. (1765). Commentaries on the Laws of England.
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The privilege of peerage is the body of special privileges belonging to members of the British peerage. It is distinct from parliamentary privilege, which applies only to those peers serving in the House of Lords and the members of the House of Commons, while Parliament is in session and forty days before and after a Parliamentary session. The privileges have been lost and eroded over time. Only three survived into the 20th century: the right to be tried by other peers of the realm instead of juries of commoners, freedom from arrest in civil (but not criminal) cases, and access to the Sovereign to advise him or her on matters of state.
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Even during the early years of the Peerage, the position of bishops was unclear. During the reign of King Richard II, the Archbishop of Canterbury declared, "of right and by the custom of the realm of England it belongeth to the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being as well as others his suffragans, brethren and fellow Bishops, Abbots and Priors and other prelates whatsoever, — to be present in person in all the King's Parliaments whatsoever as Peers of the Realm". The claim was neither agreed nor disagreed to, however, by Parliament. The Lords Spiritual at first declared themselves entirely outside the jurisdiction of secular authorities; the question of trial in the House of Lords did not arise.
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Dukes were the rulers of the provinces and the superiors of the counts in the cities and later, in the feudal monarchies, the highest-ranking peers of the king. A duke may or may not be, ipso facto, a member of the nation's peerage: in the United Kingdom and Spain all dukes are/were also peers of the realm, in France some were and some were not, while the term is not applicable to dukedoms of other nations, even where an institution similar to the peerage (e.g., Grandeeship, Imperial Diet, Hungarian House of Magnates) existed. During the 19th century, many of the smaller German and Italian states were ruled by Dukes or Grand Dukes.
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Cromwell rejected this offer, but the governmental structure embodied in the final version of the Humble Petition and Advice was a basis for all future parliaments. It proposed an elected House of Commons as the Lower Chamber, a House of Lords containing peers of the realm as the Upper Chamber, and a constitutional monarchy, subservient to parliament and the laws of the nation, as the executive arm of the state at the top of the tree, assisted in carrying out their duties by a Privy Council. Oliver Cromwell had thus inadvertently presided over the creation of a basis for the future parliamentary government of England. In 1657 he had the Parliament of Scotland unified with the English Parliament.
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By the reign of Henry VII of England, there were two methods of trial by peers of the realm: trial in the House of Lords (or, in proper terms, by the High Court of Parliament) and trial in the Court of the Lord High Steward. The House of Lords tried the case if Parliament was in session; otherwise, trial was by the Lord High Steward's Court.Pike, pp.218–227 In the Lord High Steward's Court, a group of Lords Triers, sitting under the chairmanship of the Lord High Steward, acted as judge and jury. By custom the number of Triers was not fewer than 23, so that a majority was a minimum of 12, but in fact the number ranged from 20 to 35.
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The ceremony began with the anointing of the King, symbolising his spiritual entry into kingship, and then his crowning and enthronement, representing his assumption of temporal powers and responsibilities. The peers of the realm then paid homage to the King before a shorter and simpler ceremony was conducted for the Queen's coronation. The return procession to Buckingham Palace was over in length, making it the longest coronation procession up to that time; crowds of people lined the streets to watch it, over 32,000 soldiers took part and 20,000 police officers lined the route. The coronation was commemorated by the issuing of official medals, coinage, and stamps, by military parades across the Empire, and by numerous unofficial celebrations, including street parties and the production of memorabilia.
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An account of Henry VII opening Parliament on 7 November 1485 includes a description of the processions which preceded it. By this time the pattern had become established whereby the Peers of the Realm would assemble at the Palace of Westminster (which was the King's principal residence). They would then go in procession on foot to nearby Westminster Abbey for Mass, prior to returning in procession to the Palace for the Opening of Parliament itself. (During the Mass, the Knights and Burgesses who had been elected to represent the Commons would gather in the Parliament Chamber for a roll-call, overseen by the Lord Steward who would leave the Abbey early for this purpose.)Cobb H.S. 'The Staging of Ceremonies in the House of Lords' in The Houses of Parliament: History, Art, Architecture.
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The British heir- apparent's coronet as depicted by Hugo Gerard Ströhl The coronets of the Prince and the Peers of the realm were regulated by King Charles II by Royal Warrant, signed on 9 February 1661. Part of the warrant proclaimed: "Our Will and Pleasure therefore is, That the Son and Heir Apparent of the Crown for the time being, shall use and bear his Coronet composed of Crosses and Flower-de- Lized with one Arch; and in the midst a Ball and Cross, as hath our Royal Diadem". In other words, the heraldic coronet used in the Prince of Wales's coat of arms is similar to the heraldic crown (St. Edward's crown) used in the Royal arms, except that instead of two intersecting arches it has only one.
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Persons who are closely related to peers are also more correctly described as gentry than as nobility, since the latter term, in the modern British Isles, is synonymous with "peer". However, this popular usage of 'nobility' omits the distinction between titled and untitled nobility. The titled nobility in Britain are the peers of the realm, whereas the untitled nobility comprise those here described as gentry.. David Cannadine wrote that the gentry's lack of titles "did not matter, for it was obvious to contemporaries that the landed gentry were all for practical purposes the equivalent of continental nobles, with their hereditary estates, their leisured lifestyle, their social pre-eminence, and their armorial bearings". British armigerous families who hold no title of nobility are represented, together with those who hold titles through the College of Arms, by the Commission and Association for Armigerous Families of Great Britain at CILANE.
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Letters patent issued by Queen Victoria in 1900, creating the office of Governor-General of Australia as part of the process of Federation Letters patent transferring a predecessor of the University of Lorraine to Nancy in 1768 Letters patent () (always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president, or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, title, or status to a person or corporation. Letters patent can be used for the creation of corporations or government offices, or for granting city status or a coat of arms. Letters patent are issued for the appointment of representatives of the Crown, such as governors and governors-general of Commonwealth realms, as well as appointing a Royal Commission. In the United Kingdom they are also issued for the creation of peers of the realm.
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The peerage in the United Kingdom is a legal system comprising both hereditary and lifetime titles, composed of various noble ranks, and forming a constituent part of the British honours system. The term peerage can be used both collectively to refer to the entire body of nobles (or a subdivision thereof), and individually to refer to a specific title (modern English language-style using an initial capital in the former case but not the latter). British peerage title holders are termed peers of the Realm. The peerage's fundamental roles are ones of government, peers being eligible (although formerly entitled) to a seat in the House of Lords, and of meritocracy, the receiving of any peerage being the highest of British honours (with the receiving of a more traditional hereditary peerage naturally holding more weight than that of a more modern, and less highly regarded, life peerage).
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Peers of the realm and officers of arms put on their coronets, the trumpeters sound a fanfare and church bells ring out across the kingdom, as gun salutes echo from the Tower of London and Hyde Park. Finally, the archbishop, standing before the monarch, says the crowning formula, which is a translation of the ancient Latin prayer Coronet te Deus: "God crown you with a crown of glory and righteousness, that having a right faith and manifold fruit of good works, you may obtain the crown of an everlasting kingdom by the gift of him whose kingdom endureth for ever." To this the guests, with heads bowed, say "Amen". When this prayer is finished, the choir sings an English translation of the traditional Latin antiphon Confortare: Be strong and of a good courage; keep the commandments of the Lord thy God, and walk in his ways.
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By a process of associating elder sons with them in the kingship, the early Capetians established the hereditary succession in their family and transformed a theoretically electoral kingship to a sacral one. By the time of Philip II Augustus, who became king in 1180, the Capetian hold on power was so strong that the practice of associate kingship was dropped. While the Capetian monarchy began as one of the weakest in Europe, drastically eclipsed by the new Anglo-Norman realm in England (who, as dukes of Normandy, were technically their vassals) and even other great lords of France, the political value of orderly succession in the Middle Ages cannot be overstated. The orderly succession of power from father to son over such a long period of time meant that the French monarchs, who originally were essentially just the direct rulers of the Île-de-France, were able to preserve and extend their power, while over the course of centuries the great peers of the realm would eventually lose their power in one succession crisis or another.
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When Robert was 18, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society – not in itself an exceptional honour since peers of the realm had an automatic right to membership but it is a mark of the esteem in which he was already held that his sponsor was John Martin, future professor of botany at Cambridge. Furthermore, less than two years later, a Caribbean genus of the verbena family, which the plant collector, Dr. William Houston had identified, was named Petrea in Robert's honour. On his death, the following poem, signed by Janus the Younger (probably a pseudonym for Philip Southcote), appeared in the Daily Advertiser: Less sentimentally, his friend, Peter Collinson wrote of Petre in 1744; And on the fly leaf of his catalogue of the plants in Thorndon Garden is inscribed this tribute; Lord Petre was commemorated in a stucco monument by the French sculptor Louis-Francois Roubiliac which was housed in the Temple of Death in the country garden of Jonathan Tyers, the proprietor of Vauxhall Gardens. The garden was at Denbies, near Dorking.
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Although during the king's formal receptions (the Honneurs de la Cour) their sovereign origins were acknowledged in deferential prose, foreign princes were not members by hereditary right of the nation's main judicial and deliberative body, the Parlement of Paris, unless they also held a peerage; in which case, their legal precedence derived from its date of registration in that body. Their notorious disputes with ducal peers of the realm, remembered thanks to the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon, were due to the princes' lack of rank per se in the Parlement, where peers (the highest tier of French nobility, mostly dukes) held precedence immediately after the princes du sang (or, from 4 May 1610, after the legitimised princes). Whereas at the king's table and in society generally, the prestige of the princes étrangers exceeded that of the ordinary peer, the dukes denied this pre-eminence, both in the Montmorency- Luxembourg lawsuit and in the Parlement, despite the king's commands. They also clashed with the upstarts at court favored by Henry III, who raised to peerage, fortune, and singular honor a number of fashionable young men of the minor nobility.
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