NEW PEERS’ TITLES

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 March 1930, Page 4

NEW PEERS’ TITLES

o MOMENTOUS CHOICE. Twice a year as a. rule it falls to newly-created peers to undertake the business of choosing their titles, says a, writer in the London “Times.” It is a momentous choice, for a. peerage title, once chosen, is an unalterable possession, save by a further step in the peerage, and if there is a son and heir it may bind posterity for unknown generations. A younger son of a noble family will usually take his family name and associate it with his own home, while another will be content to do likewise unless his name is already in use as a peerage title. Such anticipation must often be the chief pitfall. Au earl-designate finds almost all (ho counties in the country appropriated. ,-ind sometimes also his family name, which he may not wish to change. Thus Sir Edward Grey, who was Io receive an. earldom, obtained from (ho Grown the reduction of the honour to a. viscounty because the head of bis house wa.s already Earl Grey. Mr Balfour was fortunate in finding a little village bearing the name on which he has shed such lustre, and could therefore become Earl of Bal-

four in preference to Earl Balfour. There is much virtue in this “of,” apart from territorial considerations; Jellicoe of Scapa, Beatty of the North Sea, Kitchener of Khartoum and of the Vaal, Byng of Vimy, and Allenby of Megiddo are modern examples. So, also, Davidson of Lambeth commemorates a distinguished achiepiscopate. New peers might more often have recourse to the long roll of extinct peerages, but careful research is advisable, for the associations of an old title are sometimes hardly respectable. Our modern internationalists may find it more consonent with their sympathies in future to draw upon the names of foreign places, though the few precedents—those of Marquess .Douro, Earl St. Vincent, Earl of Camperdown, Earl of Ypres, and Viscount Barfleur —happen to appeal to the pride of mere nationalism. Still, precedents are precedents, and we may yet live to see an Earl of Moscow and Viscount Leningrad.