NEW PEER’S TITLES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 113, 9 April 1930, Page 6

NEW PEER’S TITLES.

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 6on of a noble family will usually take his family name and associate it, with his own home, while another will he content to do likewise unless his name is already in use as a peerage title. Such anticiption must often be the chief pitfall. An earl-designate finds almost all the counties in the country appropriated, and sometimes also his family name, which he may not wish to change. Thus Sir Edward Grey, who was to receive an earldom, obtained from the Crown the reduction of the honour to a viscounty because the head of his house was already Earl Grey. Mr Balfour was fortunate in finding a little village bearing the name on which he ehed such lustre, and could therefore become Earl of Balfour in preference to Earl Balfour. There is much virtue in this “of,” aP^ri 1 * ron J territorial considerations; Jellicoe ot Scapa, Beatty of the North Sea, Kitchener of Khartoum and the Vaal, .Byng of Vimy, and Allenby of Megiddo are modern examples. So, also Davidson of Lambeth commemorates a distinguished archiepiscopate. New peers might more often have recourse to the long roll of extinct peerages, hut careful research is advisable, for the associations of an old title are sometimes hardly respectable. Our modern internationalists may find it more consonant 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 am Viscount Leningrad.