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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
CONTENTS
SOME CURIOSITIES OF THE PEERAGE.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
ERRATIC PENS.
CHEWTON-ABBOT.
ACROBATS.
THE ABANDONMENT OF WIND-POWER.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
QUITS!
No. 20.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 17, 1884.
SOME CURIOSITIES OF THE PEERAGE.
IN TWO PARTS.—PART I.
In a paper which appeared in this Journal(January 12) headed ‘What is a Peer?’ it wassought to present within very narrow limits andin untechnical language a sketch of the institutiongenerally known as the Peerage. We endeavouredto exhibit the difference between the peerage itselfas a whole and that important section of it termedthe House of Lords, the status of the peers of theUnited Kingdom, of Great Britain, of Scotland,and of Ireland, and the distinction between realtitles of nobility and those permitted to be adoptedby courtesy. In short, we dealt with the externaland legal features of the peerage viewed as anelement of the constitution. We now propose to,in some measure, fill up the previous outline ofthe subject, and this will be done by shortlyexamining some of the internal characteristics ofthis institution which are distinctly peculiar toit. These will include a reference to matterswhich may not inaptly be termed ‘curiosities,’if we limit the sense of this word to matterswhich, though perhaps not exactly curiosities inthemselves, are nevertheless such, from their beingconfined to the cognisance of comparatively fewpersons.
Adopting for present purposes this acceptationof the word ‘curiosities,’ it may safely be assertedthat the peerage abounds with curiosities of allkinds. Probably the most interesting are thosedisclosed in the records of family vicissitudes; butthen these are but chapters in human life withtheir interest enhanced by the exalted position ofthe actors in the various dramas presented. Then,again, there are the anecdotal curiosities, which areexceedingly amusing, especially those of a strictlypersonal character; and we might easily fill manypages with narrations of this kind, any one ofwhich would abundantly confirm the saw, thattruth is stranger than fiction. But we thinkthat such curiosities as we have mentioned are notthose which would most interest or arrest theattention of an uninitiate