When a peer is not necessarily one's equal

King Charles’ coronation was a slimmed-down affair, without much of the traditional pomp and ceremony. Many aristocrats were not invited, although their families have, in the words of the Duke of Rutland, “supported the Royal Family 1,000 years or thereabouts,” and had historically played a key role in the ceremony, kneeling before the new monarch to signify their allegiance.

To honor these spurned aristos, let’s use a linguistic lens on Britain’s peerage. 

Generally, we think of a “peer” as an equal. The word comes from the Latin par (“equal”) and is often used to refer to people similar in age, gender, employment, and so on. The peerage, though, is as far from the idea of equality as you can get: it is a hierarchy of hereditary and honorary aristocratic titles.

Though the history of the word is complicated, peer seems to have begun to indicate “nobleman” a century or so after English barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta (1215), the foundational statement of individual rights versus government power. The barons claimed they were subject to the legal judgment of their pares (“peers” – it was written in Latin), which was a progressive step since their lives had been subject to the whims of the monarch. 

But since they were barons, a “jury of their peers” meant their fellow aristocrats, and so English acquired another auto-antonym – a peer is both one’s equal and one’s superior. Unless, that is, one is a member of the peerage.

The highest rank in the peerage is duke or duchess. Duke derives from the Latin for “leader,” dux, and was once applied widely. A writer in 1380 refers to “Jesus Christ, duke of our battle.” 

In France, though, the term was more specific: a duke was a nobleman who ruled a large area of land (a duchy) but still owed allegiance to a king. In the early Middle Ages, England was ruled by the Normans, so there were a fair number of French dukes around. There were no English dukes until 1337. Up until then, the English referred to the grandest aristocrats with the good old Germanic word earl, from a root meaning “warrior.”

One rank down is the marquis, another French title brought to England in 1385. In French, marquis is pronounced “mar-`kee,” but in English it’s pronounced and often spelled “marquess,” with the stress on the first syllable. The female equivalent is “mar-sho-`ness,” spelled “marchioness.” The feminine form makes it clearer that a marquis/marquess was originally a noble tasked with securing “the marches,” an archaic term for “boundaries” or “borders.”

Next week, we’ll proceed down the hierarchy and see why the opposite of “nobleman” was once “bachelor.”