Westphalian Peerage

Peerage

Nobility is a social class, normally ranked immediately under royalty, that possesses more acknowledged privileges and higher social status than most other classes in a society, membership thereof typically being hereditary. The privileges associated with nobility constitute substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles. The Medieval chivalric motto noblesse oblige, which literally means "nobility obligates", explains that privileges carry a life-long obligation of duty to uphold social responsibilities, be it of honorable behavior, customary service or leadership, that lives on by a familial or kinship bond.

Historically, membership in the nobility and the prerogatives thereof have been regulated or acknowledged by the monarch or government, thereby distinguishing it from other sectors of a nation's upper class wherein wealth, lifestyle or affiliation may be the salient markers of membership as with the Landed Gentry.

Not all of the benefits of nobility derived from noble status per se. Usually privileges were granted or recognised by the monarch in association with possession of a specific title, office or estate. Most nobles' wealth derived from one or more estates, large or small, that might include fields, pasture, orchards, timberland, hunting grounds, streams, etc. It also included infrastructure such as castle, well and mill to which local peasants were allowed some access, although often at a price.

Nobles typically command tribute in the form of entitlement to cash rents or usage taxes, labour and/or a portion of the annual crop yield from commoners or nobles of lower rank who lived or worked on the noble's manor or within his seigneurial domain.

Duelling can be used to establish the status of a respectable gentleman, and is an accepted manner of resolving disputes.

A lordship might include one or more manors surrounded by land and villages subject to a noble's prerogatives and disposition. Seigneuries can be bought, sold or mortgaged. If erected by the crown into, a barony or countship, it becomes legally entailed for a specific family, which could use it as their title.

Kings possess the exclusive prerogative to act as fons honorum within their realms. Royal letters patent are necessary to obtain a title of the peerage, which also carries nobility and a seat in the House of Lords, and an automatic entail of land and rights to the local peasants' output.

Peers are of five ranks, in descending order of hierarchy:

Duke comes from the Latin dux, leader. The feminine form is Duchess.

Marquess comes from the French marquis, which is a derivative of marche or march. This is a reference to the borders ("marches") between England, Scotland, and Wales, a relationship more evident in the feminine form: Marchioness.

Earl comes from the Old English or Anglo-Saxon eorl, a military leader. The meaning may have been affected by the Old Norse jarl, meaning free-born warrior or nobleman, during the Danelaw, thus giving rise to the modern sense. Since there was no feminine Old English or Old Norse equivalent for the term, "Countess" is used (an Earl is analogous to a Count), from the Latin comes.

Baron comes from the Old Germanic baro, freeman.