The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

The Earl of Shrewsbury, head of the Talbots, a race far famed alike in camp and field from the days of the Plantagenets.

The Viscount Falkland, representative of that noble Cavalier who fell at Newbury.

The Baron Mowbray and Segrave and Stourton, titles which carry us back almost to the days of the Great Charter.

Nor does the feudal train end there. We see also a St. Maur, Duke of Somerset, whose family has aged since in the time of Henry VIII. men scoffed at it as new; a Clinton, Duke of Newcastle; a Percy, Duke and heir of Northumberland, that name of high romance; a De Burgh, Marquis of Clanricarde; a Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, twenty-sixth Earl, and head of a house which for eight centuries has stood on the steps of thrones; a Courtenay, Earl of Devon; an Erskine, Earl of Mar, an earldom whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, and many another.

And if we come to later days we have the Duke of Bedford, head of the great Whig house of Russell; the Dukes of Marlborough and Westminster, heirs of capacity and good fortune; Lords Bute and Salisbury, descendants of Prime Ministers; and not only Lord Selborne, but Lords Bathurst and Coventry, Hardwicke and Rosslyn, representatives of past Lord Chancellors.

These, and others such as they, inheritors of traditions bred in their very bones, spurning the suggestion that they should purchase the uncontamination of the Peerage by the forfeiture of their principles, fought the question to the end. If they asked for a motto, surely theirs would have been, "Fais ce que dois, advienne que pourra."

And so we pass to the group who abstained, the great mass of the Peerage, too proud to wrangle where they could not win, too wise to knock their heads uselessly against a wall, too loyal not to do their utmost to spare their King. More than three hundred followed Lord Lansdowne's lead, taking for their motto, perhaps, the "Cavendo tutus" of his son-in-law. And still there was fiery blood among them, and strong men swelling with righteous indignation. There were Gay Gordons, as well as a cautious Cavendish, an Irish Beresford to quicken a Dutch Bentinck, and a Graham of Montrose as well as a Campbell of Argyll. Three Earls, Pembroke, Powis, and Carnarvon, represented the cultured family of Herbert, and, as a counterpoise to the Duke of Northumberland, we see six Peers of the doughty Douglas blood. Lord Curzon found by his side three other Curzons, and the Duke of Atholl three Murrays from the slopes of the Grampians. There were many-acred potentates, such as the Dukes of Beaufort and Hamilton and Rutland, Lord Bath, Lord Leicester, and Lord Lonsdale, and names redolent of history, a Butler, Marquis of Ormonde, a Cecil, Marquis of Exeter, the representative of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Burleigh, and a Stanley, Earl of Derby, a name which to this day stirs Lancashire blood. If it were a question of tactics, then Earl Nelson agreed with the Duke of Wellington, and they were backed by seven others whose peerages had been won in battle on land or sea in the course of the last century; while if the Law should be considered, there were nine descendants of Lord Chancellors. Coming to more recent times, there was the son of John Lawrence of the Punjab, and of Alfred Tennyson the poet, Lord St. Aldwyn and Lord Balfour of Burleigh and Lord Lister, and Lords Rothschild, Aldenham, and Revelstoke. What need to mention more?—for there were men representative of every interest in every quarter; but if we wish to close this list with two names which might seem to link together the Constitutional history of these islands, let us note that there was agreement as to action between Viscount Peel, the sole surviving ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, and Lord Wrottesley, the head of the only family which can claim as of its name and blood one of the original Knights of the Garter.

What more is there to say? As, nearly two years ago, we stood round the telegraph-boards watching the election results coming in, many of us saw that the Peerage was falling. The end has come quicker than we expected. The Empire may repent, a new Constitution may spring into being, and there may be raised again a Second Chamber destined to be far stronger than that which has passed, but it will never be the proud House of Peers far-famed in English history.