the realm, constitute the hereditary distinctions in British society. The discharge of public duties, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, impart official dignity; while a seat in the Privy Council or in the house of Commons, the honour of knighthood, patents of precedence at the bar, &c. confer distinctions which, being neither hereditary nor official, may fairly be comprehended under the third of the above-named classes.

In seeking to arrive at clear and satisfactory views of a subject like this, we are naturally induced to venture upon some attempts to trace these honorary distinctions to their respective origins, and to examine their remote as well as their recent history; but yet even these aids do not secure all the information that is necessary to satisfy the demands of a liberal curiosity. There are no authentic sources from which any very material information can be derived with respect to the manners and customs of our remote ancestors, as regards rank, place, and precedence. In a primitive condition of society, the supreme ruler, the priesthood, and the people, are the natural divisions into which a nation would, as it were, classify itself. Any inquiry into the usages of the Saxons, still less into those of the ancient British, would supply but little assistance towards rendering more interesting or useful the account here proposed to be given of the various orders of society in this country. It is well known that the Norman invaders and their descendants assumed in England all those exclusive privileges by which they made themselves every thing, and the serfs, who cultivated the soil, no better than slaves. Although the legal

institutions, the language, and the lineage of the Saxons, in process of time, recovered their influence, and ultimately prevailed, yet it is to our Norman conquerors and to their usages we must look for the germ of that which constitutes our ceremonial and titular code—the principle upon which our ranks and dignities have been formed and arranged, as well as the power by which they are conferred. Still it is only the germ of that system that modern English society may be said to have derived from the rude soldiers of fortune who followed in the train of William, duke of Normandy. With the consent of their leader, they constituted themselves the nobles of the land; and though the titles of duke and earl might be traced to an age antecedent to the extinction of the Saxon dynasties, yet a long period elapsed after the Conquest before any other degrees of nobility than those of baron and of knight were established in England, as will appear from the accounts given of both those dignities in other parts of this volume. The latter was, as it still continues to be, a personal distinction; the former, a result of territorial possessions. It was the tenure of certain lands which in those days imparted to a man the dignity of a baron. Many knights possessed what were termed "knights' fees," and if they held such lands they were bound to perform "knights' service;" but the existence or continuance of knighthood did not in any respect depend upon territorial possessions.

It is here perhaps not unworthy of observation, that inasmuch as the Crown has not extensively exercised the power of giving precedence to new knights or newly made barons, over men already in the enjoy

ment of those dignities, yet the monarch gradually called into existence new orders of nobility; and though he did not much alter the positions of individual nobles amongst each other in their respective ranks, yet he assumed the power of placing one entire order above another. Thus the whole peerage at one time consisted chiefly of barons: and now barons form its lowest rank; for each successively created order was placed not after, but before, those who may be considered to have constituted the original nobility of the land. In like manner the ancient and general order of knights bachelor have been moved downwards in the scale of precedence, to make way for the knights of the several orders and for the baronets,-for all, in short, who bear the prefix of "Sir."

Rank and precedence in this country may of course be granted to any person by the supreme power of the legislature; or it may be imparted by an exercise of the royal prerogative in the form of a patent or warrant. Where the legislature is silent, or the sovereign has not thought it necessary to interfere, the particular station confessedly held and fully recognized to belong to any class, may be presumed to rest upon immemorial usage: thus the ranks given to the younger children of dukes, marquises, &c., depend upon established custom; those enjoyed by the knights of the various orders, by privy councillors and by other official persons, have been conferred by patent. In some cases the rank and precedence of knights have been declared by the statutes of the orders to which they belong, but the largest portion of the code of precedence is founded on acts of par

liament passed in the reigns of Henry VIII., of William and Mary, of Anne, and of George III.

It is to be presumed that the regulations of Henry were intended to recognize and confirm the greater part of the rules of precedence then existing; for, as far as ancient practice can be ascertained, the provisions of that act are in perfect accordance with it, though doubtless the progress of society, at that time most remarkable, rendered considerable additions unavoidable.

In the subjoined tables of precedence the reader will find that, wherever necessary, an explanatory notice has been given under each head, to account for the arrangement adopted, to show the relation which that particular rank may bear towards others, to describe changes, anomalies, and exceptions, or to supply any additional information which the case may seem to require.

GENERAL TABLE OF PRECEDENCE.

I. THE SOVEREIGN. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader, that as the monarch is the highest personage in the realm, no one takes precedence of him. The king or the queen regnant is always, and in all respects, superior to any subject, and his or her position exemplifies more clearly than that of any other person the real meaning of the term Precedence. Common observation is sufficient to inform the reader, when considering the precedence of the Sovereign, that on many occasions propinquity to

the place of greatest honour is regulated by a reversed scale to that of numerical precedence, and though apparently a contradiction in terms it is true, that persons of greatest dignity do not strictly precede those of less consideration and importance. Thus in many state-processions it is well known that the position occupied by royalty is not by any means the first in numerical order; but wherever the sovereign is placed, from that point radiate the gradations of dignity and rank, and by propinquity to that centre is regulated the whole complicated machinery of etiquette and precedence. Therefore in any scale the sovereign is not so much to be regarded as having a specific personal rank, but as constituting and establishing by his own position the source from which all dignity shall spring. This is a necessary consequence of the fact, that many officers of state on ceremonial occasions actually go before Her Majesty, without thereby negativing the royal title to precedence, or acquiring for themselves any increase of dignity or rank. Whatever position therefore the sovereign occupies, that is ipso facto the first place with reference to all precedence, though it may be far from first in a numerical point of view.

II. PRINCE CONSORT.-The following is an extract from the London Gazette: Whitehall, March 5th, 1840.-Her Majesty has been pleased to declare and ordain, that Field Marshal His Royal Highness Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emanuel, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe Coburg and Gotha, K.G., Her Majesty's consort, shall henceforth upon all occasions and in all meetings, except where otherwise