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.