The Dukes Read Free Page A

opportunities" as an average man: he worked on the factory floor to learn about engineering, then learned business techniques to make his Goodwood estate self-sufficient, with the result that his experience transcends all class divisions. Others, like the Duke of Somerset, have managed somehow to live a private life in a small country house without anyone appearing to realise that he exists.
    Many dukes, however, like Sebastian in The Edwardians, have simply to face the limitations of their position : "Sebastian, condemned by the very circumstance of his situation to be nothing more, ever, than a commonplace young man; as commonplace as a king; for even his rebellions, were he to rebel, must be on ordained lines; there was nothing for him to rebel against, except his own good fortune, and that was a thing he could never evade ... all these things were tied on to him like so many tin cans to the tail of a poor cat. With them went the romance of his whole make-up. Poor Sebastian, condemned to be romantic; condemned always to be romantically commonplace! What were the wild oats of such a young man? An inevitable crop, sown by his bad godmother at his christening. Not sown even by his own hand, but anticipated on his behalf. Poor Sebastian, his traditions were not only inherited, they were also prophetic. They stretched both ways. It was an unfair handicap." 8
    The large country estate, with the house as its pivot, was (and is) a peculiarly English affair. In many ways it was a perfect example in miniature of the welfare state, self-sufficient and self-protecting, with every member of the "family", from shepherds to carpenters to kitchen-maids, provided for from cradle to grave. Of course, it was capricious, depending as it did upon the personality of the Duke at its centre; should he choose to be mean (the nineteenth-century Duke of Newcastle springs to mind), the mini-welfare state collapsed. For the most part, however, people who lived on these estates had their births, clothes, education, health, weddings and funerals paid for.
    Where, anyway, has this handful of families come from? What makes their status so special? In the first place, there have always been very few of them. The title of duke is granted the least often. Now there are twenty-six, but there have been times when there were only two or three. The most there has been at one time was forty, at the end of George I's reign, descending to thirty-one by 1930. Two or three more are likely to be extinct by the end of the century, reducing the total to twenty-three. There have been none (except royal) created since 1900, and there are not likely to be any more.
    The first dukedom in England was created in 1337, when Edward III made his son the Black Prince Duke of Cornwall. This is now hereditary in the heir to the throne. Shortly afterwards the dukedom of Lancaster was also merged with the throne. The title of duke is not indigenous in England. In the Roman Empire there had been the dux, a leader or general, whence our word derives through the French due, which came to us with the Conquest. The Norman kings styled them­selves Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine in France, and were understandably jealous of creating a title in England equal in rank to one of their own. So 270 years had to pass before the first English­man became a duke in 1337, and he was of royal blood. A dukedom of Suffolk was twice created, in 1448 and 1514, and Richard II created six dukes in one day, on 29th September 1397, but none survived two years. The first non-royal duke to last was Norfolk in 1473, followed by Somerset, bestowed by Edward Seymour upon himself in 1547 in the name of his ward, the infant King Edward VI. Thereafter, the title was so rarely granted, and so regularly pruned by beheadings and attainders, that there were no dukes at all in England for thirty years after the execution of the Duke of Norfolk in 1572 (and no non-royal dukes for even longer).
    Dukedoms proliferated in