The House of Lords has a long history, having íts origins in the kings’s court that preceded the summoning of knights of the shires to court. For this quiz, I thought I would pose some historical questions. Feel free to have a guess if not too sure. As usual, the first two readers to supply the correct answers will be the winners.
1. There are five ranks of peerage (barons, viscounts, earls, marquesses, and dukes). However, until late in the 14th Century, there were only two ranks. What were they?
2. Labour leaders were apparently willing to contemplate a peer as Prime Minister in 1940, in preference to Winston Churchill. Who was the peer?
3. There have been several Labour life peers to serve as Leaders of the House of Lords, but who was the last Labour hereditary peer to serve as Leader of the House?
1. Baron and Earl are the oldest two, though Duke was early 14th Century.
2. Viscount Halifax.
3. Malcolm Shepherd, 2nd Baron Shepherd.
1. Earls and Barons
2. Lord Halifax
3. Lord Shepherd 1974-76, who was also created a life peer in 1999 to allow him to remain in the Lords.
1. Earl and Baron
2. Viscount Halifax
3. Lord Shepherd
1. Baron and Earl
2. Viscount Halifax (later Earl of)
3. Lord Shepherd
1) Earl and Baron
2) Lord Halifax
3) Lord Shepard, under Harold Wilson, I think.
1. Barons and Earls
2. Lord Halifax?
3. Lord Longford
1. Earl and baron
2. Lord Halifax
3. Lord Shepherd
1 Baron; Earl
2 Halifax
3 2nd Baron Malcolm Shepherd
You’ve gotta admit that I’m a cool operator, unless we are all wrong!
Interesting about the dukes in the 14thC.
I wonder why they needed leaders, when earls and Barons were already there?!!
I’ve got my ideas.
Congratulations to all the readers who responded. As I think will be obvious, everyone supplied the correct answers. Twm O’r Nant: you can rest assured you are in good company. The two original ranks of peerage were those of Baron and Earl. Lord Halifax was a possible alternative to Winston Churchill to suceed Neville Chamberlain in 1940. Lord Shepherd was the last Labour hereditary peer to serve as Leader of the House. As Dave H mentions, he was offered in 1999, like all hereditary peers who were former Leaders, a life peerage.
Jason Lower and Dave H were the first to respond and so are this week’s winners, but commendations to Ulysses, Jonathan, Len, JH, Rich and Twm O’r Nant.
This was a more easily comprehensible, and perhaps commendable quiz, Lord Norton; and it ‘introduces’ ranks of Peers;
thereupon, I still submit that what British democracy very crucially needs is a short ‘bank’ of quizzes and educational-foci by means of which the (say three?) main ‘levels’ of the ‘rank-and-file’ Electorate can begin advancing effectively in their ability to use demo-cratic fact-gathering, discussion-sharing, scrutiny questioning, formal-argumentation & moral-reasoning, and win-lose debating, micro-abilities and eventually full-blown skills or ‘citizenship-abilities’.
(Peace).
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milesjsd: I think what you are referring to is, in effect, citizenship education. I am a strong supporter of not only maintaining citizenship education – it is under some threat – but also expanding it.
I think that’s good;
nonetheless we should be clearly, and up-front, distinguishing between
“skills training for workplaces” (which would surely, and necessarily, have to begin including the democratisational-citizenship-training microskills that I proposed above); and
“education for lifeplaces” (which would in turn distinguish between “social” education and “self-education”: please refer to “Awareness Through Movement” by Moshe Feldenkrais for a clear exposition in this Matter).
“Citizenship-education” as it now stands is a vapid term: and one of its flawed major slanting definiens is “what is your Workplace level” ?
In this latter, the United Nations schematic for the five Holistic Domains of a human-life quite confusingly and wrongly included “Work” under the fourth Domain of “Social” (the other Domains, at that time, being Physical, Emotional, Mental, and Spiritual).
So once again we need the first of the three principles of good-communication and honest-argumentation, “Clarity”;
and we find ourselves having to be almost blindly trusting, that British citizenship-education is “ahead of the pack” and already up-grading us all, surely ?
2205PM.T23Aug11.JSDM.