Earl of Devon - Interregnum

Interregnum

Since there was no Earl of Devon, James I granted the title in 1603 to Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy, whose aunt had been the last Earl's mother. He died without legitimate issue three years later, and the King gave (or rather sold) the Earldom to William Cavendish, 1st Baron Cavendish.

Meanwhile, the heirs of Sir Philip de Courtenay of Powderham lived quietly under the Tudors, as country gentlemen, became baronets in 1645, during the English Civil War; and gained the title of Viscount Courtenay of Powderham in 1762, ten days before the death of the first Viscount.

In 1831, the senior living Courtenay of this line was William Courtenay, the third Viscount, an aged rake, living in Paris, having fled a bill of indictment. Should he die unmarried, the viscounty would become extinct, while the baronetcy would be inherited by his third cousin, another William Courtenay, who happened to be Clerk Assistant to Parliament. This William Courtenay persuaded the House of Lords that "heir male" in the last creation of the title had meant "heir male collateral", and that his cousin was therefore 9th Earl of Devon, and his ancestors had been de jure Earls of Devon back to 1556. William Courtenay duly succeeded his cousin as 10th Earl in 1835, and from him the later Earls are descended. (A madman, John Nichols Thom, claimed to be "Sir William Courtenay" in 1832, and stood for Parliament twice, proclaiming his right to the Earldom and the political platform of the extreme Philosophical Radicals. He organized an agricultural rising outside Canterbury in 1838, and was shot during its suppression.)

The inconvenience, since 1831, of having two Earls for the same county, has been dealt with thus: The Cavendish Earls, who were elevated to a Dukedom in 1694, had been spelling their title Duke of Devonshire; the ancient Earls had usually been Earls of Devon. This is due in part to the differences between English and "law Latin", the language in which royal decrees were traditionally written. This has now become the difference between the two peerages, and it is convenient to call the Blount Earl (1603–06) Earl of Devonshire also.

The descendent of the Earl now lives in Saint Louis, Missouri in the United States and serves as a neurosurgical physician at Barnes Hospital.