Viscount Gort - The Irish Peerage

The Irish Peerage

Before 1801, the few Irish peers that existed had their own House of Lords in Ireland. The vote in favour of joining the United Kingdom resulted in a remarkable number of new peerages in Ireland. Like their counterparts in Scotland, the Irish peers did not acquire an automatic seat at Westminster, but elected a small number of representative peers from among their number to sit as peers in the House of Lords at Westminster, for life. Upon the demise of a representative peer, a new incumbent would be elected to fill the vacancy. This remained the practice until the partition of Ireland and the grant of Home Rule in both South and North.

All Irish peers at Westminster served as a result of an election process: those not elected to the House of Lords were entitled to stand for election to the House of Commons, leading to the apparent incongruity of Lord Gort, MP. This was the case with the second Lord Gort and the third Lord Gort, but ceased to be an option for the sixth Lord Gort.

In practice, most distinguished Scottish and Irish peers acquired UK titles which gave themselves and their descendants a seat in the upper chamber of the Legislature of the Empire. For this reason, the grant of special remainders for UK titles was far more strict than it had been for Irish titles and the Field Marshal Lord Gort was not sufficiently unique to merit this extra favour.

The original Gort peerage was an Irish peerage granted after the creation of the United Kingdom. This means that there had been the option of creating the original Gort peerage as a UK title. As stated, a large number of Irishmen, which meant in practice mostly the Anglo-Irish, had been rewarded with peerages before and after the Act of Union; some might be converted to UK titles, but there were too many for all to expect a UK title.

An Irish peerage was a useful constitutional device to give them, or perhaps rather their wives, the social standing they sought and to tie them in as members of the Establishment, particularly in Ireland, without granting the seat in the Legislature that came with a UK title. As a result, it was found useful not to be abolish the Irish roll, when the Peerage of Great Britain was closed in favour of the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Later, an Irish peerage might even be given to a distinguished man without any obvious Irish connection, to lend gravitas to imperial appointments, whilst giving him the option of sitting in the House of Commons afterwards should he aspire to ministerial office.