Question from a Reader: Could an earldom pass through the female line? Let us say an earl dies and he has no living sons remaining and there are no grandsons, could the earldom pass to his eldest daughter?
Answer: Could be “yes,” but more likely “no,” so if this is the plot point on which you wish to know author suicide, I would not recommend it as a plot bunny. That being said, let me make several explanations.
First and foremost, It depends on the original documents that set up the title in the first place. If the documents say, as most do, ‘to heirs male of the body’, then the title CANNOT descend through daughters. Some of the older titles say ‘heirs of the body’. In this case, one of the daughters will inherit in her own right and will become the countess of XXXXX, but will not be able to exercise all the privileges of the title (for example, she will not be able to sit in the House of Lords). Everything depends on the founding documents.
If it is heirs male of the body, the title would become dormant until they can search all collateral family lines, no matter how distant.
Here’s a brief summary with an example from the lovely Jude Knight’s website ~ https://judeknightauthor.com/…/who-inherits-the-title…/
Generally speaking, only the Scottish had founding documents that permit a female to inherit. Now that I have said such, people will provide me a hundred examples from the time period where a female inherited.
It is often easier to start with the question of how to make X the peer. There were a few cases of earldoms in the English peerage where the title went to a daughter. There is even an appendix on it in the Complete Peerage. Usually, such peerages went to the oldest daughter if there were no sons. while baronies could go into abeyance, some argue that earldoms did not.
A peerage by writ was a very old peerage. There were only earls and barons at that time. These peerages were based on a writ of summons to the Parliament of the day. As most peers acquired other titles and higher ranks along the way, these sometimes were forgotten. However, there have been several cases where a superior title was dormant, extinct, or went to a male where the barony (and rarely an earldom) could be inherited by a daughter or daughters. Because they were by writ, there was no patent for these and so the inheritance was not tied strictly to the oldest son.
Basically, legitimate sons inherited in birth order. If the founding documents do not specifically allow daughters to inherit, then the title goes into abeyance until the Monarch allows a child of one of the daughters to take the title. It might not be the eldest, in this case.
The title does not go into abeyance if the daughter can inherit (the wording appears to be heirs general). It goes to the eldest daughter. This happens mostly in Scotland. The eldest daughter’s eldest son inherits from her even if he is younger than any son the other daughters have.
Abeyance is where there is no known heir or where there is a dispute about which heir is the right one. For example, the 1st earl had an eldest son who inherited and twin sons as younger sons. Birth order for these two has been lost over time, and they both have one male descendant in the 6th generation. Which is the heir? No one can be confident. Therefore, the title goes into abeyance while the King, and those he assigns the task, figure it out.
Question #2 – What if the holder of the title successfully petitioned the Crown to recreate the title for the eldest son of one of the daughters?
Answer: Though I assume this could be accomplished, I am not assured of what sort of rules and caveats one must overcome to make this happen. I would also assume that this option would have had to have been set up prior to the death of the last title holder.
It seems to me, and I do not wish to be your “Debbie Downer” in this matter, that this option would have been known before the last title holder’s death. This is not something that research might discover, after the death, making an unknown as the new title holder.
Title holders knew who was next in line. Simple as that. Only if there were numerous deaths (which I have written in one of my books) would one see a significantly younger son inherit or even the son of one of the daughters. However, when I did this, I kept it in the male line, with two heirs dying before they could inherit and one of those having only daughters at the time of his death. One killed in a duel on the Continent before he married. And the fourth with a son who became the new earl after that father’s death. A bit overkill (pardon the pun), but still male heirs of the body.
Every Woman Dreams... 