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Company type | Private limited company |
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Industry | Publishing |
Predecessor | Burke's Peerage (1826) Limited (2013–2016) |
Founded | 1826London, England | in
Founder | John Burke |
Headquarters | , England |
Website | burkespeerage |
Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher founded in 1826, when the Anglo-Irish genealogist John Burke began releasing books devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland. His first publication, a Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom, was updated sporadically until 1847, when the company began publishing new editions every year as Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage (often shortened and known as Burke's Peerage).
Other books followed, including Burke's Landed Gentry , Burke's Colonial Gentry , and Burke's General Armory . In addition to its peerage publications, the Burke's publishing company produced books on Royal families of Europe and Latin America, ruling families of Africa and the Middle East, distinguished families of the United States and historical families of Ireland.
The firm was established in 1826 by John Burke (1786–1848), progenitor of a dynasty of genealogists and heralds. His son Sir John Bernard Burke (1814–1892) was Ulster King of Arms (1853–1892) and his grandson, Sir Henry Farnham Burke (1859–1930), was Garter Principal King of Arms (1919–1930). After his death, ownership passed through a variety of people.
Apart from the Burke family, editors have included Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Alfred Trego Butler, Leslie Gilbert Pine, Peter Townend, and Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd.
From 1974 to 1983, Jeremy Norman was chairman of the company, taking the role while Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd was editor. [1] [2] His fellow directors included Patrick, Lord Lichfield, and John Brooke-Little, Norroy & Ulster King of Arms. Under Norman's chairmanship, new volumes were published on royal families, Irish genealogy, and country houses of the British Isles. In 1984, the Burke's Peerage titles were separated and sold: Burke's Peerage itself was acquired by Frederik Jan Gustav Floris, Baron van Pallandt, while Burke's Landed Gentry and other titles were sold to other buyers. [3]
Last published in 2003 as Burke's Peerage & Baronetage, the Burke's titles (including Burke's Landed Gentry) have since been reunified and the present ownership plans to next publish an updated book-form bicentenary edition in 2026.
In 1877, the Oxford professor Edward Augustus Freeman criticised the accuracy of Burke's and said that it contained pedigrees that were
purely mythical – if indeed mythical is not too respectable a name for what must be in many cases the work of deliberate invention [... and] all but invariably false. As a rule, it is not only false, but impossible [...] not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood. [4]
Oscar Wilde in the play A Woman of No Importance wrote: "You should study the Peerage, Gerald. It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done!" In 1901, the historian J. Horace Round wrote of Burke's "old fables" and "grotesquely impossible tales". [5]
More recent editions have been more scrupulously checked and rewritten for accuracy, notably under the chief editorship, from 1949 to 1959, of L. G. Pine and Hugh Massingberd (1971–1983). [2] [6] Pine was particularly sceptical regarding many families' claims to antiquity, saying: "If everybody who claims to have come over with the Conqueror were right, William must have landed with 200,000 men-at-arms instead of about 12,000." [7]
Sir Rupert Iain Kay Moncreiffe of that Ilk, 11th Baronet,, Chief of Clan Moncreiffe, was a British Officer of Arms, historian and genealogist.
The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It is the British element of the wider European class of gentry. While part of the British aristocracy, and usually armigers, the gentry ranked below the British peerage in social status. Nevertheless, their economic base in land was often similar, and some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers. Many gentry were close relatives of peers, and it was not uncommon for gentry to marry into peerage. With or without noble title, owning rural land estates often brought with it the legal rights of the feudal lordship of the manor, and the less formal name or title of squire, in Scotland laird.
Sir John Bernard Burke, was a British genealogist and Ulster King of Arms, who helped publish Burke's Peerage.
Burke's Landed Gentry is a reference work listing families in Great Britain and Ireland who have owned rural estates of some size. The work has been in existence from the first half of the 19th century, and was founded by John Burke. He and successors from the Burke family, and others since, have written in it on genealogy and heraldry relating to gentry families.
Sir Robert Douglas of Glenbervie, 6th Baronet was a notable genealogist responsible for one of the major works on Scottish families, The Baronage of Scotland.
The High Sheriff of Tipperary was the Sovereign's judicial representative in County Tipperary. Initially an office for a lifetime, assigned by the Sovereign, the High Sheriff became annually appointed from the Provisions of Oxford in 1258. Besides his judicial importance, he had ceremonial and administrative functions and executed High Court Writs.
John Burke was an Irish genealogist, and the original publisher of Burke's Peerage. He was the father of Sir Bernard Burke, a British officer of arms and genealogist.
Hugh John Massingberd, originally Hugh John Montgomery and known from 1963 to 1992 as Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd, was an English journalist and genealogist. He was chief editor of Burke's Peerage/Burke's Landed Gentry from 1971 to 1983.
John David Blake Butler was an English actor best known for his role as the lecherous chief librarian Mr. Wainwright during the first and third series of Last of the Summer Wine in 1973 and 1976 respectively.
Richard Boyle Townsend was an Irish politician.
The O'Connell family, principally of Derrynane, are a Gaelic Irish noble family of County Kerry in Munster. The principal seat of the senior line of the family was Derrynane House, now an Irish National Monument.
Richard O'Donovan II, The O'Donovan of Clancahill, (1764/1768—1829), Lieutenant General was the son of Jane Becher, daughter of John Becher, and Daniel V O'Donovan, The O'Donovan of Clancahill.
Roger Soame Jenyns, who usually wrote his name simply as Soame Jenyns was a British art historian, known as an expert on East Asian ceramics.
Mary Elizabeth Morgan-Grenville, 11th Lady Kinloss was a British peeress.
Richard Gordon FitzGerald Uniacke, FRSAI was a British genealogist and librarian. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Robert FitzGerald Uniacke, late vicar of Tandridge, Surrey, a descendant of an old Irish family, the Uniackes of Uniacke and Castleton, County Cork. He was a great grandson of Richard John Uniacke (1753–1830), Attorney-General of Nova Scotia.
John Robert Monsell was an Irish illustrator.
Joshua Dawson (1660–1725) was an Anglo-Irish public servant, land developer and politician of the Kingdom of Ireland.
Alfred Nathaniel Holden Curzon, 4th Baron Scarsdale,, was a British aristocrat and clergyman. He was the father of George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, who was the Conservative Viceroy of India and British Foreign Secretary.
John Goddard Richards was an Irish barrister, justice of the peace, and High Sheriff of Wexford for 1824. He was the eldest son and heir of the leading surgeon Solomon Richards and his wife Elizabeth Groome, daughter of the Reverend Edward Groome. He owned land on the Roebuck Estate in County Dublin and the Ardamine Estate in County Wexford.
The Bund family of Wick Episcopi owned estates in Worcestershire since the fifteenth century; from this armigerous landed gentry family came several individuals of note in the fields of law, local government and literature.
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