This WikiProject primarily aims to standardise pages about peerages and baronetcies in the United Kingdom and Ireland (including the former states of England, Scotland, and Great Britain), and their holders.
A page about a particular title (such as Duke of Norfolk or Earl of Derby) may include the following information:
Titles should only share articles when one is totally connected to the other: no one has ever been Marquess of Tavistock without being Duke of Bedford, for instance, so information on the former title should be in the latter's article, but there should be separate articles on, for instance, Earl of Arundel and Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Cardigan and Marquess of Ailesbury, Earl of Bedford and Duke of Bedford. If titles share an article, the article should be at the highest title, except when the lesser title is the one currently extant: Duke of Bolton, for instance, should redirect to Marquess of Winchester, since the latter is extant.
The history should note the creation or creations of the titles in question, and should also indicate if the circumstances under which any peerage of a previous creation ended: forfeiture, extinction, etc. The article should note the subsidiary titles, and any courtesy titles used.
The list could be formatted as follows, with Earl of Anyplace a title associated with Duke of Somewhere, the article being at "Duke of Somewhere":
The years listed next to the titles are the years of creation and extinction etc. (if applicable), while the remaining are birth and death dates.
Use: c. for circa; b. for born; d. for died; and Second creation, etc, to indicate more than one creation of the same title.
After the list, the current heirs should be listed, in this format:
Heir Apparent: A B C D, Marquess of Elsewhere (b. 1930)
Lord Elsewhere's Heir Apparent: A B C D, Earl of Anywhere (b. 1960)
A peer's article should be at "Name, (Ordinal) Rank (of) Title (for example, John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk; William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw; Charlie Falconer, Baron Falconer of Thoroton), except in cases where the title is never (or hardly ever) used. This normally applies in two situations:
In both cases, the peerage can be used when necessary for disambiguation, and should always be preferred over parenthetical disambiguation (Douglas Hogg, 3rd Viscount Hailsham, not "Douglas Hogg (politician)" or similar).
Notes:
Articles on peers should start with the peer's full name and highest title(s) in bold, followed by linked authorised post-nominal letters, separated from the name and each other by commas, and then the dates of birth and death in brackets as usual. For example, the article on Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, should start:
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS (c. 1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was...
As the code shows, each set of post-nominal letters links to the appropriate article:
'''Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington''', [[Order of the Garter|KG]], [[Order of the Bath|GCB]], [[Royal Guelphic Order|GCH]], [[Privy Council of the United Kingdom|PC]], [[Royal Society|FRS]] (c. 1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was...
If a peer bore courtesy titles before succeeding, these should be mentioned at the beginning, after the dates of birth and death. For example, the article on a fictional peer might begin:
John Henry William Smith, 6th Marquess of Somewhere, KG, PC (born 22nd March 1932), styled Viscount Anywhere until 1954 and Earl of Elsewhere between 1954 and 1983, is...
The styles a peer held over the course of his life should be contained in a "Styles" section of the article. For example, with the fictional peer above:
Notes:
Succession to peerages should be shown by succession boxes, which are created by the appropriate templates (see Template:S-start and Template:Succession box). All peerages with different predecessors or successors should have individual boxes, as should those held at different dates. For example:
Titles should be listed in descending order of seniority (in contrast to succession boxes for offices, which are listed in ascending chronological order).
Succession boxes for offices, when these are held by peers, should refer to them by title, masking a link to the actual article. The style used is "The Earl of Somewhere", "The Lord Elsewhere", etc. In cases where this is ambiguous, where offices have been held successively by successive holder of the same title, the numeral should be added:
For more specific examples, see Template talk:Succession box. See also the guidelines on succession boxes here, which also include examples for peers.
In familial references (when stating who someone's father, mother, brother, etc. was), and in non-contemporaneous references (i.e. references to time periods different to that of the narrative), peers should be referred to as, for example, "the 7th Marquess of Salisbury" (henceforth "the full form"). In other situations, peers should usually be referred to simply as, for instance, "Lord Salisbury" (henceforth "the short form"), both when mentioned in other articles and in their own articles, unless it is important that their exact rank or numeral is stated, in which case the full form should be used (i.e. both the rank and the numeral). Dukes are "the 12th Duke of Devonshire" in their full form and "the [[Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire|Duke of Devonshire]]" otherwise. Second and subsequent reference should be to "Lord Salisbury" or "Salisbury" ("the Duke" or "Devonshire" for Dukes). Their wives have the same form of reference, save that ordinals are obviously omitted and the usage of the title alone should not be used: "Lady Salisbury" or "the Duchess".
Notes:
Peers should appear in lists either in the form used in the article title (substituting a different peerage if appropriate for the time period in question) or by their correct style (see Forms of Address in the United Kingdom). Usual practice is to use the full form for historical lists (e.g. lists of incumbents of a particular office) and the correct style for contemporary lists (e.g. lists of current Privy Counsellors or members of the House of Lords), but usage is by no means consistent, and the form considered most appropriate for a particular list should be used (more graphical lists tend to use the correct style for aesthetic reasons).
Articles on baronetcies should be sorted by surname, i.e. all baronetcies held by people with a particular surname should share an article, regardless of whether they are actually related. The article should be at "Surname baronets", e.g. Mount baronets. They should have a very similar format to articles on peerages (and, indeed, if a noble family held a baronetcy before a peerage, it should be included as if a previous peerage). The article should thus be in the following format:
etc.
Baronets should generally be at their simple name; for example, Robert Peel. When necessary for disambiguation (as is often necessary, as these families tend to reuse names), the baronetcy can be included in the article title in the form "Sir Forename Surname, Ordinal Baronet"; for example, Sir William Mount, 1st Baronet and Sir William Mount, 2nd Baronet. (The 3rd Baronet, Ferdinand Mount, would not be at "Sir Ferdinand Mount, 3rd Baronet" even if he used the title, as it is not necessary for disambiguation.) The baronetcy alone should not be used for disambiguation without the preceding "Sir": "John Smith" or "Sir John Smith, 17th Baronet" are fine, but "John Smith, 17th Baronet" should not be used.
Articles should start with the name and "Ordinal Baronet" in bold, followed as with other people by post-nominal letters. For example:
Sir John Henry Smith, 5th Baronet, VC, MC (1 January 1900 – 31 December 1970) was a British war hero...
Baronets, as with knights, should be referred to as "Sir John Smith", and afterwards as "Sir John" or "Smith". Again as with knights, the "Sir" should be included in the link, even if not in the article title; e.g. [[John Smith|Sir John Smith]]. The numeral and "Baronet" should normally not be included in text (e.g. [[Sir John Smith, 7th Baronet|Sir John Smith]]), except when making familial references or when confusion might otherwise arise.
As with peers, boxes should be used. They should be formatted like this:
The code look like this:
{{s-start}}
{{s-new|creation}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Smith baronets|Baronet]]<br />'''(of London)|years='''1800–1850}}
{{s-aft|after=[[Sir John Smith, 2nd Baronet|John Smith]]}}
{{s-end}}
Currently working on:
Then
The List of extant baronetcies is a list of every current or extant baronetcy, including currently unproven ones. They used to be in separate pages for each kind (NS, UK, etc.), but now are all on one page, with separate tables for each kind. The tables themselves (on the List of extant baronetcies) are ordered strictly by precedence, i.e., the official number in the first column, which is based on the full date of creation.
The "List of baronetcies of . . ." lists are meant to become a complete list of every baronetcy that has ever existed, including not only the current/extant baronetcies, but also all extinct baronetcies and currently unproven and dormant baronetcies.
The two sets of lists therefore are not exactly reflexive; rather, the extant lists are a subset of the Complete lists, and sorted by date.
Where there is a double barrelled name, eg Harbord-Hamond a page should be created called Harbord-Hamond baronets. That page should have [[Category:Baronetcies]] on it, even if it redirects to another name - as Harbord-Hamond redirects to Baron Suffield (but might have redirected to Hamond). It is intended that all family surnames should be listed in [[Category:Baronetcies]].
For alphabetizing, please use the last name listed, e.g., Home-Purves-Hume-Campbell should be in lists at Campbell. This policy is up for discussion on the project's discussion page.
The following are some categories that may be placed on any Wikipedia article relating to baronets. When using, remember to remove the first semi-colon.
There is no consensus that nobility infers automatic notability, and a previous proposal to establish this has failed.
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