Roll of the Peerage

The Roll of the Peerage is a public record registering peers in the peerages of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. It was created by Royal Warrant of Queen Elizabeth II dated 1 June 2004, is maintained by the Crown Office within the United Kingdom's Ministry of Justice, and is published by the College of Arms.

On 11 November 1999, the House of Lords Act 1999 received the Royal Assent and took effect, removing the automatic right of hereditary peers to a seat in the House of Lords. Until that date anyone succeeding to a title in the peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain or the United Kingdom and proving succession received a writ of summons to Parliament. All peers receiving such writs were enrolled in the Register of Lords Spiritual and Temporal, a document maintained by the Clerk of Parliaments.

The Register of Lords Spiritual and Temporal was not a complete roll of the peerage. Succession to a title in the Peerage of Ireland had never conferred an automatic right to a writ of summons in the United Kingdom Parliament, although from 1801 to 1922 elected representative peers from the Irish peerage did receive writs. A similar system of representation operated for peers of Scotland from 1707 to 1963, when the right to a writ of summons was extended to all peers of Scotland. However, the Register was an officially compiled roll recording a large proportion of the hereditary peerages of the United Kingdom and its constituent kingdoms.

Under the House of Lords Act 1999, the only peers receiving writs of summons to Parliament are life peers and 92 representatives of the hereditary peerages of England, Scotland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Ninety of these representatives are elected by and among the hereditary peers themselves; the remaining two, the Duke of Norfolk and the Marquess of Cholmondeley, have automatic seats in virtue of their offices of state as Earl Marshal and Lord Great Chamberlain respectively. These 92 and any other hereditary peers who may wish to stand in by-elections for the 90 elected representative seats are the only hereditary peers currently recorded for parliamentary purposes. This falls considerably short of the coverage achieved by the old Register of Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and shorter still of being a full register of hereditary peers.

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