William de Morley, 3rd Baron Morley

Baron Morley is an abeyant title in the Peerage of England. On 29 December 1295 William de Morley, lord of the manor of Morley Saint Botolph in Norfolk, was summoned to parliament and was thereby deemed to have become Baron Morley. At the death of the sixth baron in 1443, the barony was inherited by his daughter Alianore de Morley, the wife of Sir William Lovel, who was summoned to parliament as Baron Morley jure uxoris and died in 1476, shortly before her. It was then inherited by their son Henry Lovel, following whose death in 1489 it came to his sister Alice Lovel, who was married to Mr Parker. The title was thenceforward held by her descendants the Parker family until 1697, when on the death of the fifteenth baron without children, the barony fell into abeyance.

It can be no co-incidence that in 1815 John Parker, 2nd Baron Boringdon (1772–1840), of Saltram House in Devon, of the apparently unrelated Parker family which originated from humble origins in North Molton in Devon, on his elevation to the dignity of an earl in 1815, chose the title Earl of Morley, ostensibly referring to his recent purchase of the relatively minor manor of Morley (modern spelling Morleigh) in Devon, midway between Totnes and Kingsbridge. It had become common in the 19th. century for members of the post-mediaeval nobility when elevated further in the peerage to adopt defunct mediaeval titles which bore some ostensible link to the family, thus lending it an air of great antiquity. Such actions were often adopted in all innocence based on erroneous pedigrees produced by genealogists overly eager to please their patrons. An example is the Russell family, Dukes of Bedford, of which a younger son when himself elevated to the peerage adopted the title "Baron Russell of Kingston Russell", an ancient Dorset manor with which his family had in fact no connection.

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