Trevor-Roper was among the life peers in the first Birthday Honours list recommended by the newly elected Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, in June 1979. He was reluctant to be known as Lord Trevor-Roper. ‘Double-barrelled titles are an invention, and a monopoly, of Wilson ian peers,1 and I don’t want to be in that galère,’ he told Valerie Pearl. There was, he observed, already a Lord Trevor; the title Lord Roper might carry the risk of confusion with the socialist cleric Lord Soper; and under the rules of the College of Arms either peerage title would require him to change his surname to either ‘Trevor’ or ‘Roper’. He preferred to adopt a title, Dacre, that had been held by the Roper family between 1786 and 1794, and by their collateral Trevor descendants between 1851 and 1890. When he consulted Xandra, she was at once enchanted by it. But there was an obstacle, in the form of an existing Lady Dacre. The title, which, as a Plantagenet barony created by writ in the reign of Edward II, passed through the female as well as the male line, had devolved on Rachel (1929–2012), wife of the playwright William Douglas Home. This was the peerage which had once been known as ‘Dacre of the South’: there was a second Dacre barony, Dacre of Gillesland, ‘Dacre of the North’, created in 1661 and held by the Earl of Carlisle (father of Trevor-Roper’s friend George Morpeth).
Chiefswood, Melrose
My dear Blair
I wonder how one becomes a commoner again. It cannot be more of a business than becoming a peer. But I suppose that having begun the latter process one must complete it before beginning the counter-process of renunciation. I am having a dreadful time with the baroness (suo jure) Dacre. Why did I ever mention to Xandra that we once possessed that ancient, musical, romantic title? Why did I not persuade her to be content with the less romantic, but comfortable title of Lady Mold?2
It all began when you (bird of ill omen) were in my house: when Robert Beddard1 rang to say that there was a message in the Lodge at Oriel to ring Lady Dacre. Scenting trouble in the wind, I did not ring her. She had already agreed that morning, and that was enough for my purposes. I went up to London next morning, registered under my new title in the House of Lords, lunched merrily at the Beefsteak Club, and then presented myself at the College of Arms to sign my application for the royal patent. When I met Garter,2 he said, ‘There has been a development. Lady Dacre has rung. She objects.’
‘Impossible!’ I exclaimed: ‘she has already agreed over the telephone to me this morning.’ This shook him, for the Baroness had prudently omitted to mention this inconvenient fact in her conversation with him. ‘Anyway’, I went on, ‘let her object. Objection will get her nowhere. What can she do? I suppose she can appeal to the Earl Marshal’s court, but short shrift will she get there …’ and I fingered the letter I had elicited from the Earl Marshal himself, expressing ‘delight’ at my proposed title. I knew that the Earl Marshal’s court had met only once, in 1737: I did not see it meeting again on this issue.3
Garter agreed that this was unlikely, but he feared that Lady D might write letters of protest to the Prime Minister or the Queen, which would then be referred to him and interfere with his cosy sessions in El Vino. I saw his point; so after having assured myself that she had no locus standi in the matter and could be ignored, I agreed to what in industrial relations is known as ‘a cooling-off period’. Doubtless when she had had the position explained to her—and Garter and I agreed that we would both write emollient and reassuring letters to her—she would see sense …
Next day I returned to Oxford, found the Lady D’s message in Oriel, and telephoned her. She told me that she had been suffering from mussel-poisoning when I had telephoned, and therefore could not be held responsible for anything she had said. I thought it prudent to say very little beyond advising her to wait for my, and Garter’s, letters. Then I packed the car and set off for Scotland.
On arrival I found Xandra in a high state of indignation. Lady Dacre, she said, had rung up and used bullying language to her, which made her now more determined than ever to be the Lady Dacre of the North. Besides, from straws in the wind, she had sensed (correctly, I am sure) that her own bossy sister1 would take Lady Dacre’s side; so it was more than ever necessary to be firm against both of them.
I was not particularly eager for this battle, especially as I was not quite sure of the other Dacres, viz: Lord Carlisle, who, under his earldom, is Baron Dacre of Gilsland,2 and whom, being a friend, I was particularly anxious not to offend. I had got some sort of agreement from him on the telephone; but if Lady D could recant, so could he. Of course neither he nor she has any right to block me (since the College of Arms has agreed (a) that my proposed title prejudices no one and is proper in itself, and (b) that I am a proper person to hold it), but, as you know, I am a man of peace. I do not relish the idea of driving into the House of Lords in a triumphal chariot, over the mangled and bleeding limbs of ancient hereditary peers and peeresses. On the whole, I was eager for peace on that front, and put my trust in the cooling-off period.
Unfortunately the Baroness, who perhaps is not over-employed in other matters, has not cooled off. In fact, she has used the cooling-off period only to hot things up. First, she mobilised her cousin, Lord Hampden,1 who, ‘as titular head of the Brand family’, sent me rather a pompous letter, based on misinformation from her, urging me to desist. The Dacre title, he said, was 650 years old and very beautiful; it belonged to them, the Brand family; and no one else should breach their monopoly (he prudently avoided any mention of Dacre of Gilsland). Two days later came a letter from Lord Carlisle: a charming letter expressing delight that I was taking the title. This lifted my spirits. At least there was peace on that—the more important—front.
But the next letter that I opened soon brought me back to earth. It was from the Baroness, and was not at all charming. In fact it was very stuffy. She told me that it was bad enough that Dacre of Gilsland existed, but if I were to become Dacre of Glanton, their ancient title, of which ‘we as a family [i.e. the Brands] are very proud’, would become ‘common’. I ‘should’ go choose another title. Theirs was ‘over 600 years old’. She realised that ‘there is little that I can do to stop you’, but she would not give in willingly. She was protesting, and this was her protest, and she was writing to Garter ‘to repeat my misgivings’. I have now heard from Garter. From his tortuous circumlocutions and unwillingness to quote, I infer that she has expressed her misgivings to some tune.
Oh dear, what do I do? If I had thought that the lady would make such a to-do, I would never have suggested the title. But now I have gone so far, is it possible to go back? The books are signed, the name enrolled, my ceremonial introduction fixed. The Lord Chancellor has been booked, my sponsors squared, the luncheon invitations have gone out, the robes have been arranged, my pass has been drawn up, my signature recorded. Perhaps all these arrangements, for the sake of peace, can be reversed. But dammit! I then say to myself, why should I go into reverse? And why should the Brands be so ‘proud’, or so jealous, of a mere title, a label, a tuft, a tassel, a coloured bead, a gewgaw, which has been bandied intermittently from family to family for six centuries, without tradition or continuity or distinction (except for murder, litigation and extravagance) or, for the last 250 years, land? They only acquired this pretty toy, in 1829, because a Mr Brand, of whom nothing whatever is known, had married into the Trevor-Ropers (who had themselves acquired it by marrying into the Lennards). Now they behave as if they had owned it for six centuries and had a monopoly of it for ever. A fig for their stuffiness! If Lord Carlisle had objected, that would have been different: the Howards can claim some solid continuity with the medieval Dacres—lands, castles, linear descent; but the Brands, these accidental inheritors who have the insolence to be ‘proud’ of their accidental inheritance …
Of course the real reason is clear to me. Five or so years ago the Brands went to some trouble and expense to call the barony (for the third time) out of abeyance. Naturally they think that they have invested in a monopoly; and equally naturally, they are cross to discover that by the mere technicality of ‘differentiation’ (i.e. by calling myself Dacre of Glanton) I can breach their supposed monopoly. They are clearly determined to make a stink: a stink through which it will be unpleasant to advance, and from which it will be very inconvenient to retreat.
So here I am, still suspended, in my chrysalis state, in a cocoon of heraldic flummery, no longer a common caterpillar like you, not yet a noble butterfly like Lords Briggs, Bullock, Vaizey,1 not to mention Brayley, Kagan, Plurenden, Energlyn, Grade, Weidenfeld, et hoc omne genus.2 Meanwhile a dreadful habit is growing up of calling me Lord Trevor-Roper—precisely the title I wish to avoid. I am thinking of dropping the title altogether outside the House of Lords and continuing, in Oxford at least, to be de facto a commoner; but perhaps this is unfair and confusing to others. However, it’s an ill wind … I have now got some ideas for my university sermon, next term, on ‘The Sin of Pride’: a sermon which I trust you will attend, for your spiritual edification.
You will understand that, what with this aristocratic prise d’armes in darkest Hampshire, and the flurry of opening our garden to the gaping public last Sunday (it rained all day, so not many came to gape), there has been little time for scholarship, and that little has been used up preparing a paper to give at Wolfenbüttel next month (why did I ever agree to that diversion? I already know Wolfenbüttel—have worked in the Herzog August Bibliothek there—and the other papers look desperately dull. But perhaps I can make a sortie to Bonn and pressurise in person that antiquarian bookseller who has sold a vital Mayerne MS—the key, perhaps, which will unlock a whole missing archive and force me to begin my book again de novo).1 However, I am not intellectually entirely idle. Nor, I am sure, are you. I only hope that your intellectual activities are not equally distracted by concern about your contretemps with the police. Of course, if you should be disqualified from locomotion for a year by the beaks and driven to the water-wagon by penitence, your opportunities for scholarship would be enlarged; but the presentation of it might be duller.2 Remember the profound words of Samuel Butler, which got him into such trouble in Victorian England, that ‘the human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given to imagination’.1 But perhaps you had better not quote this apologia to the beaks, as you stand in the dock, accused of driving perfectly with .001% above the permitted level of alcohol in the blood. I still hope that by now you have received a formal note from the police that they have dropped the case. If so, I have a bottle of champagne to share with you in rejoicing.…
yours ever
Hugh