Challenge To Heredity Of Earl's Office

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 14

Challenge To Heredity Of Earl's Office

(Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, May 6.

Mr W. W. Hamilton (Labour) is to ask Mr Macmillan in the Commons this week .whether the Government will introduce legislation to abolish the hereditary nature of the office of Earl Marshal and Chief Butler of England, held by the Dukes of Norfolk. The measure, called the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel Estates Bill, is now before the House of Lords where it is likely to pass without opposition. It proposes that Arundel castle should be put in trust for the nation and that entail should be broken. The Duke of Norfolk is Earl Marshal by heredity and premier duke and earl of England. During the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords, Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough, leader of the Opposition, gave a hint that Labour members of Parliament might challenge the hereditary nature of the post when the measure was considered in the Commons. “I think it is likely to be argued in another place that a Bill of this kind is perhaps hardly

suitable for dealing with a question which would strengthen by statute the hereditary position of Earl Marshal,” said Lord Alexander. “Be that as it may, I think it is necessary for us to say on this side of the House that it cannot surely be taken as a fact on record for ever and ever in this House that the hereditary position of Earl Marshal will remain whatever the Government, or whatever kind of regime this country may be working under. “There are many wonderful aspects of the office of Earl Marshal filled with tradition and excellently carried out by the present holder. Of that there is not the slightest complaint or criticism. “But I think it is essential in the passing of the second reading of this Bill, which we will not oppose, to say tfoat perhaps it will be looked on from another point of view in another place by those who have my general political outlook: that we ought not by such a Bill to strengthen permanently by statute the position of a hereditary Earl Marshal.