Patrick Stopford, 9th Earl of Courtown, sips on his pint in a small bar tucked away near the House of Lords, as he contemplates the looming end of an era.
Known in Westminster as Patrick Courtown, he is the Conservative Party’s deputy chief whip in the Lords and a 45-year veteran of the British parliament. He is also one of 92 hereditary peers whose seats will soon be abolished under legislation the UK’s Labour government has pledged to ram through.
“The record shows I’ve devoted over half a lifetime to this house,” says the genial Courtown (70), who inherited his seat from his father along with his title, derived from lands his family owned in Wexford. It will be an “emotional wrench” to leave the Lords, he says. Courtown, London-born but with an easy Hibernian manner, revels in the political nitty-gritty of lawmaking. He shall miss it.
“If I’m evicted from this place, I think I’ll travel,” he says, his eyes brightening as he swings from serious to sanguine. “I haven’t done a lot of travelling. I’ve never even been to North America. That’s what I’m going to do – three or four months in loads of wacky places.”
As well as being among the 92 peers heading for the exit, Courtown is also part of an even smaller group in the Lords whose stories are nearing denouement: the handful of hereditary peers with titles from the Republic – his family owned Marlfield House near Gorey, where he spent summers. It is now a hotel; Courtown sold it in the 1970s.
The 22 appointed life peers from the North will be unaffected by Labour’s purge of inherited seats. So will many other life peers from Britain with strong Irish links, such as Labour’s chief whip Roy Kennedy (Lord Southwark), whose parents are both from the west.
But as for hereditary peers in the upper house with direct links to the Republic, the cohort including Courtown and the Earl of Cork, the Lord High Steward of Ireland, the Earl of Arran, the Earl of Clancarty and the Baron of Henley are among the last of the Irish Lords.
“The Irish influence on the house won’t fully disappear when hereditary peers are abolished,” says Courtown. “But some of the historical connections to Ireland will.”
The upper house of parliament in Westminster, a bastion of British nobility, remains festooned with conspicuous links to Ireland and the Republic. The Irish harp is still part of the royal standard, the flag of the British monarch, and so can be seen stitched all over the sovereign’s gilded throne in the Lords. It is also carved into walls all around the Palace of Westminster.
I’ve never had any difficulty from Irish people, ever. It’s always been live and let live’
— Patrick Courtown
St Patrick, St Brigid and St Columba still look down from stained glass above the famous Central Lobby, close to the Lords. Paintings of Home Rule debates hang in corridors.
There are still about 130 existing hereditary titles in the Irish Peerage. Most holders do not sit in the House of Lords, such as the Duke of Leinster, Maurice Fitzgerald; the Marquess of Waterford, Henry Beresford; and Alexander Feilding, the Earl of Desmond, a title historically linked to Munster. But he also holds the title of the Grand Carver of England, a hereditary role in the royal household that means he carves the king’s meat at official dinners.
Royal processions are usually led by the Lord High Steward of Ireland, one of the UK’s Great Officers of State, who is also Earl of Waterford and Earl of Shrewsbury, an English title. The Lord High Steward of Ireland traditionally bears the Curtana, the blunt-tipped Sword of Mercy, at royal coronations. However, the current holder, Tory peer Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, was suspended from the House for nine months over a lobbying scandal at the end of 2022, so was unable to carry out the role at the May 2023 coronation of King Charles. In his place, former Tory MP Penny Mordaunt bore the sword.
Although there are several peers with titles from the Republic, technically they must sit in the House of Lords on British titles – Courtown, for example, is also the Baron of Saltersford in the Cheshire Peak District. But they are always referred to in Westminster by their Irish earldoms, which are the more senior titles. Stopfords have been earls of Courtown since 1762.
The incumbent Courtown agrees it may sound anachronistic to Irish people that members of Britain’s legislature are listed there under inherited titles linked to centuries-old earldoms in a republic that won independence over 100 years ago.
“I’ve seen it with my Irish friends,” he says. “They always introduce me as Patrick Stopford, even though I go by Patrick Courtown. But I’ve never had any difficulty from Irish people, ever. It’s always been live and let live.”
He became the 9th Earl at 21 when his father died. He recalls drinking in a pub in Inch, Co Wexford, soon afterwards. A local man asked him: “Are you the new lord now?”
“I told him: ‘Yes, but I think those days are long gone, aren’t they?’ He laughed and said he wasn’t so sure. There’s a funny love-hate relationship there between Irish people and Anglo titles.”
Another of the hereditary peers whose time in the Lords will be up when Labour’s legislation goes through is the 15th Earl of Cork and Orrery, Jonathan Boyle, who goes by Jonathan Cork.
A former British navy submarine commander who later went into the sugar business, the 79-year-old was elected to the Lords as a Crossbench (independent) representative by other hereditary peers in 2016, upon the death of another. Labour had first tried to abolish hereditaries under Tony Blair, but a 1999 deal saw 92 retained – it is this replenished group that Keir Starmer’s government wants out.
“I wish it [the abolition] wasn’t happening. It [inherited seats] is a difficult precept for people to accept. But so is the House of Lords. A mostly-appointed House is open to abuse,” says Cork. Courtown, too, agrees the Lords is used by prime ministers for “patronage”.
“Yet our system is built on the primacy of the House of Commons,” says Cork. “So to retain primacy over the Lords, then the Lords cannot be fully elected. If it is, it will seek power to represent those who have elected it. It has to stay in some way appointed.”
Cork’s ancient ancestor, Richard Boyle, was a Kent lawyer who moved to Ireland in 1588 to work in the British-administered civil service. He became a tax collector and, eventually, extremely rich.
“I have to admit, he probably made his money from misdirecting taxes or swiping 10 per cent or whatever they did in those days,” says the peer, a thoughtful and, occasionally, disarmingly honest custodian of his family’s heritage.
Richard Boyle, who was ennobled in 1620 as the 1st Earl of Cork, bought 12,000 acres across Munster from Sir Walter Raleigh, becoming the biggest landowner in the region. The family’s portfolio once included Myrtle Grove in Youghal and Lismore Castle in Waterford. Much of the Cork holdings later moved to the Devonshire family through marriage of an only daughter – women do not inherit earldoms or other ennobled titles from their fathers. Only sons do.
The Orrery earldom, derived from lands around Charleville in Cork, was later joined with the Cork title, whose holders eventually retreated back to Britain as independence dawned.
Earlier branches of the family fought to retain Protestant dominance over Catholics, and the Corks were also pioneers of the plantation of Munster, which didn’t endear them to locals. While freely acknowledging the complex impact his family had on the region, Jonathan Cork says the family over the centuries also helped to build towns such as Bandon and created industries.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, the Corks have been in “disposal mode”, he says, although the current earl retains a few assets in Cork. He concedes the family became “persona non grata”.
‘”Anglo-Irish” is also a form of republican disparagement that was put on people with English connections’
— David Roche
Yet now, even though he has never lived in Ireland, Cork declares an affection for the place that will always be a part of him. He shares family photos of him with his wife Rebecca and their children, all full of smiles, on various trips to the southwest.
“There is still a close blood relationship between the Irish and British,” he says, while acknowledging the historical complexity of those bonds. “I’m not really Irish at the roots, but I am proud of my Irish connections. It’s an emotional thing you can hang your hat on.”
Sir David O’Grady Roche (77), Baronet of Carass in Limerick – his branch of the family hails from Carlow – grew up in Ireland before leaving for Britain in his early 20s. His father, who had post traumatic stress syndrome following wartime service as a submarine commander, was eventually forced to sell their home, Aghade Lodge, near Tullow.
Roche (he dropped the O’Grady name in England) later became a chartered accountant and wealthy property developer in London, who was among the first to try to redevelop Battersea Power Station in the 1980s. He is not a member of the House of Lords – baronets inherit the title “Sir” but remain commoners. But he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the strata of British nobility and how they intersect with Ireland. He also dislikes the “Anglo-Irish” term applied to those, like him, with titles.
“I am Irish,” says Roche. “I am also a United Irishman. There are certain people who are seen as English in Ireland, and Irish in England. But ‘Anglo-Irish’ is also a form of republican disparagement that was put on people with English connections.”
Sometimes the disparagement can flow both ways, however. The late Arthur Gore, 8th Earl of Arran, a title linked to the Aran Islands, was a peer and controversial newspaper columnist. In the early 1970s, with the Troubles in full flow, he lambasted Irish people in a column in the Evening Standard: “I loathe and detest the miserable bastards ... May the Irish, all of them, rot in hell.”
Such sentiments are almost never encountered now. Roche is an associate member of the Irish Peers Association, established to further the interest of Irish peers in the House of Lords, but now mainly a social club. The association’s secretary is Shane Jocelyn, styled Viscount Jocelyn, the 30-something heir to the Earl of Roden, an Irish peerage whose holder sold the freehold of Dundalk in 2007.
Jocelyn was born and raised in Cashel in Connemara, where his 87-year-old father, Robert Jocelyn, the 10th Earl of Roden, still lives. The younger Jocelyn, although “Irish through and through” and schooled in Meath and Galway, also grapples with dual identity perceptions of his Britishness. He says he sometimes feels as if he “falls between two stools”.
He will become Earl of Roden after his father. Yet even if hereditary peerages were not abolished, he still would not be eligible to seek to sit in the House of Lords – the Rodens have no English titles.
For other hereditary peers, it is not just the end of their term in the House of Lords they must contemplate, but also the likely end of their lineage. Nick Trench, an artist who sits in the Lords as the cross-bench peer Lord Clancarty (historically linked to Ballinasloe), has one daughter, who cannot inherit his earldom. He truly is one of the last of the Irish Lords.
Trench’s wife, British journalist Victoria Lambert, has campaigned for years for women to be allowed inherit titles. He, meanwhile, appears resigned to what is to come. He supports the UK government’s intention to remove the principle of inherited Lords' seats, even if it costs him his own seat.
“I inherited all this fascinating history, but I am much more interested in today,” says Trench, an ardent remainer in the Brexit debate and an advocate for a return to the single market at least.
“I have no land or financial interests in Ireland. But I do have a precious Irish passport – my grandfather on my mother’s side was born in Ireland. I am jealous of Ireland, as part of the European Union. It would be lovely if British citizens had the same opportunities as the Irish once again.”
The intertwining of Irish and British interests never ends, but only changes.
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