Peer pressure
From Charles Mosley Sir: John Martin Robinson (Books, 22 May) is kind about the well-written architectural descriptions of country seats in the latest Burke's Peerage. So I hope I won't seem ungrateful in putting him right about other points.
He says peerage titles emanate from the Crown, then implies that titles of people who, having bought Scottish wasteland, call themselves the Something of Somewhere don't. Scottish feudal barons and Scottish Chiefs — which, as the passage above shows, he has confused with each other — are both recognised by the Lyon Court. This is as much part of the Crown's judicial arm as is the Queen's Bench in England. Hugh Peskett's prefatory essay makes that clear.
Charles Mosley
Editor-in-chief, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage Knightage London SW1
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