WE CONTINUE TO RECEIVE requests for information about "reliable", "reputable", "honest", "real" traders, brokers, merchants dealing in "feudal titles". Invariably these requests explain that the enquirer has a genuine love of history and wishes to be associated with some tangible part of our island story. Despite our often caustic comments on the trade in "titles", we do sympathise with the sentiments of our correspondents and, indeed, we are willing to help where we can. However, we shall do nothing to help merchants who sell bogus titles. Nor shall we acquiesce in the propagation of their false claims about what titles or "titles" allow. On the contrary, we shall do everything we can to expose their chicanery, and now take this opportunity to repeat here again that owning a manorial lordship, even a genuine one, does not carry with it the right to be addressed as a lord. This is an official comment ~

Lordships of Manors Misleading advertisements for lordships of manors sometimes appear in the press. A manorial lordship is not an aristocratic title, but a semi-extinct form of landed property. Lordship in this sense is a synonym for ownership. According to John Martin Robinson, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and co-author of The Oxford Guide to Heraldry ~ "Lordship of this or that manor is no more a title than Landlord of the Dog and Duck". It cannot be stated on a passport, and does not entitle the owner to a coat of arms. It is an extract from the website of the British Embassy in Washington, DC.

We have been asked to publish and to keep updated a list of the "titles" merchants we can unconditionally recommend. Here it is ~

(Unfortunately, there is no one we can yet recommend.)

And here is a list of the names, most of which have been sent to us for our opinion, and none of which we have been able to recommend for any type of transaction ~

This list has been temporarily censored

Caveat Emptor ~ Manorial Titles

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© 2000 The Baronage Press and Pegasus Associates