A modest number of titles in the peerage of Ireland date from the
Middle Ages. Before 1801, Irish peers had the right to sit in the
Irish House of Lords, on the abolition of which by the
Union effective in 1801 by an Act of 1800 they elected a small proportion – twenty-eight
Irish representative peers – of their number (and elected replacements as they died) to the
House of Lords at
Westminster. Both before and after the Union, Irish peerages were often used as a way of creating peerages which did not grant a seat in the House of Lords of England (before 1707) or Great Britain (after 1707) and so allowed the grantee (such as
Clive of India) to sit in the
House of Commons in London. As a consequence, many late-made Irish peers had little or no connection to Ireland, and indeed the names of some Irish peerages refer to places in Great Britain (for example, the
Earldom of Mexborough refers to a place in England and the
Earldom of Ranfurly refers to a village in Scotland). Even after the Union, Irish peers could not represent seats in Ireland in the Commons, but if not representative peers then they could be elected in Great Britain: when
Castlereagh inherited the Marquisate of Londonderry in 1821, he automatically ceased being MP for
Down in Ireland but was then elected in
Orford in England. Irish peerages continued to be created for almost a century after the union, although the treaty of union placed restrictions on their numbers: three needed to become extinct before a new peerage could be granted, until there were only one hundred Irish peers (exclusive of those who held any peerage of Great Britain subsisting at the time of the union, or of the United Kingdom created since the union). There was a spate of creations of Irish peerages from 1797 onward, mostly peerages of higher ranks for existing Irish peers, as part of the negotiation of the Act of Union; this ended in the first week of January 1801, but the restrictions of the Act were not applied to the last few peers. In the following decades, Irish peerages were created at least as often as the Act permitted until at least 1856. But the pace then slowed, with only four more being created in the rest of the 19th century, and none in the 20th and 21st centuries. The last two grants of Irish peerages were the promotion of the Marquess of Abercorn (a peerage of Great Britain) to be
Duke of Abercorn in the Irish Peerage when he became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1868 and the granting of the
Curzon of Kedleston barony to
George Curzon when he became Viceroy of India in 1898. Peers of Ireland have precedence below peers of England, Scotland, and Great Britain of the same rank, and above peers of the United Kingdom of the same rank; but Irish peers created after 1801 yield to United Kingdom peers of earlier creation. Accordingly, the Duke of Abercorn (the junior duke in the Peerage of Ireland) ranks between the
Duke of Sutherland and the
Duke of Westminster (both dukes in the Peerage of the United Kingdom). When one of the
Irish representative peers died, the Irish Peerage met to elect his replacement; but the offices required to arrange this were abolished as part of the creation of the
Irish Free State. The existing representative peers kept their seats in the House of Lords, but they have not been replaced. Since the death of the
4th Earl of Kilmorey in 1961, none remains. The right of the Irish Peerage to elect representatives was abolished by the
Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1971. Titles in the
Peerage of the United Kingdom have also referred to places in Ireland, for example
Baron Arklow (created 1801 and 1881) and
Baron Killarney (created 1892 and 1920). Since partition, only places in
Northern Ireland have been used, although the 1880 title "
Baron Mount Temple, of Mount Temple in the County of Sligo", was recreated in 1932 as "Baron Mount Temple, of Lee in the County of Southampton". ==Ranks==