Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Peerage and Baronetage

Hello. I need help with the title of Noble immigration to the United States. Nobility does not define "noble" to include royalty but I don't know what term would be correct. Thank you. Invasive Spices (talk) 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Noble immigration to the United States#Article title

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Frances Burke, Countess of Clanricarde#Requested move 1 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 13:29, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

With the death of Ancilla Dent in October 2025, this title has come out of abeyance as Ancilla's death left her sister Patricia Bence as the sole heir. I have updated the Baron Furnivall title, but I suspect there are many places that need updating throughout wikipedia. New Progressive (talk) 17:10, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think it would be helpful to have a reliable secondary source covering this; I assume Patricia is not yet enrolled as a peer? People unfamiliar with the peerage are likely to argue that this is WP:OR and WP:SYNTH, although an editor citing Debrett's on inheritance of peerages and Burke's or Debrett's that Ancilla and Patricia were the only two heirs to the abeyant barony might argue that this is a "routine calculation" in the loose sense. Choess (talk) 19:22, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Are baronets still automatically notable? Asking for an encyclopedia. Bearian (talk) 22:36, 11 February 2026 (UTC)

We've had a consensus for I think about 2 decades that baronets aren't presumed notable strictly by virtue of their title. First baronets are somewhat more likely to be notable (they rendered some service to the Crown to be granted the title, albeit sometimes a purely financial one). In this case the Complete Baronetage says that "Robert Barr, a Burgess of Glasgow , is said to have been cr[eated] a Baronet 29 Sep. 1628, but no further particulars are known of him". I think in this case I would reverse the direction of a redirect and point the article at Barr baronets, which I would format as a list (of one) like Munro baronets of Lindertis (1825). @Charles Matthews: has been doing most of the work on lists of baronets, recently, and would be well placed to render advice. Choess (talk) 19:17, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

@Bearian: No, baronets aren't automatically notable. Quite commonly these days, the heir to a baronetcy does not formally apply for the title; in other cases (e.g. Ferdinand Mount) he does not use the title. Denis Thatcher was made a baronet but that was the only creation now for six decades. Baronets have become a threatened species therefore. The English Wikipedia is a good place to have coverage of the past baronetcies, but after four centuries some of the holders of the title are unremarkable. Charles Matthews (talk) 07:13, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

In this particular case, I'd agree with the suggestion of a move to Barr baronets. A baronetcy as entity typically is notable, because it occurs in standard reference works, as here in Burke and Cokayne. It can be thought of as having a legal existence, for example here after it became dormant, because there are numerous legal cases precisely about the standing of dormant titles. Charles Matthews (talk) 08:26, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Jane Fellowes, Baroness Fellowes#Requested move 12 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 04:17, 20 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone#Requested move 22 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. TarnishedPath^talk 04:48, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Since our last discussion (in 2017) Leigh Rayment has died - but, as far as I know, we did not notice. [Even a genealogy.com/LeighRayment/bio.htm biography of him now requires Wayback to see the front page - and a trick to save the archive url, which you will need to re-assemble by hand]. Subsequently his website has expired, and the standard named templates have been redirected to archives.

It looks like a full (?) copy of his website is available at https://leighrayment.com.au Can we transition to using this?

Rest in peace, Leigh Rayment. You were sui generis.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough 15:24, 1 March 2026 (UTC).

This move is perhaps of interest to the project, specifically around WP:NCPEER. Thanks. HundredVisionsAndRevisions (talk) 17:43, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Lord Mountbatten#Requested move 10 March 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Jacksonvil (talk|contribs) 22:27, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Is the reader better served by a page like this which lists baronetcies of three creations, or by a set index from which they are directed to three separate pages? Does this project have a guideline on this?

I see that @Charles Matthews has made similar changes for other baronetcies - picking a random example from Category:Set index articles on titles of nobility I find this edit changing it from a comprehensive article to a SIA. It seems to me that the reader would find a comprehensive article more helpful, but I thought I would enquire here where the experts on baronetcies are to be found. (I'm not a peerages expert, but was alerted to changes which linked to Ripley Castle - though I now notice that my involvement there was to redirect the castle to the village in 2008, before someone else created the article on the castle five years later!) PamD 13:25, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Baronets are generally less notable than peers (not only because they are more junior in the hierarchy, but also because they didn't have seats in the House of Lords), and so there is generally a lot less to say about a particular baronetcy. Splitting up these articles therefore generally results in a lot of short articles that are little more than a brief explanation of why the title was created in the first place followed by a list of names. In addition, the territorial designations of baronetcies are very peripheral and often not known, and so the reader is not particularly assisted by disambiguation based on them. For example, if I know there is a baronet called "Sir James Dalrymple" and go to Dalrymple baronets to work out who he might be, I have to click through to all the pages linked there to find all the Jameses (it turns out he could be the 1st Baronet "of Cranstoun" or the 2nd or 4th Baronets "of Hailes"). It would be far easier for me if they were all listed on one page. I would therefore generally be in favour of the first type of article, unless there is a particular need to separate out a particular creation (e.g. because its holders also at some point held a peerage, and so the reader is better served by a link to the article on that peerage, which can then also list the baronets - see e.g. Shirley baronets and Earl Ferrers). Proteus (Talk) 15:16, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

@PamD:, @Proteus:: The history goes back to around 2008, and there was a burst of activity for four years or so. WP:SETINDEX was split from WP:DAB in 2014, but the idea was around already in 2008, and could have been used.

I would strongly defend the use of set index pages, on multiple grounds. Firstly, anyone who looks can see that the categorisation of the omnibus pages is chaotic. A very moderate article such as Cooper baronets used to have

Category:Baronetcies in the Baronetage of England

Category:Extinct baronetcies in the Baronetage of Ireland

Category:1622 establishments in England

Category:Baronetcies in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom

Category:Extinct baronetcies in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom

Which is just an unfixable mess.

Secondly, around 2012 Motmit started to add navboxes for baronetcies, but there is no sensible way to do that without separate articles. Doesn't scale.

Thirdly, infoboxes. It is not fair to say that there is a lack of content for baronetcies. Besides heraldry, which I have been adding at scale, there is basic data, seat, motto. This is all encyclopedic and in the standard reference books I use. The convention is bare bones for the family history, but surely more can be added. Look at Cokayne's books, for example.

Getting round to referencing, while the initial content added was fairly accurate, it was very largely unreferenced, except in endnotes. And literally no one goes in and references pages with half-a-dozen baronetcies on them. It is an empirical fact that many baronetcies in the long pages have been left without inline referencing for a dozen years. No one even notices.

I understand exactly the point about "Sir James Dalrymple", but you can go to James Dalrymple. There is a link there that makes my argument for me: instead of Dalrymple baronets it could go to Dalrymple baronets of Hailes (1701) and then I think the criticism is dealt with.

I'm going on a bit, but to follow up from that: look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Cooper_baronets and the number of linking pages. Dab pages are supposed to have few incoming links. Pretty much every one of those links is a WP malfunction: a specific baronetcy would be meant. Splitting up the pages is sanity, as far as offering a fix is concerned. Charles Matthews (talk) 16:11, 24 March 2026 (UTC)