ABSTRACT
The concept of hereditary nobility underwent considerable modification in fourteenth-century England. There gradually developed a corporate group with distinctive legal rights and social privileges, the 'peerage of parliament', consisting of some sixty or seventy lords who had individual summonses to parliament. At the end of Edward III's reign ten of these were dukes and earls; the rest were 'barons of parliament' whose titles derived from their receipt of individual summonses to parliament, but were coming to be regarded as creating a hereditary right. From Richard II's accession to the grant of dukedoms to Langley and Woodstock in 1385, Gaunt was the only subject who was a duke, besides holding three earldoms and claiming a kingdom. These solitary eminences neatly corresponded to his domestic and diplomatic roles; then from 1390 he uniquely possessed two duchies. His special social and political stature was more than adequately registered in the hierarchy of peerage.
