Earl of Arundel
oldest extant English peerage
Earl of Arundel is a title of nobility in England, and one of the oldest extant in the English peerage. It is currently held by the Duke of Norfolk, and it is used (along with the earldom of Surrey) by his heir apparent as a courtesy title.
History
The earldom was created in 1138 or 1139 for the French baron William d'Aubigny. Its origin was the earlier grant by Henry I to his second wife, Adeliza of Louvain, of the forfeited honour of Arundel, which included the castle and a large portion of Sussex. After his death, she married William, who thus became master of the lands, and who from about the year 1141 is variously styled earl of Sussex, of Chichester, or of Arundel. His first known appearance as an earl is at Christmas 1141. Until the mid-13th century, the earls were also frequently known as Earl of Sussex, until this title fell into disuse. At about the same time, the earldom fell to the originally Breton FitzAlan family, a younger branch of which went on to become the Stuart family, which later ruled Scotland and England.
A tradition arose that the holder of Arundel Castle should automatically be Earl of Arundel, and this was formally confirmed by King Henry VI. The Earl of Arundel's Dignity and Style Act 1627 (3 Cha. 1.
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This entry incorporates text from “Earl of Arundel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.