What Is a Marquess?

In the five-degree ladder of the peerage — duke, marquess, earl, viscount, baron — the marquess occupies second place. It is the least familiar of the ranks to most readers, partly because there are comparatively few marquessates and partly because the rank is not created in modern practice, so it rarely appears in the news.

Its position produces a specific and often-missed consequence: an earl, who feels senior, is in fact outranked by a marquess, and the eldest son of a marquess frequently uses a courtesy earldom. Courtesy titles of this kind are styles used by the heir during the holder's lifetime; they are not separate peerages, and their user is not a peer.

Marquess is the standard spelling in the peerage of England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. Marquis is the French form, used also in the peerage of Scotland and retained by a few holders as a matter of family usage. Both are pronounced in the anglicised way by most British speakers, and the choice of spelling follows the individual title rather than a general rule.

The feminine form is marchioness, pronounced as three syllables with the stress on the first. As at every rank, a marchioness may hold the dignity in her own right or, far more usually, hold the style as the wife of a marquess.

The word descends from the Old French marchis, a lord of the marches, the border territories where the risk of incursion was greatest and where the Crown therefore needed a trusted and well-armed magnate. The name of the rank thus records a function rather than a place, which is why it does not attach to any particular part of the country.

As an English peerage rank it was introduced later than the earldom and around the same period as the dukedom, and it was received with some suspicion by earls who resented a new degree inserted above them. It never became numerous. Because the rank is not used for new creations today, the marquessates in existence are inherited dignities of considerable age, and their current standing is best confirmed through the Roll of the Peerage rather than secondary lists.

The House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 18 March 2026, and on the end of the 2024–26 session on 29 April 2026 hereditary peers ceased to sit or vote in the House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage. The House now comprises life peers together with the Lords Spiritual, who sit as bishops of the Church of England and are not peers. The titles themselves were not abolished: a duke remains a duke and a baroness remains a baroness, and the ranks, their forms of address and their place in the order of precedence continue exactly as before. What changed is the constitutional consequence of holding a hereditary peerage, not the dignity itself.

Because every existing marquessate is hereditary, the practical effect on this rank is uniform: no marquess sits in the House of Lords by virtue of the marquessate. The rank, its precedence and its forms of address continue unchanged, and holders remain entered on the Roll of the Peerage.

A title of honour is a dignity, not a deed. Holding a peerage does not by itself prove ownership of land, a house or an estate, does not confer public office or any governmental authority, and does not make its holder a representative of the Crown. The territorial word in a title — 'of Somewhere' — is a designation attached to the dignity, and in many modern creations it records a connection rather than a possession.

Three separate confusions cluster around this rank. The first is the spelling, addressed above. The second is with the Continental marquis or margrave, which are related in etymology but belong to other national systems with their own rules; a French marquis is not a British peer, and the two should not be treated as interchangeable in English writing.

The third is the assumption that rarity implies seniority beyond the ladder. A marquess ranks second, full stop: not between duke and royal, and not above a duke because there are fewer marquessates than earldoms. Rank order in the peerage is fixed by degree, not by scarcity.

The peerage is only part of what is loosely called the nobility. Baronets and knights are not peers, hold no peerage rank, and are addressed as Sir; the wider gentry hold no title at all in the peerage sense. Royalty is a separate category above the peerage rather than the top of it. Keeping these distinctions clear is essential to describing a marquess accurately.

Nor is the rank an office. A marquess holds no jurisdiction over the marches or anywhere else, exercises no public authority, and represents no government body. The dignity is honorific, and any suggestion otherwise should be treated as an error.

Etiquette for this rank is covered in the Brattleby forms of address index, which sets out the spoken form, the salutation, the envelope and the treatment of a marchioness alongside the other degrees. This page confines itself to what the rank is and where it stands.