A viscount ( , for male) or viscountess (, for female) is a title used in certain countries for a nobility of varying status. The status and any domain held by a viscount is a viscounty.
In the case of French viscounts, the title is sometimes left untranslated as vicomte .
The title was in use in Normandy by at least the early 11th century.
Similar to the Carolingian use of the title, the Normans viscounts were local administrators, working on behalf of the duke. Their role was to administer justice and to collect and revenues, often being castellan of the local castle. Under the Normans, the position developed into a hereditary one, an example of such being the viscounts in Bessin. The viscount was eventually replaced by , and provosts.As a rank of the British peerage, it was first recorded in 1440, when John Beaumont was created Viscount Beaumont by King Henry VI. The word viscount corresponds in the UK to the Anglo-Saxon sheriff (root of the non-nobiliary, royal-appointed office of sheriff). Thus, early viscounts originally received their titles from the monarch, and not hereditarily; they eventually tended to establish hereditary principalities in the wider sense. The rank is a relatively late introduction to the British system, and on the evening of her coronation in 1838, Queen Victoria recorded in her diary an explanation for this by then-Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (himself a viscount):
I spoke to Ld M. about the numbers of Peers present at the Coronation, & he said it was quite unprecedented. I observed that there were very few Viscounts, to which he replied "There are very few Viscounts," that they were an old sort of title & not really English; that they came from Vice-Comites; that Dukes & Barons were the only real English titles;—that Marquises were likewise not English, & that people were mere made Marquises, when it was not wished that they should be made Dukes.
In British practice, the title of a viscount may be a place name, a surname, or a combination: examples include Viscount Falmouth, Viscount Hardinge and Viscount Colville of Culross. Some viscounts in the peerage of Scotland were traditionally styled "The Viscount of X", such as the Viscount of Arbuthnott. In practice, however, very few maintain this style, instead using the more common version "Viscount X" in general parlance, for example Viscount of Falkland who is referred to as Viscount Falkland.
A British viscount is addressed in speech as Lord X, while his wife is Lady X, and he is formally styled "The Right Honourable The Viscount X". The children of a viscount are known as The Honourable Forename Surname, with the exception of a Scottish viscount, whose eldest child may be styled as "The Honourable Master of X".
However, the son of a marquess or an earl can be referred to as a viscount when the title of viscount is not the second most senior if those above it share their name with the substantive title. For example, the second most senior title of the marquess of Salisbury is the earl of Salisbury, so his heir uses the lower title of Viscount Cranborne.
Sometimes, the son of a peer is referred to as a viscount even when he could use a more senior courtesy title which differs in name from the substantive title. Family tradition plays a role in this. For example, the eldest son of the marquess of Londonderry is Viscount Castlereagh, even though the marquess is also the Earl Vane.
On occasion, the title of viscount may be the courtesy title used for the grandson of a duke, provided that he is the eldest son of the duke's eldest son. This is because the eldest son of the duke will be given the second-highest title of his father (marquess or earl), and so the third-highest is left for his eldest son. It is possible for the great-grandson of a duke to hold the courtesy title of viscount if the duke's eldest son has the courtesy title marquess and his eldest son, in turn, uses the title of earl.
In Spain, nobles are classified as either Grandee of Spain (Grandes de España), as titled nobles, or as untitled nobles. A grandee of any rank outranks a non-grandee, even if that non-grandee's title is of a higher degree, thus, a viscount-grandee enjoys higher precedence than a marquis who is not a grandee.
In the kingdom of Spain the title was awarded from the reign of Felipe IV (1621–65; Habsburg dynasty) until 1846.
However, in such case titles of the etymological Burgrave family (not in countries with a viscount-form, such as Italian burgravio alongside visconte) bearers of the title could establish themselves at the same gap, thus at generally the same level. Consequently, a Freiherr (or Baron) ranks not immediately below a Graf, but below a Burggraf.
Thus in Dutch language, Burggraaf is the rank above Baron, below Graaf ( i.e., Count) in the kingdoms of the Netherlands and of Belgium (by Belgian law, its equivalents in the other official languages are Burggraf in German language and vicomte in French language).
The Japanese cognate () () was the fourth of the five peerage ranks established in the Meiji period (1868–1911). The Japanese system of nobility, , which existed between 1884 and 1947, was based heavily on the British peerage. At the creation of the system, viscounts were the most numerous of all the ranks, with 324 being created compared to 11 non-imperial princes or dukes, 24 marquesses, 76 counts and 74 barons, for a total of 509 peers.Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, p. 391.
Other equivalent titles existed, such as:
Another prominent fictional viscount is Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, one of the love interests in Gaston Leroux's classic novel Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, first published in 1910. He is a notable viscount in France and a patron of the Opera Populaire, the fictional opera house based on the real Palais Garnier. When Raoul marries Christine Daaé she becomes the Vicomtesse de Chagny.
|
|