Where “The Much Honoured” comes from

“For the much honoured The Laird of Grant,” wrote the Commission of the General Assembly on 12 May 1649. The Laird of Grant held his lands in barony, and the phrase is the ancestor of the prefix Scottish barons use today. This paper sets out the evidence: a courtesy of the seventeenth century, given to barons by peers and by the Kirk; its spoken counterpart, “your Honour”; its record by Innes of Learney as “the old prefix of a laird or chief”; and its place now, beside the peer’s “Right Honourable”.

Key findings, checked against the records

1576barons addressed “Right Honourable” by peers, 16th–17th centuriesThe evidence

1616the earliest Scottish letter found addressed “much honoured”The evidence

1938Innes of Learney records it as “the old prefix of a laird or chief”The evidence

“or if a baron, ‘The Much Honoured, the Baron of Dunfallandy’”

Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, Lord Lyon, 1952It shows a Lord Lyon giving the baron’s form.

A courtesy of the seventeenth century

“Much honoured” began as a courtesy of address, not as the mark of a rank. The earliest Scottish letter found with it is dated 6 January 1616, from the laird of Drumlanrig “To his muche honoured and worthie Brother, Jhone Murray of Lochmaben”.¹ Through the seventeenth century it went to people of many conditions. Sir William Alexander wrote in 1628 “To my noble and much honoured lord my Lord Earle of Monteith”, a peer;² the Commission of the General Assembly wrote in 1647 “To the much honoured The Laird of Libbertoun”;³ and a letter of 1694 is addressed to “the Much Honored William King, of Newmil[n]. Provost of Elgine”.⁴

Even so, writers already used it to set a laird beside a peer. John Taylor, travelling in the Highlands in 1618, writes of “the truely noble and Right Honourable Lords”, the Earl of Mar among them, “with my much honoured, and my best assured and approved friend, Sir William Murray, Knight, of Abercarny”.⁵ The earl is Right Honourable; the knight and laird is much honoured.

Barons addressed as “much honoured”

A search of ninety-one printed volumes of Scottish family papers and correspondence found sixty-five dated examples between 1615 and about 1750. Twenty-three of them, about a third, were addressed to men who held lands erected into a barony: the lairds of Grant, Culloden, Keir, Grandtully, Bemersyde, Niddrie, Balnamoon and Invercauld.⁶

Peers used it of barons. Lord Gordon wrote on 8 April 1645 “For my much honoured cusein, the Laird off Grant”.⁷ The Earl of Callander wrote in 1652 “For the much honnored Sir George Stirling of Keir, Knicht”, the Marquis of Montrose in 1658 “For the much honored Sir George Stirling of Keare”, and the Earl of Wintoun in 1664 “For the much honoured, the Laird of Keir”.⁸ So did the Kirk: the Commission of the General Assembly addressed its letter of 12 May 1649 “For the much honoured The Laird of Grant.”⁹

The phrase could also stand alone before the name, as a prefix does: “For the much honoured the Leard of Culoden” in 1695, “the much honoured the Laird of Niddrie” in 1698, “To the much honoured the Laird of Ballnamoon” in 1708, and “For the much honoured the Laird of Grant and Luss, at Edinburgh” in 1719.¹⁰ Tradesmen used it too. The accounts of 1739 and 1740 for the barony of Invercauld are headed “The Much Honoured the Laird of Invercald”.¹¹

In all of these the baron is addressed as the laird of his lands, or by his name. No example was found before 1800 that joins “much honoured” to the words “Baron of”.

Not the only form

The same barons were addressed in other ways as well, often in grander terms. Three days after Lord Gordon’s letter, another reached the same man “For the right honorable the Laird of Grant”, and in 1646 two letters from the exiled court at St Germain were directed “To our trustie and wellbeloued the Baron of Grant”.¹² The barons of Kilravock were “the richt honorable and my gud frind and kin the baron of Kilraok” to the Countess of Crawford in 1576, “the rycht honorabill the Barrone of Kylraok” to the Earl of Crawford in 1579, “the richt honorable the Barrone of Kilraik” to the Marquis of Argyll in 1642, and Right Honourable again, as “The Baron of Kilravock”, in a kinsman’s letter of 1685.¹³ One of the Invercauld tradesmen headed his account “The Right honourable Laird of Envercall”.¹¹

A baron of the seventeenth century might therefore be Right Honourable, Honourable or Much Honoured, as the writer chose. No rule fixed one of them to his rank. Where an address names him as “the Baron” and gives a prefix, though, it is Honourable or Right Honourable; “much honoured” goes with “the Laird of”. “The Right Honourable” has since become the settled prefix of peers below a marquess, which is why the baron’s prefix today is the other one. On how the barons themselves were named and titled, see Baron of X, or X of Y?

“Your Honour”

The written prefix had a spoken counterpart. A man who was “honourable” on the cover of a letter was “your Honour” inside it, as a lord was “your Lordship” and a duke “your Grace”. David Brodie of Brodie wrote to the Laird of Grant on 1 June 1626, “I man intreat your honour to doe him this last fawour”, to come to his father’s funeral, and signed himself “Youris honouris weill affectionat to be commandit with service”.¹⁴ George Stirling ended a letter of 1673 to the Laird of Keir “Rycht Honnorabill, your Honouris humble servant”.¹⁵ The Synod of Ross, rebuking the Baron of Kilravock in 1709 for a meeting of “the Barrons called by your Honor” that ran on into the Sabbath, still signed “Your honor’s to be commanded in our Lord”.¹⁶ A London merchant wrote to a later Baron of Kilravock in 1754, “Your Honour can hardly conceive the spirits I have on the receipt of any of your favours”,¹⁷ and in 1776 the tenants of Glenshee began their petition to the Laird of Invercauld “May it pleas your Honour”.¹⁸

A formal letter to a baron opened in the same key. The Marquis of Huntly wrote to the Laird of Grant on 22 December 1677, “Much honored Sir”; General Mackay wrote to Campbell of Calder from The Hague that October, “Much Honored Sir”; and Lord Lovat began a letter of 1714 to the Laird of Culloden “Much honoured and D^r Sir”.¹⁹

Like the prefix, it was not the barons’ alone. Petitions of the 1650s in the Culloden papers address the authorities as “your Honours”, and a letter of 1624 calls the same Laird of Grant “your virscheip”, your worship.²⁰ But neighbours, ministers, merchants and tenants all used it of barons for a century and a half. Sir Walter Scott gave it to his Baron of Bradwardine, whose bailie assures him that the people “would certainly obey his honour’s orders”.²¹

Recorded by a Lord Lyon

The phrase passed out of ordinary use, and it was Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, Lord Lyon from 1945 to 1969, who put it on record. In The Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland, first published in 1938, he wrote: “The old prefix of a laird or chief was ‘The Much Honoured’”.²² The guide Titles and Forms of Address carried the same point in its edition of 1955, and named the barons: “The prefix of Chiefs and Laird-Barons was, in writing, The Much Honoured; in address, Your Honour”, adding that these forms “have latterly been overlooked in Scotland”.²³

In the edition of Frank Adam’s Clans, Septs and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands that Innes revised as Lord Lyon in 1952, the passage gives the baron’s form in terms. Letters, he says, “should be and still sometimes are addressed, e.g. ‘The Much Honoured, the Laird of Glenfalloch,’ or if a baron, ‘The Much Honoured, the Baron of Dunfallandy’”.²⁴ Debrett’s Correct Form of 1970 says the same of the prefix to which chiefs, chieftains and lairds are entitled, “‘The Much Honoured’, which is not much used today”.²⁵

The baron’s prefix today

Barons kept it in use. Debrett’s Distinguished People of Today for 1989 prints “The Much Honoured Baron of Leslie”.²⁶ The Convention of the Baronage of Scotland stated the rule on its website by 2002: “The use of the prefix ‘The Much Hon.’ for barons, chiefs, chieftains and lairds is correct, but used only in the most formal circumstances.”²⁷ Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage for 2003 agrees that in writing “The Much Honoured the Baron of Pitscot” is correct, and formal.²⁸

It is a prefix of custom. The Lyon Court’s patents and its Rolls in the Gazette give a baron his name and his barony without it, as Barons in the Lyon Court’s own words and Officially Recognised show.

In present use it also does a plain job: it marks a baron off from a peer. The prefixes of the peerage are settled. Titles and Forms of Address gives them: dukes are “The Most Noble”, marquesses “The Most Honourable”, and other peers “The Right Honourable”.²⁹ A Lord of Parliament is therefore “The Right Honourable”, and a baron in the Baronage of Scotland “The Much Honoured”, the same pairing John Taylor made in 1618. The same guide sets out the forms for a duke, and the baron’s run parallel to them, each at its own level:³⁰

For the forms in full, see Proper Address for Scottish Barons.

What the record shows

“The Much Honoured” is four centuries old in Scotland. Barons were addressed by it from the 1640s, by peers and by the General Assembly, though never by it alone: lairds, chiefs and knights shared it, and the barons were as often Right Honourable. It fell out of everyday use, a Lord Lyon recorded it as the old prefix of laird and chief and gave the baron’s form, and the baronage has kept it. With it went the spoken “Your Honour”, as “Your Grace” goes with a duke. Today “The Much Honoured” is the baron’s prefix in formal address, and it tells him apart from the peer.