Marquess, also spelled marquis (in France and from time to time in Scotland), feminine marchioness, a European title of nobility, ranking in modern times immediately below a duke and above a count, or earl. Etymologically the word marquess or margrave denoted a count or earl holding a march, or mark, that is, a frontier district; but this original significance has long been lost.
In western Europe the Carolingian marchiones or margraves had been royal officials whose duty of defending a frontier might justify an exception being made to the normal rule that no count should hold more than one countship, or county. Their authority was thus not much less than that of a duke; indeed the term Markherzog (“mark duke”) is occasionally found instead of Markgraf (“mark count”). But as conditions on the frontiers or the frontiers themselves were changed, the special importance of the old marches diminished.
As the great French feudatories’ power grew at the expense of the king’s, the old marquisats were practically lost in the great duchies or countships. Then, with the multiplication of little fiefs, minor counts holding several such lordships took to assuming the style of marquis to distinguish themselves. The rank of a marquis, always inferior to that of a duke, was thus in a controversial relation to that of a count. Sometimes a count’s nobility was better established and his fief greater than that of any marquis; sometimes a marquis with a royal patent should obviously have precedence. These ambiguities served to bring the title into disrepute in the 17th and 18th centuries, as being too often self-made or pretentious (the frequency of its unauthorized adoption creating the French verb se marquiser). After the Revolution had abolished the rank, Napoleon did not see fit to revive it. Louis XVIII, reviving it after the Restoration, gave its holders definitive precedence between dukes and counts.
At the end of the Carolingian era, the German kings of the Saxon dynasty, Otto I, Otto II, and Otto III, created a new system of marks in the 10th century, giving particular attention to their eastern frontier. A margrave was expected not only to secure the frontier but also to push it forward into Slav or pagan territory, as did Gero, the Billungs, the margraves of Meissen, and Albert I (the Bear). Some of the margravates developed into hereditary principalities; thus, the Bavarian Ostmark became the duchy of Austria, the Steiermark became the duchy of Styria, and the Saxon Nordmark became the electorate of Brandenburg. Later, however, the margraves of Baden were so styled simply because their ancestors had held the mark of Verona in 11th-century Italy; the Hohenzollern margraves of Ansbach and of Bayreuth likewise echoed their ancestors’ title to Brandenburg.
The frontier mark in Italy long survived as a major territorial unit, though the original Carolingian demarcations were substantially altered. By the 14th century, however, barons and signori had begun to erect their fiefs into marchesati, after which the title grew to have much the same fate as the French marquisat.
The remnant of the original Carolingian Marca Hispanica was merged in the countship of Barcelona. The first Castilian marquesado was that of Villena (on the Valencian frontier), created for Don Alonso of Aragon in 1376; the Pacheco family, who acquired it from the crown in 1445, subsequently became dukes of Escalona. The next senior marquesado was that of Santillana (1445).
The British Isles
In England the Late Latin term marchiones was early applied to the lords of the Welsh marches, but it was there used in a sense descriptive only of their lordships’ location near the frontier without implying that they were superior to other earls. In 1385, however, Robert de Vere, 9th Earl of Oxford, was created Marquess of Dublin with precedence between dukes and earls; the other earls resented this creation, and the patent of the marquessate was revoked in 1386, after its holder had been created Duke of Ireland. John Beaufort, Earl of Somerset, was created Marquess of Dorset and of Somerset in 1397, but he was degraded to his former earldom in 1399. When the Commons petitioned for his restoration as Marquess of Dorset in 1402, he objected because of the strangeness of the term in England. In 1443, however, his son Edmund Beaufort was raised to be Marquess of Dorset, after which the title retained its place in the peerage. As earlier creations became extinct or were raised to dukedoms, the premier marquessate of England in the 20th century was that of Winchester, created in 1551.
Marquessates in the peerage of Scotland (to which no further admissions were made after the Union of Scotland and England in 1707) are Angus (1703), Annandale (1701, now extinct), Argyll (1641, now extinct), Atholl (1676), Bambreich (1681, now extinct), Bowmont and Cessford (1707), Clydesdale (1643), Douglas (1633), Dumfriesshire (1684), Graham and Buchanan (1707), Hamilton (1599), Huntly (1599), Kintyre and Lorne (1701), Lothian (1701), March (1672, now extinct), Montrose (1644, now extinct), Ormond (1488, now extinct, a later creation of the same name now being merged with the crown), Queensberry (1682), Tullibardine (1703), Tweeddale (1694), and Wigtown (1602, now extinct).