Viscount Taaffe

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Viscount Taaffe , of Corren in the County of Sligo , was a hereditary British title in the Peerage of Ireland . The title has been suspended by the British Crown since 1919 . The 6th Viscount Taaffe was raised to hereditary count by the Habsburgs .

History of the title

Award and subordinate titles

The title was created on August 1, 1628 for Sir John Taaffe . He was the head of the Taaffe family, one of Ireland's leading families since the 13th century. Together with the Viscount title he was also in the Peerage of Ireland, the subordinate title Baron Ballymote , of Ballymote in the County of Sligo, bestowed.

Other titles

His son, the 2nd Viscount, played an important role in the English Civil War . After the end of the Restoration on June 26, 1661, King Charles II raised him to Earl of Carlingford . The earldom became extinct with the childless death of his grandson, the 4th Earl, on November 24, 1738, while the Viscountcy and Barony fell to his second cousin, the 6th Viscount.

This 6th Viscount served, like several other members of his family before, in the Austrian army. Among other things, he was Chancellor of Duke Leopold of Lorraine . He was raised to the hereditary count status by the Habsburg Maria Theresa as sovereign of Austria . Due to anti-Catholic legislation of the British Crown, he had lost his lands in Ireland and in 1769 finally moved his family seat to Ellischau in Bohemia . His great-great-grandson, the 10th Viscount, was expressly confirmed on August 17, 1860 by the Committee for Privileges and Conduct of the House of Lords that, although he and his family were meanwhile Austrian citizens, he was entitled to hold the Irish Viscountcy and Barony. The old Austrian title of count expired with the abolition of the nobility in Czechoslovakia and German Austria in 1918/1919.

Withdrawal of the title in 1919

During the First World War , the 12th Viscount was an Austrian citizen on the side of the Central Powers . Since he thus "carried arms against England", his British title and rights were stripped of his British nobility due to an instruction from King George V of Great Britain and Ireland on March 28, 1919, whereby the Titles Deprivation Act of 1917 formed the legal basis. In addition to Count Taaffe as the 12th Viscount Taaffe , three other persons were affected by this law: Ernst August, Crown Prince of Hanover as Duke of Cumberland and Teviotdale , also Duke Ernst August of Braunschweig-Lüneburg as Prince of Great Britain and Ireland and Duke Carl Eduard von Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as Duke of Albany . Under the Titles Deprivation Act, the male heirs of these persons have the right to ask the British Crown to restore them to these titles, but have not yet made use of them.

With the son of the 12th Viscount, Richard Taaffe (1898–1967), the line of Counts and Viscounts Taaffe in the male line became extinct.

List of Viscounts Taaffe (1628)

literature

Web links