Need help understanding how Dukedoms,Earldoms work?

Question

I am a bit confused about how the Duke,Earl thing works. I know what they are but thats about it. I had always thought that Dukes where assigned counties and the Earls where assigned the cities and small shires with in the counties and one of their duties was Earls collecting the taxes in their Cities and shires, get their 3rd penny out of it, the Dukes would collect the taxes from the Earls of all the cities within their county, take their cut and then give the king his cut ect.. but as i was reading on i learned that there where Dukes of cities (Duke of York) so that distorted my whole veiw of how it worked. Then i was wondering, only an example: If one person was the Duke of Wales and some time after a king made his son Prince of Wales would the Prince also become the Duke of Wales ? if not, what would the Princes role be besides it being traditional.So basicly my question is what were the exact duties of Dukes,Earls, Counts,Marquees pls explain what territories did they get.

Answer 1

A duke received a large area of land called a DUCHY,which he ran for the monarch.The Duke would receive an income from taxes and any businesses he ran as payment.The lesser titled aristocracy would receive much smaller land grants, a kin to a large farm... an earl would make money from running the farm or the business,but he held much less political powers than a duke.

The Prince of Wales is an entirely different designation than the Duke of Wales.The Prince of Wales is also the Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Lord of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland and Earl of Chester. The title "Prince of Wales" can only be used by the male successor to the throne,the female successor remains "princess" until ascending the throne.

Answer 2

it used to be a case of in medievil britain that when the monrach actually had power he couldnt be for example in newcastle if there was a problem that needed his urgent  attention in torquay so they would have earls and things like that. the two most used titles by male princes are prince of wales and duke of york. the title of prince of wales was firsty used in the late 1200's and was bestoed apon the future EDWARD II and was the first heir to the throne to be known as prince of wales. it was actually all because of a welsh prince called llywelyn ab gruffudd and dont laugh at thid but he had a brother called dafydd. duke of york was always usually the second son of the monarch so prince andrew is the 2nd son of QE2 so he is duke of york the queens father was also 2nd son and was also duke of york the queens grandfather was KING GEORGE V and was also 2nd son and duke of york KING JAMES II was also the 2nd son of KING CHARLES I

Answer 3

Dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons (in that order) generally don't have lands as such these days. The only exceptions are the Duchies of Lancaster and of Cornwall, held by the Queen and the Prince of Wales respectively.

Duke, which comes from the Latin "dux", meaning leader, was an import to the isles and is purely a title of honour in most respects. The names might be taken after great counties or regions, but that's just that, a name, not sovereign powers or anything like that.

Earl as well was a title of honour from the Scandinavian "eorl", like "alderman". If takes were collected, it was possibly a landlord-tenant situation, simply because the noble owned lands regardless of his title.

Titles can be created of the same name, with different title ranks, or even of the same name and title. There are two earldoms of Mar (this was territorial long ago and is a peculiar case) but usually additional differencing modifiers are added to disambiguate such peers.

*If* someone was made Duke of Wales (doubtful), the Prince of Wales would not automatically be Duke of Wales. Those would be separate titles. There was a Duke of Ireland (merely a title of nobility) while the King of England at the time ruled as Lord of Ireland, as another example.

On the continent, many of the titles mentioned were or could have been territorials. There were sovereign duchies ruled by dukes in Germany as late as 1918, as well as principalities and many other sorts of states.

Margraves (equal to marquesses) were also to be found, ruling margraviates, rarer toward the end of most of those monarchies in 1918. The German Emperor and Emperor of Austria both had this title to represent some of their territories.

There were, of course, also counts (equal to earls) who ruled counties, most of which ended after 1806 when the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved. Many lordships and such as well.

Just don't confuse these with British peers who mostly have never, ever reigned. Their titles are not territorial, just use the names of territories in some cases.

Edited to address asker's further questions (as best as I can): In England, dukes did not have formal authority over one another. The issue with names of cities in counties and those counties being used as the names for dukes is probably a much later phenomenon that post-dates the greatest rarity of the title of duke and also its significance as an authoritative post. I imagine that issue arose when dukedoms simply became honours. There is no difference between the two, both are simply dukes.

I maintain though that titles usually came after land ownership, or because of it, but not necessarily hand-in-hand. As such , there really is no formal difference between land an earl "controls" or land that a duke "controls".

As for who gets a title when a peer dies, it varies from title to title. Generally, and for the most part, a title is inheritable by males only so a peer will be succeeded by his eldest son, who will be succeeded by *his* eldest son or a brother if he has no sons. It is called agnatic primogeniture. Some titles are created with special rules allowing for a daughter to succeed in the event of an absence of sons of a peer and some have even more exotic remainders (this is what the succession rule for a title is called), for instance placing the line of a younger son ahead that of an older one. These are usually set in place when the title is created and they can usually only be modified by an act of Parliament, such as in the case of the Duke of Marlborough. Scottish titles, however, generally allow for female succession automatically in the absence of sons.