Nobility
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50 free Nobility trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
People often use 'lord' for anyone with a title, but the word hides a strict ladder. In the British peerage a duke stands at the top and a baron at the bottom, while the marquess and the earl hold places in between that most of us could not put in order without help. Add courtesy styles, coronets and inherited offices, and the system becomes a puzzle worth playing. This quiz starts with the questions people really ask: what separates a duke from a lord, which rank comes directly above a baron, and whether a marquess or an earl is the senior title. From there it moves to the peers who left their names on everyday things, the nobles of history and fiction, and the titles used by aristocracies from Japan to Poland. It is written for history fans, period-drama watchers and anyone who has wondered how to address a duke. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing the order of the ranks and a few good stories behind them.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which rank of the British peerage sits directly above a baron and directly below an earl?
Viscount
Viscount is the fourth of the five peerage ranks. It was first granted in England in 1440, about a century after the first dukedom.
Q 02Lesser British peers are addressed as 'My Lord'; which form of address is used for a duke instead?
Your Grace
Your Grace is a style shared with duchesses and archbishops. Peers of the four lower ranks are commonly just 'Lord', which is why a duke is never merely a lord.
Q 03Which lunchtime food is named after an 18th-century English earl said to have eaten it while gambling?
The sandwich
The sandwich honours the 4th Earl of Sandwich. The story goes that meat between slices of bread let him keep playing without a fork or greasy cards.
Q 04Which founding document forbids the United States from granting anyone a title of nobility?
The Constitution
The Constitution bans it in Article I, in the same clause that stops officials accepting gifts or titles from foreign kings without the consent of Congress.
Q 05Which rainy-day footwear takes its name from the British duke who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo?
Wellingtons
Wellingtons began as the duke's own design. He told his London shoemaker to modify the tasselled Hessian boot worn by soldiers of the day.
Q 06The 5th Earl of Carnarvon paid for the excavation that uncovered which Egyptian pharaoh's tomb in 1922?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun's tomb was found by Howard Carter on the earl's money. Carnarvon's home, Highclere Castle, later found fame as the main location for Downton Abbey.
Q 07English never developed a feminine form of the word earl; what is the wife of a British earl called?
Countess
Countess is borrowed from the Continent, where an earl's equal is a count. A countess who holds an earldom in her own right keeps the title, but her husband gets none.
Q 08Earl Grey tea, said to be named after an 1830s British prime minister, is flavoured with which citrus fruit?
Bergamot
Bergamot oil gives the blend its perfume. The 2nd Earl Grey, the supposed namesake, led the government that passed the Reform Act of 1832 and abolished slavery in the British Empire.
Q 09The 9th Marquess of Queensberry lent his name to the 1867 rules of which sport?
Boxing
Boxing took its gloves from the Queensberry Rules, the first code to require them. The marquess only endorsed the rules; a Welsh sportsman drafted them.
Q 10Rebel barons forced which English king to seal Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215?
John
John sealed it to buy peace, and the Pope annulled it soon after. One clause set up a council of 25 barons to hold the king to his word.
Q 11A duke outranks every other peer; which English dukedom, created for the Black Prince in 1337, came first?
Cornwall
Cornwall was made a duchy to give the heir to the throne an income. It has gone to the monarch's eldest son ever since Edward III handed it to his own.
Q 12A marquess outranks an earl in the British peerage; the title once meant the ruler of what kind of territory?
A border region
A border region, or march, had to be fortified against hostile neighbours. That extra trust is why a marquess came to rank above lords whose lands lay safely inland.
Q 13Which Old Norse title for a chieftain is a close relative of the English word 'earl'?
Jarl
Q 21Which British wartime prime minister, born the grandson of a duke, turned down the title Duke of London?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill declined partly because his son Randolph, who would have inherited the dukedom, objected to it.
Q 22Which Labour politician campaigned for the Peerage Act 1963 so that he could give up his inherited title?
Tony Benn
Tony Benn's protest produced a law that lets heirs disclaim a peerage. The title then lies vacant until the disclaimer dies, when it passes to the next heir.
Q 23Which duke of Normandy took the English throne in 1066 from a king who had been Earl of Wessex?
William the Conqueror
Jarl crossed the North Sea with the Danes. Under their influence the Old English ealdorman gave way to the earl in the 11th century.
Q 14The coronets worn by British dukes and other peers traditionally display the leaves of which fruit plant?
Strawberry
Strawberry leaves became such a badge of rank that Disraeli's novels use them as shorthand for the whole peerage. Dukes were the first peers allowed to wear a coronet.
Q 15A baronet holds a hereditary title without being a peer; which prefix goes before a baronet's first name?
Sir
Sir is shared with knights, but a baronetcy is passed down the family. Either way the holder is a commoner rather than a peer of the realm.
Q 16Which courtesy style goes before the first name of a daughter of a British duke, marquess or earl?
Lady
Lady went before Diana Spencer's first name once her father inherited his earldom in 1975, years before she married a prince.
Q 17On which large cushioned seat does the Lord Speaker sit in the chamber of the House of Lords?
The Woolsack
The Woolsack began in the 14th century as a bale of wool, set there to recall the trade that made medieval England rich.
Q 18The Duke of Norfolk holds which hereditary office, responsible for organising coronations and state funerals?
Earl Marshal
Earl Marshal has been a Norfolk family office since 1672. The 18th duke arranged the state funeral of 2022 and the coronation that followed.
Q 19By tradition the reigning British monarch, whether king or queen, is also styled the duke of which place?
Lancaster
Lancaster's ducal estates came under the Crown when their owner took the throne as Henry IV in 1399. Their income goes to the sovereign personally.
Q 20The Duke of Atholl commands the Atholl Highlanders, described as Europe's only legal example of what?
A private army
A private army is what the regiment is: it answers to the duke, not the British Armed Forces, and is based at Blair Castle.
William the Conqueror had been a duke since he was seven or eight years old, and he descended from the Viking leader Rollo.
Q 24Which nickname is given to Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick who switched sides in the Wars of the Roses?
The Kingmaker
The Kingmaker earned the name by helping one king to the throne and deposing two, fighting first for the Yorkists and then against them.
Q 25Which English queen had her former favourite, the Earl of Essex, beheaded for treason in 1601?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I had raised Essex high as a courtier and commander, but he led a failed coup against her government and went to the block at the Tower.
Q 26Edward de Vere, a Tudor earl said by some to have written Shakespeare's plays, held which earldom?
Oxford
Oxford was first put forward as the true author in a 1920 book by J. Thomas Looney, three centuries after the plays were written.
Q 27In legend, Godiva, the wife of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, rode naked through which English city?
Coventry
Coventry's people were her husband's tenants, and the ride was the price of easing his taxes on them. The tale is first recorded in the 13th century, long after she died.
Q 28Which naval officer and later earl, an uncle of Prince Philip, oversaw Indian independence as the last Viceroy?
Louis Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten stayed on as independent India's first governor-general, and was made an earl in the same year, 1947.
Q 29Which British earl vanished in 1974 after his children's nanny was found murdered at the family home?
Lord Lucan
Lord Lucan was never found, and he was declared dead only in 1999, a quarter of a century after he disappeared.
Q 30Which former prime minister became Earl of Stockton in 1984, two decades after leaving Downing Street?
Harold Macmillan
Harold Macmillan asked for the earldom customarily given to departing prime ministers. He was 90 years old by the time he received it.