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will want to familiarize herself with the various titles and distinctions employed in the novel, and to achieve a working understanding of their connotations, to better understand the social exchanges among the various characters. The social spectrum in the novel is quite wide, for the novel is populated with such characters as divergent in class position as a duchess and an old laborer. Among the principle characters, Squire Hamley represents the untitled landed gentry; his family is reputed to be the oldest in the area, and his title “Squire,” while not an official title, is a term of regard for the foremost landowner of a town or borough. His is a high social status, with strong ties to the community primarily maintained by the rental and supervision of his lands. Throughout the novel Squire Hamley demonstrates a simultaneous disdain and sense of inferiority in regard to the Cumnors, who are the titled people in the neighborhood. His disdain is based on the sense that their title is new—having been given out in Queen Anne’s time—while his inferiority is based in their comparative wealth and social standing. Lord Cumnor is Earl of Cumnor, while Lady Cumnor is a countess (the title apportioned to an earl’s wife). “Lord” and “Lady” do not refer specifically to an aristocratic rank, but are rather the general honorifics that one might use with any member of what was known as the “peerage,” the name given to the aristocratic class in England. Thus, the fact that the people of Hollingford always refer to the Cumnors by their titles suggests the heightened importance the residents place on rank:
    The little straggling town faded away into country on one side, close to the entrance-lodge of a great park, where lived my Lord and Lady Cumnor: ‘the earl’ and ‘the countess.’ as they were always called by the inhabitants of the town; where a very pretty amount of feudal feeling still lingered, and showed itself in a number of simple ways, droll enough to look back upon, but serious matters of importance at the time (p. 6).
    The narrator employs deliberate overstatement here in equating the townspeople’s deference to “feudal feeling,” for the relationship between people and their “lord” and “lady” had long been ceremonial rather than economic. The narrator pokes fun at a defunct sensibility, but registers its importance “at the time.” (Here is yet another example of the distinction being drawn in the novel between “then” and “now,” between the 1820s and the 1860s.) An earl was in the middle of the hierarchy of the peerage. Aside from the King or Queen, first in importance was a duke (his female counterpart was known as a duchess), followed by a marquis; a rank below a marquis was the earl (and countess) , followed by the viscount; the lowest-ranking member of the peerage was known as a baronet. Strictly speaking, the term “lady” was used to designate the wife of a peer below the rank of duke and as the honorific for the daughter of a duke, marquis, or earl—hence “Lady Harriet,” the daughter of Lord Cumnor. Knights, though titled, were not members of the peerage and thus did not have the right to a seat in the House of Lords and the ability to bequeath the title and land to descendents.
    The townspeople’s interest in the titled people is best captured in the scene of the charity ball in chapter 26; the townspeople dance and yet await the appearance of the Cumnors (the people from the “Towers”), who are rumored to have a duchess visiting them. They make a very late appearance, and many of the Hollingford ladies are disgusted with the duchess: “‘Such a shabby thing for a duchess I never saw; not a bit of a diamond near her! They’re none of ’em worth looking at except the countess, and she’s always a personable woman, and not so lusty as she was. But they’re not worth waiting up for till this time o’ night’ ” (pp. 291-292). Here Mrs. Goodenough’s