The most famous recent holder of the title was the 14th Earl, Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home, better known as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. After the unexpected resignation of Harold Macmillan, the 14th Earl was named Prime Minister by the monarch. For the first time in over sixty years, a sitting Prime Minister was a member of the House of Lords rather than of the House of Commons. Because he believed that it was impractical and unconventional to remain a member of the Lords, the Earl disclaimed his peerages on 23 October 1963 under the Peerage Act passed in the same year.[1] He then contested the House of Commons seat of Kinross and Western Perthshire by standing in the 1963 Kinross and Western Perthshire by-election. The seat had been vacated by the death of the previous Member of Parliament, Gilmour Leburn. As of 2022[update] the titles are held by the 16th Earl, who succeeded in that year.
The Earls of Home descend in the male line from Cospatric I (died after 1073), the Anglo-Danish Earl of Northumbria. His descendant William de Home (son of Sir Patrick de Greenlaw, the second son of Cospatric III, Earl of Lothian), adopted the surname following his acquisition of the lands of Home in Berwickshire during the early 13th century, through his marriage to his second cousin Ada (the daughter of Patrick I, Earl of Dunbar).[2] William's arms featured the silver lion of Dunbar but with a green field instead of a red field, in reference to his lands of Greenlaw.[2]
Michael David Alexander Douglas-Home, 16th Earl of Home, was born on 30 November 1987, the only son of the 15th Earl and his wife Jane Margaret Williams-Wynne. He has two older sisters, Lady Iona Katherine (born 1980) and Lady Mary Elizabeth (born 1982), and was Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II from 1997 to 2000.[3]
Styled as Lord Dunglass between 1995 and 2022, in 2017 he married Sally Antoinette Underhill, a daughter of Group Captain Gregory B. P. Underhill.[4] On 22 August 2022 he succeeded to the peerages and to the estate of The Hirsel.[5]
There is no heir apparent. The heir presumptive is the present earl's second cousin, Alexander Sholto Douglas-Home (born 1962), a great-grandson of the 13th earl.[3]
Line of succession, simplified
Charles Douglas-Home, 13th Earl of Home (1873–1951)
Alexander Frederick Douglas-Home (1903–1995); 14th Earl of Home: 1951–1963, when peerage disclaimed; made life peer as "Baron Home of the Hirsel" in 1974.
David Douglas-Home, 15th Earl of Home (1943–2022)
Michael Douglas-Home, 16th Earl of Home (born 1987)
1st, on a cap of maintenance proper, a lion’s head erased argent (Home); 2nd, on a cap of maintenance proper, a salamander vert, encircled with flames of fire proper (Douglas).
Escutcheon
Quarterly: 1st and 4th grand quarters counter-quartered, 1st and 4th vert, a lion rampant argent, armed and langued gules (Home); 2nd and 3rd argent, three popinjays vert, beaked and membered gules (Pepdie of Dunglas); overall an escutcheon or, charged with an orle azure (Landale); 2nd and 3rd grand quarters counter-quartered, 1st azure, a lion rampant argent, armed and langued gules, crowned with an imperial crown or (Lordship of Galloway); 2nd or, a lion rampant gules, armed and langued azure, debruised of a ribbon sable (Abernethy); 3rd argent, three piles gules (Lordship of Brechin); 4th or, a fesse checky azure and argent, surmounted of a bend sable, charged with three buckles of the field (Stewart of Bonkill); overall on an escutcheon argent, a man's heart, ensigned with an imperial crown proper, and a chief azure, charged with three mullets of the field (Douglas).
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