BRITISH TITLES - ATTAINDER
attainder: in peerage (1) matters, a primarily political means, now obsolete, of enforcing the sovereign's punitive will in a manner which bypassed the usual judicial system. Being political, the vehicle was parliamentary, hence the phrase 'Bill' and (if the Bill was passed) 'Act' of attainder. The practice was formally introduced in England in 1459, although similar operations involving the stripping of an overmighty subject of his lands and/or titles had of course been carried out by Kings for many centuries previously. Attainder was abolished in 1879, although the last Act of Attainder had been passed many years earlier, against Lord Edward FitzGerald (see LEINSTER, D) following his participation in the 1798 Uprising in Ireland.
Attainder was an especially favourite method of the Tudor monarchs for eliminating possible rivals for the throne (whether actual or potential) while incurring the least possible risk of an acquittal. For instance, the rules of evidence admissible in an ordinary law court were either restricted to whatever might lead to a conviction or suspended altogether. An attainted person was said to be corrupted in blood, whereby neither he nor his descendants could ordinarily inherit either a title of honour or property. If the attainted person was already the holder of the title or property these were forfeited.
Attainders could be and were reversed, sometimes as much as several centuries later, but as with the imposition of the attainder itself only by an Act of Parliament. Individuals, even if by now deceased, who had in the meantime descended an attainted person holding a peerage (1) dignity such that they would have subsequently inherited that dignity had it not been for the attainder were sometimes retrospectively restored. But sometimes only the living person who would at the moment of the passing of the Act of Restoration have entitled to the dignity was restored (and of course from then on that person's successors in the title). It depended on the wording of the Act of Parliament.
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