Victorian Era England - were Barons expected to sit in the House of Lords?

by dwilbank

Or was it just a privilege?

One reads of lords frittering away their inheritance on gambling or bad investments, but are there examples of the nobility who completely ignored their parliamentary duties and focused on other things, like travel or exploration? (Many google searches have not found an example)

If they did so, would they have been censured by the queen or government in any way?

Legit-NotADev

Shame nobody answered this, but if you are still interested I’d image the answer is no. Firstly it would be difficult to keep track of who attends what, because unlike some foreign legislative bodies who specially record who is present or not, the UK doesn’t do this outside of divisions. There is a hansard which would record any oral contributions, but I doubt anyone was going to go through hansard for that parliament just to see who hasn’t contributed. Secondly because, yeah it’s basically privilege and nobody would expect someone who just inherited a title to particularly care about parliamentary debates. There is some more senior lords like the law lords and members of the government who would obviously be required to attend, but for most i just doubt anyone would care.

For example the second Earl of Munster inherited the earldom in 1842, but didn’t even sit in parliament for the first time until 1845, and then he didn’t contribute a single time until his death, which was just a few months after Victoria coincidentally.