Earl of Snowdon


Earl of Snowdon is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1961, together with the subsidiary title of Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex, by Queen Elizabeth II for her then brother-in-law, Antony Armstrong-Jones, who married Princess Margaret in 1960.

Titles

Choice of names

Snowdon, chosen for the earldom, had previously been used for a peerage title with royal associations. The title of Baron Snowdon had been conferred in 1726 along with the Dukedom of Edinburgh on Prince Frederick Louis, grandson of George I and future Prince of Wales. It merged in the Crown in 1760, when its holder acceeded as George III.
Linley, chosen for the viscountcy, comes from the 1st Earl of Snowdon's maternal great-grandfather, the English cartoonist and illustrator Edward Linley Sambourne.
Nymans, chosen as territorial designation of the viscountcy, relates to an English garden near Handcross in West Sussex, where Anne Armstrong-Jones, née Messel, mother of the 1st Earl of Snowdon, had grown up.

Life peerage

In November 1999, the 1st Earl of Snowdon received a life peerage as Baron Armstrong-Jones, under a device designed to allow first-generation hereditary peers to retain their seats in the House of Lords, after the passing of the House of Lords Act 1999.

Earls of Snowdon (1961)

The heir apparent is the present holder's only son, Charles Patrick Inigo Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley. Currently, there are no other heirs in the line of succession.

Coats of arms