List of excepted hereditary peers in the context of "Peerage of Ireland"

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the lower house, the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. One of the oldest extant institutions in the world, its origins lie in the early 11th century and the emergence of bicameralism in the 13th century.

In contrast to the House of Commons, membership of the Lords is not generally acquired by election. Most members are appointed for life, on either a political or non-political basis. Hereditary membership was limited in 1999 to 92 excepted hereditary peers: 90 elected through internal by-elections, plus the Earl Marshal and the Lord Great Chamberlain as members ex officio, the sole two officers to directly inherit their seats. The House of Lords also includes up to 26 archbishops and bishops of the Church of England, known as Lords Spiritual. Since 2014, membership may be voluntarily relinquished or terminated upon expulsion.

The House of Lords Act 1999 (c. 34) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which reformed the House of Lords, one of the chambers of Parliament. The Act was given royal assent on 11 November 1999. For centuries, the House of Lords had included several hundred members who inherited their seats (hereditary peers); the Act removed such a right. However, as part of a compromise, the Act allowed ninety-two hereditary peers to remain in the House. Another ten were created life peers to enable them to remain in the House.

The Act decreased the membership of the House from 1,330 in October 1999 to 669 in March 2000. As another result of the Act, the majority of the Lords were thence life peers, whose numbers had been gradually increasing since the Life Peerages Act 1958. As of June 2023, there were 825 members of the House of Lords, of whom 24 were senior Church of England bishops, whose representation in the House is governed by the Lords Spiritual (Women) Act 2015.

Elections of the excepted hereditary peers were held in October and November 1999, before the House of Lords Act 1999 excluded most hereditary peers from the membership of the House of Lords allowing Earl Marshal, Lord Great Chamberlain and 90 others to remain in the House. Before the passing of the 1999 Act, the Lords approved a Standing Order stating that those 90 would consist of:

• 15 peers to be elected by the whole House
• 75 peers elected among and within party groupings:
  • 2 to be elected by the Labour hereditary peers
  • 42 to be elected by the Conservative hereditary peers
  • 3 to be elected by the Liberal Democrat hereditary peers
  • 28 to be elected by the Crossbench hereditary peers

The elections used a version of plurality block voting: voters were required to rank candidates in order of preference for the number of seats available, with the candidates receiving the greatest number of votes, without regard to the ranking on the ballots, declared elected. Preference order was only considered in the cases of ties.