Knighthood and honours
Can I buy a British title?
No. The sale of British titles is prohibited by the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act, 1925.
However, misleading advertisements for lordships of manors sometimes appear in the press and on the internet. A manorial lordship is not an aristocratic title, but a semi-extinct form of landed property. Lordship in this sense is a synonym for ownership. According to John Martin Robinson, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and co-author of The Oxford Guide to Heraldry, ”Lordship of this or that manor is no more a title than Landlord of The Dog and Duck.” It cannot be stated on a passport, and does not entitle the owner to a coat of arms.
Beware also of websites selling completely bogus British titles and bogus lordships of manors; for more information on these, visit the Fake Titles website.
Some businesses selling bogus titles provide a Foreign & Commonwealth Office apostille or legalization certificate, claiming that this proves the "title" is recognized by Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. In fact an apostille or legalization certificate only confirms that the signature, seal or stamp on the document is genuine. It does not mean that the contents of the document are correct or that the Foreign & Commonwealth Office approves of the contents.
See additional warnings in the Land Registry's public guide, The Sale of "titles" and Land Registry.