"The Right Honourable" (The Rt Hon.) by the seventeenth century. When new lord mayoralties were created in the 1890s it was not clear if they also enjoyed this privilege. When the grant of a lord mayor was made to Liverpool and Manchester in 1893, Sir Albert William Woods, Garter Principal King of Arms, was of the opinion that Ten years later his successor as Garter, Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, decided that this was in error. However, the lord mayors of Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol continued to use the prefix. The matter came to a head in 1921, when King George V visited Liverpool, and the Home Office was forced to write to the council to inform that it could not be used without the express permission of the monarch. In the meantime, the prefix had been formally granted to the Lord Provost of Glasgow in 1912. In 1923 the Lord Mayor of Belfast was granted the honour in recognition of the city's new status as capital of Northern Ireland. The controversy continued however. Professor John J. Clarke of the University of Liverpool (author of Outlines of Local Government), the Corporation of Manchester and Herbert Woodcock, MP for Liverpool Everton all pressed for the dignity to be applied to all lord mayors. The official position was set out in a parliamentary statement by the Home Secretary, William Joynson-Hicks in July 1927, and repeated in a Home Office document issued in July 1932: The number of lord mayors or provosts in the United Kingdom entitled to the prefix now stands at six: in 1956 the dignity was allowed to the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, when the city was declared capital of Wales. The Lord Mayor of Bristol continues to use the prefix without official sanction. Map On the map below, the first year refers to the granting/confirmation of city status, while the second year refers to the conferral of the lord mayoralty or lord provostship. No years are given for the cities that had a lord mayor or lord provost before 1863. The six cities where the lord mayor or lord provost has the right to the style The Right Honourable are labelled in ALL CAPS: York, the City of London, Edinburgh, Glasgow (since 1912), Belfast (since 1923), and Cardiff (since 1956). See also City status in the United Kingdom List of cities in the United Kingdom Cities in Ireland Towns of the