Prime Minister of the United Kingdom retirement from the Commons, which elevates the individual to the House of Lords. Formerly, the peerage bestowed was usually an earldom, with Churchill offered a dukedom. From the 1960s onward, life peerages were preferred, although in 1984 Harold Macmillan was created Earl of Stockton. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher accepted life peerages, although Douglas-Home had previously disclaimed his hereditary title as Earl of Home. Edward Heath did not accept a peerage of any kind and nor have any of the Prime Ministers to retire since 1990; although Heath and Major were later appointed as Knights
Harold Wilson until May 1979, when Labour lost the general election to the Conservatives and Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister. As Wilson wished to remain an MP after leaving office, he was not immediately given the peerage customarily offered to retired Prime Ministers, but instead was created a Knight of the Garter. On leaving the House of Commons after the 1983 general election he was granted a life peerage as Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, after Rievaulx Abbey, in the north of his native Yorkshire. Shortly after resigning as Prime Minister, Wilson was signed by David Frost to host a