Standing Orders state that "No Lord under the age of one and twenty years shall be permitted to sit in the House". When most members of the Lords were hereditary peers, a peer who had inherited his or her peerage(s) while under age was entitled to take a seat on the day before his or her 21st birthday. In theory, such a hereditary peer could still be elected to sit in the House at that age; in practice, the youngest hereditary peer to have been elected was Lord Freyberg (born 15 December 1970), who was elected in October 1999 at the age of 28.