The title was first created as Baron Hume of Berwick on 7 July 1604, for George Home, Lord Treasurer of Scotland, member of the English Privy Council, and Keeper of the Great Wardrobe.
The question of the continued existence of the title came to the fore again in 1963 when the Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home, 14th Earl of Home, was required to renounce all of his peerages under the new Peerage Act 1963, in order to sit in the House of Commons.
[14][15] Upon his death in 1995, his son, David Douglas-Home, 15th Earl of Home, resumed his father's disclaimed titles.
[12] To circumvent this uncertainty with relation to Douglas-Home's disclaimer, the Lord Chancellor's office listed both "The Lordship of Hume of Berwick in the peerage of Scotland" and "The Barony of Hume in the Peerage of England" in the instrument of disclaimer,[13][16] an obvious anomaly.
On 14 May 1776, Alexander Hume-Campbell, Lord Polwarth, son and heir of Hugh Hume-Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont, was created Baron Hume of Berwick, in the Peerage of Great Britain,[17] but the title became extinct when he died without issue.