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‘The mess of the middle class’ revisited: the case of the ‘big bourgeoisie’ of Augustan London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Henry Horwitz
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Continuity and Change , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , August 1987 , pp. 263 - 296
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

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13 Ibid., 407, 410, 423. It should be noted that this cooption, in the Stones' view, did not entail any significant movement into the developing West End even by City aldermen, at least before 1700; Stone, L., ‘The residential development of the West End of London in the seventeenth century’, Malament, B., ed., After the Reformation (Manchester, 1980), 187–9.Google Scholar

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25 These men are listed in Appendices A and B. Among the principal types of primary material on which the following analysis is based are wills and inventories, livery company and joint stock records, Chancery and bankruptcy proceedings, and tax listings.

26 Excluded from the 62 are three men elected late in Anne's reign who never served. Two serving aldermen resigned, one of whom (Thomas Darwin) appears to have been in serious financial difficulties.

27 Of these 14, 10 were eldest or only sons.

28 Guildhall Library MS. 12017, Sir John Fryer's autobiography.

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34 See Appendix A, II, 2.

35 Appendix A, III. The parliamentary charter of the South Sea Company made Bank and united East India Company directors ineligible for the South Sea directorate. That same year, parliament also made Bank directors ineligible for the directorate of the united East India Company and vice-versa.

36 Of the 19, then, nine were aldermen when they were first elected directors of the Bank and 10 were not.

37 On the significance of capital gains, see Grassby, R., ‘English merchant capitalism’, 98–101, 103.Google Scholar

38 Under the custom, the testator - depending on whether he was survived by either children and/or a widow - was free to bequeath only a third or half of his personalty; hence, by multiplying the combined value of such bequests by the appropriate multiplier a minimum value of the testator's entire personalty can be established. This procedure is certainly superior to relying on contemporary estimates which tended to be inflated. Thus, Narcissus Luttrell estimated in 1698 that Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys was worth £300,000 but his well-informed kinsman Morrice put his estate at death in 1709 at £140,000: Luttrell, N., A brief historical relation of state affairs (6 vols., Oxford, 1859), 4, 531Google Scholar; Bank of England, Morrice Correspondence (transcripts), lvi. At Sir Gilbert Heathcote's death in 1733, his fortune was variously reported by three of the printed monthlies as £400,000, £500,000 and £700,000; a fourth prudently avoided a specific figure.

39 Appendix A, V.

40 Appendix A, IV.

41 In tracing sons and unmarried daughters, the principal problem is deaths subsequent to their father's demise but before they themselves reached maturity. The principal problem with respect to married daughters is ascertaining the occupations of husbands whom we know to come from London business families but who themselves cannot be identified as businessmen.

42 The 10 aldermanic sons and kin who themselves became aldermen were two sons each of Sir Francis Child and Sir Francis Eyles; the eldest sons of Sir Ambrose Crowley, Sir Richard Levett, and Sir John Parsons; nephews of Sir Samuel Stanier and Sir Patience Ward, and Sir Charles Thorold's brother.

43 As Lang observes, the problem of tracing fathers is that the sources are more forthcoming about place than parental status. It is likely that few of the unknowns in any of the cohorts came from London business or landed families. Sources for Table 2: 1600–24 cohort-Lang, ‘Social origins’, 31; 1660–88 and 1738–63 cohorts - Rogers, , ‘Money, land and lineage’, 454.Google Scholar

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48 Ibid. 451.

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51 Compare Clay, Economic expansion, I, 163–4.Google Scholar

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54 See App. B, I and II. These 66 comprise all known non-citizen London businessmen sitting in the Commons or serving as directors of the specified companies between 1694 and 1714. The non-citizen subset does not include the 40 directors of those companies (mainly royal officials and M.P.s) who were not London businessmen. It also does not include four non-citizen London businessmen who served only as directors of the new East India Company.

55 Samuel Heathcote was a younger brother of Sir Gilbert, Sir William Scawen was Sir Thomas's elder brother, William Gore was the eldest son and John Gore a younger son of Sir William, Owen Buckingham was the only son of Sir Owen, and Edward Jeffreys was the eldest son of Sir Jeffrey. Rowland Aynsworth and John Edmonds were, respectively, the sons-in-law of Sir John Fleet and Sir William Hedges. In addition, Hedges, by his first marriage, was an uncle of Sir Samuel Sambrooke.

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58 App. B. I, 15, 18, 23, 40, 63, 64.

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60 Stone, , ‘Residental development’, 187–9 and note 47Google Scholar. Among other sources utilized in this study, in addition to those relied on by Stone, are probate records, lists of subscribers to joint stocks, and land tax assessments for 1710.

61 App. B, III.

62 Of the remaining 20 non-citizens, nine did not fragment their property; of their principal heirs, four were landed men, only one a London businessman.

63 For acquisition costs, see Clay, C., –The price of freehold land in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 27 (1974), 173–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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69 Not included in the 112 are those directors who were not London businessmen (see note 54) and 33 others: 13 because they served as aldermen either before 1694 or after 1714; five because they went bankrupt; five because their citizenship is in doubt; and 10 because little or nothing about them and their families could be ascertained. Also omitted are eight citizen businessmen who served only as directors of the New East India Company.

70 The usefulness of civic officeholding as a predictor of the careers of eldest sons would not necessarily hold true for mid-eighteenth-century London, for by then the flight from the freedom by substantial businessmen had escalated. Hence, a substantially lower proportion of businessmen directors of the monied companies were citizens and a substantially lower proportion of common councilmen were merchants or financiers. See Rogers, N., ‘London politics from Walpole to Pitt: patriotism and independency in an era of commercial imperialism, 1738–63’ (Ph.d. thesis, University of Toronto 1974), 312, 340–1.Google Scholar

71 For the suggestion that Nonconformity might keep families in the London business world, see Grassby, , ‘Social mobility’, 358.Google Scholar

72 Since global data (e.g., census or tax) about London businessmen in the period are lacking, only approximations are possible. Our total of 240 might be set beside the 251 liveried merchants who had trading volumes in 1695–1696 (as entered in the port books) of £500 or more or with DeKrey's identification of a civic elite in William's and Anne's reign of about 200 (about 60 percent of them merchants). De Krey, , A fractured society, 125, 130.Google Scholar

73 Rogers, , ‘Money, land and lineage’, 452.Google Scholar

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75 Public Record Office, Probate 11/496, fo. 209. For reasons he does not explain, Mitford was not prepared to make his nephew and namesake Michael Mitford (his brother Robert's son) his heir.

76 For the Hoares, see Hoare, H. P. R., Hoare's Bank, a record (London, 1955)Google Scholar. For Henry Hoare's land purchases, see Clay, C., ‘Landlords and estate management in England’, Thirsk, J., ed., The agrarian history of England and Wales 1640–1750, (1985), II, 184.Google Scholar

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