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Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism: the Politics, Finances and Estates of the third Lord Carrington*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Andrew Adonis
Andrew Adonis
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, Oxford
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Extract

Politicians in the 1880s believed they were introducing ‘democracy’ into Britain and many feared the – possibly revolutionary – challenge it posed to the existing social and political orders. Historians have for some time recognized that the aristocracy continued to play a significant role in each until at least the First World War. The peers' social hegemony, strong institutional position and relative economic security were a formidable combination. Few would now accept Ensor's view that the 1880s witnessed the beginning of ‘the economic dethronement of the landowners’, and that ‘political headship [could not] long survive economic defeat’. The durability of the late-Victorian aristocracy remains, however, a phenomenon more frequently asserted than examined. The peerage was the sum of its individual members; yet the few ‘micro’ studies hitherto published have concentrated on the ‘aristocracy of the aristocracy’ – the elite of wealth and power, mainly dukes, within the peerage. We know little of the mass of peers who were far less favourably placed, suffered real financial difficulties, but whose tenacity and continued sense of purpose were crucial to the peers' ability to survive.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , December 1988 , pp. 871 - 897
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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3 Microfilms of the marquess of Lincolnshire's papers are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Films 1097–1153). Charles Robert Wynn-Carrington (1843–1928), eldest son of the second Lord Carrington, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, succeeding as third baron in 1868. Created Earl Carrington in 1895 and marquess of Lincolnshire in 1912, he is referred to by his earlier title throughout. Carrington's diary, continuous from 1889 until 1928, is the most significant item in the collection (MS Films 1100–1112).

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27 Diary, 15 and 23 June 1909. Rosebery was a leader of these ‘rich men’. He responded thus to an entreaty from Carrington: ‘On Tariff Reform I am with you, but the tremendous direct taxation imposed by the Budget will bleed Free Trade to death’. Rosebery to Carrington, 8 Dec. 1909, quoted in diary.

28 Diary, 3 Nov. 1903.

29 Diary, 3 Dec. 1920.

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33 Diary, 5 Aug. 1908. Punch described it as a ‘radical jamboree’ and noted that Carrington ‘took part in the athletic sports which preceded the speeches and came 11th in the sack race’.

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35 Diary, 7 Feb. 1898 and 6 Feb. 1899.

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54 Martins, S. W., A great estate at work: the Holkham estate and its inhabitants in the 19th century (Cambridge, 1980), esp. pp. 60–4Google Scholar; Thompson, , English landed society, p. 307Google Scholar. Liberal peers were not immune from exaggerating their plight. Spencer lamented to Carrington: ‘As I live up to mine you may imagine how this [rent reduction] has crippled me…We have had to cut everything down…We find we cannot live at Althorp except in a corner’. Spencer to Carrington, 25 Feb. 1888 (MS Film 1121). Even Carrington believed that ‘the big landed families are tumbling about in all directions’. Diary, 5 Mar. 1896. Underneath this entry is written: ‘Note: 15 Sept. 1912: The absurdity of all this croaking is proved by the fact that Dukes are today going stronger than ever.’

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57 Diary, 23 Oct. 1896. The first of the estates to be sold were peripheral holdings in Cardiganshire and Montgomeryshire; Carrington was also left £26,000 by a cousin in 1887 (‘I never saw him but twice in my life’). Evidence of Carrington's agent to the 1893 Welsh Land Commission, Reports, Commissions (1896), XX, 248; ; Carrington to Carnarvon 21 Nov. 1887, Carnarvon papers, British Library, B.L. Add MS 60801, 13/4.

58 Cannadine, D., ‘Aristocratic indebtedness in the 19th century: the case re-opened’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXX (1977), 624–50Google Scholar; the quotations are from pp. 646, 647 and 640.

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61 See Table 3: ‘Savings effected since 1894 and benefits which will commence to accrue in 1897’.

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63 Spring, , ‘Land and politics’, p. 23Google Scholar.

64 1916 was the last year that Carrington preserved game; he calculated from his gamebooks that between 1869 and 1916 he had shot 74,530 head of game. Diary, 6 Feb. 1916. Carrington's only son, Viscount Wendover, was killed in 1915; for the estate's future this was, of course, the most important event of the war.

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68 Yorkshire Post, 15 Mar. 1920. Carrington's views on this subject were not, in fact, so clear cut (see below).

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72 From information in MS Film 1111.

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81 Diggle, , The creation of small holdings, pp. 7–9 and 18Google Scholar; Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 110Google Scholar.

82 Eversley to Carrington, 26 Nov. 1913, MS Film 1137.

83 Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 110Google Scholar.

84 Carrington to Campbell-Bannerman, 5 Nov. 1905, Campbell-Bannerman papers, London, B.L. Add. MS 41212.

85 Diary, 10 Mar. 1906.

86 Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 32Google Scholar. Landlords were, in particular, blamed for the severe effects of the depression: according to Channing, F. A. ‘over-renting…has been the chief cause of the depression’. The truth about the agricultural depression (London, 1897), p. 93Google Scholar.

87 James, R. R., Rosebery (London, 1963), p. 342Google Scholar (from Rosebery's memorandum against Harcourt's death duties). Carrington wrote to Ripon in 1908: ‘It was largely owing to you that we were as a party able to get a Land Policy. Spencer and Kimberley, grand Liberals as they were, never would hear of it’. Carrington to Ripon, 10 Oct. 1908, Ripon papers, B.L. Add MS 43544, 127/8.

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92 Diary, 5 Nov. 1905. Carrington's friendship with Edward, which dated back to the prince of Wales' tours of Egypt and India in the 1860s and '70s, remained such that Edward told Campbell-Bannerman on the formation of the government that he ‘regarded Charlie almost like a brother’. Diary, 6 Dec. 1905.

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94 Herbert Samuel papers, London, House of Lords Record Office, A 155/iii, 31. For a more detailed list of typical ingredients see Channing, F. A., An agricultural policy (London, 1905)Google Scholar.

95 Hansard, 4, clii. 23.

96 For a typical example in the literature of the misplaced emphasis given (retrospectively) to land taxation in the Liberal programme see Douglas, R., ‘God gave the land to the people’, in Morris, A. J. A. (ed.), Edwardian radicalism 1900–1914 (London, 1974), 148–61Google Scholar. Douglas makes no mention of Carrington, ignores the English and Welsh land legislation passed between 1906 and 1908, and can therefore see the 1909 budget as ‘the first government measure designed to deal with the land problem on a nationwide scale’. Ibid. p. 154.

97 House of lords, 7 Mar. 1912, Hansard, 5, xi. 368.

98 Collings, J., Land reform (London, 1906, p. 243Google Scholar.

99 Diary, 8 Dec. 1906; Carrington to Knollys, 19 Nov. 1906, MS Film 1119.

100 Hansard, 4, clxvi. 867.

101 Diary, II Nov. and 13 Dec. 1906.

102 Floud, F. L. C., The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (London, 1927), p. 143Google Scholar. According to Perry the 1892 Act ‘facilitated the entry of the small man, par excellence the labourer, into the farming community’. Perry, P. J., British agriculture 1875–1914 (London, 1973), p. XXXVGoogle Scholar. But the number of such ‘small men’ was very small indeed. Salisbury would not agree to the introduction of compulsory powers into the 1892 Act, ‘which must end in taking land at an artificially low valuation, otherwise it will be useless’. Salisbury to Balfour, 28 Jan. 1892, Balfour papers, London, B. L. Add. MS 49690, 3–4.

103 Winfrey to Lewis Harcourt, 3 Apr. 1907, Harcourt papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1986 Adds. 161/16; C. F. G. Masterman to Harcourt, 7 June 1907, ibid.

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105 Diary, 23 Aug. 1907.

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107 Carrington to Asquith, 10 Apr. 1908, Asquith papers, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 11/58; I, Hansard, 5th ser (C) lviii (1379) and lx (1644).

108 Diary, 31 Dec. 1907.

109 Barnett, D. C., ‘Allotments and the problem of rural poverty, 1780–1840’, in Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (ed.), Land, labour and population in the industrial revolution (London, 1967), 174Google Scholar.

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114 Asquith to Crewe, 7 Oct. 1911, Asquith MS 46/191–2.

115 Diary, 21 Dec. 1918, 12 Jan. 1919, 6 Feb. 1919, 19 Dec. 1919 and 8 Nov. 1922.

116 Diary, 31 Dec. 1923.

117 Diary, 17 Dec. 1923.

118 Diary, 31 Dec. 1923.

119 Campbell, J., Lloyd George, the goat in the wilderness, 1922–1931 (London, 1977). pp. 97–9Google Scholar.

120 Diary, 30 July 1925.

121 Diary, 4 Aug. 1925.

122 Vincent, , Formation, p. 211Google Scholar.