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The English Landed Estate in the Age of Coal and Iron: 1830–1880*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

David Spring
David Spring
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Extract

Few present-day historians of English society use the phrase “the landed gentry” with the same easy confidence that Lecky could muster. They hesitate to draw too hard and fast a line between the landed and commercial classes, for they see in the society of the gentry something more than fox-hunting squires and Church of England parsons. The works of Miss Scott Thomson and of A. S. Turberville, for example, have revealed a class more elusive in its activities and outlook, a class that was becoming increasingly amphibious: at home in two elements, the city and the countryside and engaged in economic enterprise that was by no means exclusively agrarian. In other words, the life of the country house may be as broad as English life itself; and it may come as no surprise, therefore, to discover that the growth of industrialism between 1830 and 1880 impinged on the society of the gentry, diversifying the nature of both its economic activities and its income.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Winter 1951 , pp. 3 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

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References

1 Thomson, G. S., The Russells in Bloomsbury 1669–1771 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1940)Google Scholar.

2 Turberville, A. S., Welbeck Abbey and its Owners (London: Faber and Faber, 1938), vol. IIGoogle Scholar.

3 An appropriate adjective used by Namier, L. B., England in the Age of the American Revolution (London: Macmillan & Co., 1930), p. 17Google Scholar.

4 Among the records of great estates I have had access to are those of the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Portland, the Earl of Durham, Earl Fitzwilliam, the Earl of Derby, the Marquis of Ailesbury, and Viscount Portman. These have not been uniformly valuable, though it is likely in most cases that the archives of a great estate will be voluminous and detailed. I have also had access to the papers of numerous smaller estates.

5 Bladesover, the name of a fictitious landed estate in Tono-Bungay, the acute social novel written by H. G. Wells, will be used throughout this essay to refer to the English landed estate as a social and economic phenomenon.

6 Henry Morton to Earl of Durham, April 28, 1836, in Lambton MSS., in the possession of Viscount Lambton, Biddick Hall, Durham.

7 For presumably exhaustive lists of the gentry concerned in the northern coal field, see Simpson, T. V., “Old Mining Records and Plans,” Transactions of the Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. LXXXI, 1930–31Google Scholar; Kirsopp, J., The Northumberland and Durham Coal Field (Newcastle upon Tyne: A. Reid & Co., 1908)Google Scholar.

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15 Ibid., October 21, 1843; Gradon, W. McGowan, Furness Railway: Its Rise and Development 1846–1923 (Altrincham: Oakham Press, 1946), p. 9Google Scholar.

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18 Lists of Names, Descriptions and Places of all Persons subscribing to the amount of £2,000 and upwards to any Railway Subscription Contract deposited in the Private Bill Office during the present session of Parliament, Parliamentary Papers, 1845, 1846. Although the railway companies are known to have tampered with these lists, this should not detract too much from their value as evidence on this point. An earlier and perhaps more reliable list of shareholders in the London and Birmingham Railway points to no different conclusion; see Report of Select Committee on the London and Birmingham Railway Bill, Parliamentary Papers, 1839, appendix 32.

19 I have discussed this problem with Mr. H. Pollins of the London School of Economics who is at present engaged in a study of early railway investment and will doubtless throw more light on the question.

20 See Proceedings of the Committee of the House of Commons on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad Bill (London, 1826)Google Scholar for a good idea of the kind of people who might oppose an early railroad.

21 Earl Fitzwilliam to unknown addressee, December 8, 1833, in Milton MSS., of Earl Fitzwilliam and in the possession of Captain T. Fitzwilliam, Estate Office, Peterborough.

22 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Practicability and the Expediency of establishing some Principle of Compensation to be made to the Owners of Real Property, Parliamentary Papers, 1845, passim.

23 Pope-Hennessy, J., Monckton Milnes: The Years of Promise 1809–1851 (London: Constable, 1949) P. 199Google Scholar; the sum was £ 100,000.

24 Even the railway journals like the Railway Times and Bradshaw's Railway Gazette do not manage to be specific about many cases of extortion.

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28 Estate Accounts for 1800 and 1837, in the Stanley MSS., in the Lancashire County Records Office, Preston.

29 Rental Book in the Portman MSS. in the Portman Estate Office, London.

30 Minutes of Evidence on Town Holdings, Q. 81.

31 Official Report of Conference to Promote Taxation of Land Values (Glasgow, 1899), p. 33Google Scholar.

32 First Report of Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, Parliamentary Papers, 1888, p. 5.

33 Minutes of Evidence on Market Rights and Tolls, Parliamentary Papers, 1888–89, passim. The Duke of Norfolk earned £10,000 a year from his market rights, and the Duke of Bedford £ 15.000.

34 Private Acts, 2 & 3 W. 4, c. 34.

35 Diary of the seventh Duke of Devonshire, September to, 1842, Chatsworth MSS., in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire. Barrow-in-Furness: Its Histoiy, Development, Commerce, Industries and Institutions (London, 1881), p. 7Google Scholar.

36 Barrouf-in-Furness, p. 53.

37 Ibid., p. 70; diary of the seventh Duke, June 25, 1873, Chatsworth MSS.

38 Diary of the seventh Duke, June 25, 1873, Chatsworth MSS.

39 Ibid., passim.

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43 Braybrooke MSS. in the Essex County Records Office, Chelmsford, T. W. Bramston to Lord Braybrooke, October 23, 1862.

44 lbid., T. W. Bramston to Lord Braybrooke, June 5, 1863.

45 “An Arrangement to Dispose of the Earl of Sefton's Debt,” 1791, in the Sefton MSS. in the Lancashire County Records Office.

46 The Greville Memoirs, ed. Reeve, H. (New York, 1875), I, 202Google Scholar.

47 West Riding Household Accounts in the Wentworth Woodhouse MSS.

48 J. E. Denison to Earl Fitzwilliam, August 18, 1847, in the Wentworth Woodhouse MSS.

49 The relations between the gentry and their agents and the extent to which important decisions were made by the agents are important questions for the history of the English landed estate in the nineteenth century. I do not discuss them in this paper since they deserve separate treatment, and I intend to examine them at a later time.

50 The most authoritative statement of the Victorians on strict settlement is by Joshua Williams; see his The Settlement of Real Estates (London, 1879)Google Scholar. There is a less involved ducussion in St. Leonards, Lord, A Handy Book, on Property Law (Edinburgh, 1863)Google Scholar.

51 Habakkuk, H. J., “Marriage Settlements in the Eighteenth Century,” Royal Historical ociety Transactions, 1950Google Scholar.

52 Lambton MSS.

53 Private Acts, 35 & 36 V., c. 6.

54 Earl Fitzwilliam to the Duke of Devonshire, July 2, 1845, in the Chatsworth MSS.

55 Private Acts, 13 & 14 V., c. II Lord Grey to Earl of Durham, July 9, 1849, in the; Lambton MSS.; The Economist, August 19, 1848.

56 Habakkuk, “Marriage Settlements in the Eighteenth Century.”

57 Duke of Devonshire to the Duke of Bedford, May 17, 1858, in the Chatsworth MSS.

58 Duke of Bedford to the Duke of Devonshire, May 25, 1858, Ibid.

59 R. Welford, A History of the Parish of Gosforth (Newcastle upon Tyne, n.d.). pp. 17–18.

60 Sir Robert Price was a life-long friend of the third Earl Fitzwilliam, and his melancholy story lies fully related in a long correspondence between him and the Earl, to be found in the Wentworth Woodhouse MSS.

61 Armytage MSS., passim.

62 Private Acts, 48 & 49 V., c. 4.

63 Ibid., 8 & 9 V., c. 29.

64 In the years 1823–26, the Bank of England loaned a total of £ 1,500,000 to landlords, this sum being made up of a number of large loans. After 1826, however, no fresh loans were made; but it seems that the gentry paid their interest rather faithfully and by 1870 had gone far toward wiping out the debt. See SirClapham, John, The Bank, of England: A History (Cambridge: The University Press, 1944), II, 82–85Google Scholar.

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66 Lord Grey to Earl of Durham, July 9, 1849, in the Lambton MSS.

67 Bateman, J., The Great Landlords of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1883)Google Scholar, passim; Private Acts, 37 & 38 V., c. 7; Stucley MSS. in the possession of Major D. Studey, Hartland Abbey, Devon, passim.

68 Lambton MSS., passim.

69 Diary of the seventh Duke of Devonshire, passim, in the Chatsworth MSS.

70 West Riding Estate Accounts, passim, in the Wentworth Woodhouse MSS.

71 Curzon MSS. in the possession of Lord Scarsdale, Kedleston, Derbyshire, passim; Isham MSS. in the Northamptonshire Records Society, passim.

72 Examples of the later handbooks are Garnier't Land Agency, ed. Raffety, H. W. (London, 1899)Google Scholar; or Macdonald, D. G. F., Estate Management (10th ed.; London, 1868)Google Scholar. An earlier textbook for agents was LaWrence, J., The Modern Land Steward, (London, 1801)Google Scholar.

73 First Report of the Royal Commission on Real Property, Parliamentary Papers, 1829, p. 6.