The Penetration of New Wealth Into The English Governing Class From The Middle Ages To

The Penetration of New Wealth into the English Governing Class from the Middle Ages to
the First World War

Author(s): E. A. Wasson
Source: The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 51, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 25-48
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Economic History Society
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Economic History Review, LI, 1(1998), pp. 25-48
The penetration of new wealth into

the English governing class from
the middle ages to the First World
War
By E. A. WASSON
A ristocratic it has been from the first', the great Maitland wrote of
A the English elite, 'but never oligarchic; always ready to receive into
itself new members who would have the time, the means, the will to do
the work, without inquiring into the purity of their pedigrees or their
right to coat armour." This analysis, made in the morning of modern
scholarship by a legal and constitutional expert, became the prevailing
orthodoxy among later social and economic historians as well. Scholars
balanced important interpretations of English history on the hinges of a
door open to advancement. A flexible, mobile society was traced as far
back as the thirteenth century. The unique stability of constitutional
government, the elastic social fabric that survived the challenges of war
and revolution, entrepreneurship in agriculture and industry that made
England the first modern society, imperial expansion that led to the most
far-flung empire in history, the failure of a separate bourgeois culture
arising to challenge aristocratic hegemony, and even the rapid descent
from glory in the twentieth century have all been attributed to the fluid
interpenetration of ranks and classes.2
Of course, not all scholars embraced the open door argument, either
as an historical reality or as an explanation for stability, expansion, and
1 Fisher, ed., Collected papers, I, pp. 470-1. I am grateful to the American Historical Association
for a Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant and the English Speaking Union for a research fellowship which
financed trips to Britain and Ireland that helped complete this study. David Hayton and his team
at the History of Parliament Trust were exceptionally gracious, and I owe a particular debt to Edith
Johnston-Liik for generously making available the fruits of her work on Irish MPs. Computer
assistance from Michael Chupa and Kaizar Campwala has been much appreciated. My thanks go
to Michael McCahill, Wilfrid Prest, and David Spring for reading and criticizing earlier versions of
this article and to the members of the audience at the annual meeting of the American Historical
Association in Atlanta in January 1996 who offered comments and suggestions.
2 Macfarlane, Origins of English individualism, p. 163; Hexter, Reappraisals in history, p. 95; Jones,
Gentry and lesser nobility, p. 9; Payling, Political society, pp. 31, 49; Mingay, Gentry, pp. xi, 5-10, 194;
Beckett, Aristocracy in England, pp. 16-7; Stone and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 3-5; Heal and Holmes,
Gentry, pp. 27, 41-2; Doyle, Old European order, p. 83; Holmes and Szechi, Age of oligarchy, p. 147;
Porter, English society, p. 71; Evans, Forging of the modern state, p. 7; Thompson, English landed society,
pp. 22, 126; Kitson Clark, Expanding society, p. 9; Perkin, Rise of professional society, p. 65; Marwick,
British society since 1945, pp. 39, 41.
C Economic History Society 1998. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 E7F, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA.
26 E. A. WASSON
decline.3 As a result, much effort has been expended on measuring social

mobility in English society. Unfortunately, the tiny number of titled
families provides a class too small upon which to rest broad conclusions.
Moreover, only one comprehensive list of landlords was drawn up
between the Domesday survey (1086) and the twentieth century. To
conduct a longitudinal study of even a handful of landowners over four
or five centuries requires prodigious research in private archives, and the
evidence that survives is rarely intact.4 Registers and directories of the
gentry are a relatively recent development, and contain much erroneous
information which is also selective since inclusion rested on the whims
of editors.5 Tax records and lists of the pedigreed compiled by heralds
were flawed and erratic. Monographs on county communities have yielded
rich pictures of elite society, but they are confined to brief periods or
single shires, and employ diverse approaches that render comparisons
difficult or impossible.6 Stone and Stone strove to gain a three-century
perspective by conducting an ingenious analysis of hundreds of country
houses. They escaped the teleological bias of studies focused on a single
event such as the civil war, the narrow vision afforded by looking only
at the titled, and the incompleteness of government records and private
lists. It is unlikely, however, that their sample is typical of the national
experience.7 No method of measurement seems to provide a precise,
long-term set of data covering the whole country with which to test the
paradigm of an 'open' elite.
In the 1970s when regular publication of the volumes of the History of

Parliament Trust commenced, a comprehensive yet manageable means
to address the question of social mobility within the English elite was
made available. Like other sources, this one is not perfect. It excludes
the House of Lords. A standard statistical format has not been used
throughout the project. The first volumes published in the 1930s have
had to be redone, some later ones were rushed into print too quickly,
and information on socio-economic origins and family descents varies in
quality. Other problems, such as lacunae in election returns, are inherent
in the data and hence beyond the control of the editors. Thus, the
History of Parliament can serve only as a foundation. Searchers after
I Purdue, 'Open elite?', pp. 311-3; Berlatsky, 'Lawrence Stone', p. 95; Briggs, 'History as communi-
cation', p. 53; D. Cannadine, 'No entrance', New York Review of Books, 85 (20 Dec. 1984), p. 85;
Furbank, Unholy pleasure, p. 82; Morrill, 'Parliamentary representation', pp. 101-2, 115; Kynaston,
City of London, I, p. 381; Dickinson, Politics of the people, p. 4; Bush, English aristocracy, pp. 5-8;
Rogers, 'Money, land and lineage', p. 438; Stone and Stone, Open elite?
' See, e.g., English, Great landowners, or the wholly anecdotal evidence in Habakkuk, Marriage,
debt, and the estates system, p. x and passim.
5 See, e.g., Burke's landed gentry, 1837 onwards or Walford's county families of the United Kingdom,
1860 onwards.
6 Morrill, 'Northern gentry', pp. 66-7.
7 See above, n. 3; Spring and Spring, 'English landed elite', p. 151; Spring and Spring, 'Social
mobility'; F. M. L. Thompson, Times Lit. Supp., 7 Sept. 1984, p. 990.
( Economic History Society 1998
NEW WEALTH AND THE ENGLISH GOVERNING CLASS 27
social origins must supplement its work by tracking hundreds of family

histories through business directories, county chronicles, antiquarian jour-
nals, and the like.8 None the less, the long line of blue volumes offers
an incomparable opportunity for a new approach to an old problem.
This article is based on the premise that families who achieved repeated
membership in the Houses of Parliament composed the English governing
class and, for much of the period under review, the social and economic
elite at the national level as well. The volumes of the History of Parlia-
ment, the registers of the peerage, and the directories of post- 1832
MPs provide an unrivalled source for identifying the national elite over
many centuries.
I have compiled data relating to over 2,800 families to provide the
basis for a comprehensive analysis of the British and Irish aristocracies.
This article focuses on 1,978 English families who produced 12,783
members of the House of Commons and 2,914 peers, a much larger
group than any previous scholar has used to quantify elite social origins.
From the mid-seventeenth century through much of the Victorian age
these families defined the structure of the state and directed policy.
To be sure, the character of the social order was no more immutable
than was the place of Parliament in the constitution. During the medieval
period plebeian butchers, bakers, and tallow chandlers were elected as
representatives of the boroughs. In the twentieth century, solicitors,
miners, and used car salesmen populate the green benches and the red
ones. But in between, roughly from the accession of Elizabeth I to the
early years of Victoria's reign, four out of five MPs and most peers were
patricians or the founders of landed families, and Parliament was the
framework on which the national elite was structured. A recent compara-
tive study concluded that 'England represents an extreme instance of the
continuity of aristocratic power in European history.'9 It is the extraordi-
nary longevity and resilience of the governing class that has intrigued
historians and makes possible a study covering half a millennium. Figure
1 illustrates the extent to which the House of Commons was dominated
by families able to elect three or more MPs or to achieve an hereditary
peerage. 'O
8 For a discussion of the under-utilization of prosopographical research to answer questions

power elites, see Bulst, 'Rulers, representative institutions, and their members', pp. 41, 49. For the
sources used in this study, see Roskell et al., Commons; Wedgwood, Commons; Bindoff, Commons;
Hasler, Commons; Henning, Commons; Sedgwick, Commons; Namier and Brooke, Commons; Thorne,
Commons. I have also used Returns of Members of Parliament in England, Scotland, and Ireland; Keeler,
Long Parliament; Judd, Members of Parliament, 1734-1832; Who's Who of British Members of Parliament
1832-1979; Young, Parliaments of Scotland. I consulted in manuscript the History of Parliament
volumes for 1690-1715 then being edited by David Hayton at the History of Parliament Trust,
London. I also worked with directories and family and local histories held at the Institute of
Historical Research, University of London; the British Library; Cambridge University Library; the
National Library of Scotland; the National Library, Dublin; and the Library of Congress.
9 Dewald, European nobility, pp. 4-5.
10 During many decades between 1660 and 1820 more than 80% of MPs came from elite families.
All MPs descended in the male line from the first MP or peer are counted as members of a
parliamentary family so long as the relationship was known to contemporaries. If a junior member
acquired an estate and founded a cadet line, this was treated as a separate family. The vast majority
of MPs were brothers, sons or uncles of, or were themselves the senior member of the family.
( Economic History Society 1998
28 E. A. WASSON
80-
70-
60-
50-
40-
30-
20-
10-
1558- 1640 1660-90 1715-54 1754-90 1790- 1820-32 1832-67

1603 1820
Date
Figure 1. Percentage of the House of Commons composed of members from

families with three or more MPs andlor achieving a hereditary peerage,
1558-1867
Note: The figure for 1640 relates to the Long Parliament
Sources: Returns of Members of Parliament; Who's who of British Members of Parliament
Status and political authority were closely linked in England. Loss of

access to office could mean social obliteration." Well into the nineteenth
century, as Cannadine has noted, 'the status elite and the wealth elite
were essentially the same people. In the main, the power elite were
recruited from the wealth elite."2 As late as 1881 the fifteenth Earl of
Derby believed 'political influence' was the first object of owning a landed
estate.'3 The price of land reflected not merely its economic value but
the combination of social and political power that an estate brought its
owner.'4 Elton, who criticized fellow historians for according Parliament
unwarranted political importance before the civil war, none the less
admitted that by 1600 the Commons achieved a social homogeneity that
made the membership representative of the richest and most powerful
men in the country."' In Victoria's last years the annual state opening
Eventually most old families had to pass their estates via an heiress. Heirs by birth or marriage
sometimes changed their names to maintain continuity. This study, like those of Stone and Stone,
English, and the other longitudinal analyses of landed families, counts a family as a single continuous
line if the main estates passed intact by inheritance and not by sale.
" Blackwood, Lancashire gentry, pp. 97-8.
12 Cannadine, Decline and fall, p. 18.
13 Clemenson, English country houses, p. 96.
14 Mingay, English landed society, p. 39.
15 Elton, 'Parliament', p. 80.
C Economic History Society 1998
ceremony probably involved the coming together of more wealth than at

any time in parliamentary history.'6
The method I have used of identifying the elite is not without its
drawbacks. Brothers could be returned to the Commons without a father
or son to precede or succeed them, but such cases were extremely rare.
A handful of important families were infrequently represented in Parlia-
ment either because genes and disease kept bringing minors to the fore
or because they felt no political urge. However, virtually all peerage
families of more than a couple of generations' standing in the House of
Lords also elected MPs, with the exceptions of the Viscounts Saye and
Sele, the Earls of Craven, and the Marquesses of Abergavenny, who
experienced a serious dearth in representation in the lower house during
the modern era. These examples exhaust the list of noble families (aside
from a small number of Roman Catholics, foreigners, and those no longer
masters of their estates) with little representation in the Commons.'7 A
few prominent gentry families such as the Dymokes of Lincolnshire or
the Wakes of Northamptonshire also ceased to be represented in Parlia-
ment during the eighteenth century, but most of these cases can be
explained by unusual circumstances or economic decline. Some Victorian
judges established peerage families without the resources to sustain elite
status. There were some Irish, Scots, and Welsh families who straddled
parliamentary borders, which makes it difficult to decide whether to
include them as 'English'. Family influence often extended to 'in-laws',
but they are not represented in this study. Roman Catholic families were
excluded from Parliament from the seventeenth to the early nineteenth
century, although as a proportion of the whole elite their numbers
were scant.
Before the reign of Henry VIII a substantial portion of the families
with three or more MPs were townsmen. About 30 per cent were purely
urban or professional. However, as the sixteenth century progressed the
proportion of townsmen declined when wages were no longer paid and
prosperous merchants found landed estates to purchase. For example,
the Prides, Thornes, and Myttons, who dominated the medieval represen-
tation of Shrewsbury, either disappeared or became landed.gentry.'8 Only
about 40 families fell into the 'urban' category in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and virtually none after 1660. The handful of old-
fashioned burgess families such as the Walkers of Exeter (three MPs
1640-87) or the Webbs of Taunton (three MPs 1705-80) were throwbacks
from a nearly extinct species. Two-thirds of the 'three plus' families
whose parliamentary activity pre-dated 1660 either were members of the
nobility or gentry when they first entered Parliament, or purchased land
and entered the elite. The numbers in this study are, therefore, most
16 Rubinstein, Men of property, p. 168.

7 The Abergavennys were Catholic for a time. Poor peers did exist but tended either to fade
into extinction or to revive their fortunes through marriage.
18 Cox, 'Parliamentary representation', pp. 240, 242-5. The decline in the proportion of MPs who
were businessmen can be traced in Roskell, Commons, I, pp. 155-9, 161-5, 168-71; Hasler, Commons,
I, p. 20; Moir, Addled Parliament, p. 57; Keeler, Long Parliament, p. 21; Henning, Commons, I, p. 10.
30 E. A. WASSON
useful for analysis of the 'landed' elite from the seventeenth century
onwards, but even as far back as the fifteenth century the dataset includes
much of the top layer of society.
Beginning in the fifteenth century knights of the shire were recruited
more and more frequently from greater gentry and noble families. By the
Tudor period, in Bindoff s words, a county seat became 'the most coveted
prize' open to competition among the gentry.'9 From then until the late
nineteenth century shire knighthoods remained largely the preserve of
leading landowning families and a chief determinant of status.20 The
gentry began to infiltrate borough representation as early as the 1320s,
and this trend became an 'invasion' during the next two centuries.21
Gentlemen were attracted to borough seats as they became increasingly
conscious of the dignity and importance of Parliament and of the political,
economic, and social advantages of having a seat there. The tight restric-
tion on the creation of new peerages, especially under Elizabeth I, at a
time when the size of the elite was growing rapidly led to intense pressure
to gain election, as shire knights if possible and borough members if
necessary. The 'invasion' became a conquest.22 In 1400 fewer than one
in 20 county members also sat at some point for a borough. By Elizabeth
I's reign over half did so. Hundreds of country gentlemen spent their
entire parliamentary careers as burgesses, including for the first time heirs
to peerages.23
The rise in the social eminence of a seat in the Commons, whatever
the type or location, becomes clear when one looks at the number of
close relatives of peers who became MPs at a time when the secular
membership of the House of Lords was tiny. While fewer than two dozen
MPs were of noble status between 1386 and 1421, at least one in five
of all Elizabethan MPs had a close peerage connection in the male line.
19 Bindoff, 'Parliamentary history', p. 124. By the late sixteenth century the loss of a county
contest came to be seen even by the aristocracy as a great 'indignity': Hasler, Commons, I, pp. 240,
283; III, p. 287. A large majority of such encounters, from the middle ages to the mid-nineteenth
century, were not open contests but 'arranged' behind the scenes. They were no less hard fought
on that account, nor was the result any less a triumph or a humiliation because the local power
elite were well aware of what was occurring: Edwards, 'Emergence of majority rule', pp. 180-6.
20 References to the natural assumption of this position by the pre-eminent county families are
frequent in the Tudor volumes of the History of Parliament: e.g. Bindoff, Commons, I, pp. 351, 364,
378, 393, 395, 448, 494, 557, 572, 641, 698; II, pp. 1, 44, 82, 84, 298, 306, 342, 353, 478, 508,
543, 546, 568; III, pp.9, 16, 78, 101, 122, 145, 155, 169, 221, 298, 313, 323, 396, 460, 462,
503, 521, 525, 528; Hasler, Commons, I, pp. 204, 350, 356, 380, 483, 490-1, 546, 612; II, pp. 15,
36, 96, 98, 214, 233, 250, 255-6, 273, 286, 294, 299-301, 339, 347, 349, 358, 385, 400, 409,
434, 487-9, 494, 496, 508; III, pp. 7, 12, 35, 107, 112, 124, 234, 525, 536, 549, 567, 604, 668;
Heal and Holmes, Gentry, p. 175.
21 McKisack, Parliamentary representation, pp. 100-1; Denholm-Young, Country gentry, p. 53; Jal-
land, ' "Revolution" in northern borough representation', p. 26; Lander, Government and community,
p. 58; Roskell, Parliament and politics, pp. 155-64; Roskell et al., Commons, I, pp. 43, 53, 172-5;
Graves, Tudor parliaments, p. 73; Bindoff, Commons, III, pp. 90, 232, 567.
22 Stone, Crisis of the aristocracy, pp. 97-103; Bindoff, 'Parliamentary history', pp. 112, 114, 119;
Aspinall, Parliament through seven centuries, p. 45; Neale, Elizabethan House of Commons, p. 141;
Lehmberg, Reformation Parliament, p. 19; idem, Parliaments of Henry VIII, p. 206; Loach, Parliament
under the Tudors, p. 37; Lander, Government and community, pp. 59-60; Bindoff, Commons, I, p. 4;
Hasler, Commons, I, p. 56.
23 e.g. the 8th Baron Bergavenny, 5th Baron Chandos, 4th Baron Eure, 5th Earl of Kent, and
8th Baron Mountjoy.
? Economic History Society 1998
The number of MPs related to peers in the female line doubled during
the course of the sixteenth century. Every family with an hereditary
representative sitting in the House of Lords between 1558 and 1603
elected at least one relative in the male or female line to the House of
Commons. Most peerage families continued the practice. It became the
rule rather than the exception for heirs to English peerages to be returned
to the Commons unless they were idiots, insane, Roman Catholic, female,
or minors when they succeeded to the title. As life spans lengthened, the
proportion of the peerage by succession able to serve an apprenticeship in
the Commons increased. Membership in the lower house also enormously
enhanced one's chance of getting a peerage, the indefatigable pursuit of
which was a characteristic of great landowners and social climbers over
the centuries.24 From the mid-sixteenth century until the age of parlia-
mentary reform MPs were generally men of wealth and rank who sought
election for a variety of practical motives but chiefly to assert status.
Although the bullying of tenants could help to win a seat, sustained
success with the electorate required skill, time, tact, and money. Repeated
election over the centuries was accorded to families willing to make a
commitment to nursing a constituency. The ritual of election was a
demonstration of the will to rule and a communal sanction of rank which
had to be earned.25 Moreover, once wages ceased to be paid only the
rich could afford to serve. Self-made men and their sons coveted member-
ship in the Commons because it demonstrated their financial muscle and
helped to consolidate their social success. Generally, they acquired landed
estates before election, not afterwards. It is hard to think of an example
of someone who made a fortune through electoral influence. Professional
careers could be enhanced by service in the Commons; this applied
particularly to lawyers, but they formed a small proportion of all MPs.26
Between 1558 and 1914 both Houses of Parliament were composed
largely of the economic as well as the political elite.
It can be argued that to use the standard employed in this article as
a test for membership in the governing class is to set the barrier of
inclusion too high. That would be true if one were trying to identify
local elites. This study concentrates on a small group atop- a much larger
pool of wealth and authority. The peerage and greater gentry, of whom
nearly 100 per cent are included here, were the ones who formed the
royal entourage and shaped national affairs. Their enormous acreage,
24 Few newly created peers served first as MPs until the sixteenth century. Under He
proportion was 41.2%, under Elizabeth I, 78.9%. Over three-quarters of all new peers in 1560-
1700 were previously MPs, well over 80% in 1700-1850. (These figures exclude foreigners, peeresses,
royal bastards, heirs to existing peerages, promotions, life peers, titles called out of abeyance, and
reversed attainders.) Excluding military heroes, judges, younger sons of dukes, and husbands of
titled heiresses, new peers without experience in the Commons totalled less than 15% in 1559-1900.
25 Crouch, Image of aristocracy, p. 102; Hasler, Commons, III, p. 506; Thomas, 'Eighteenth-century
politics', pp. 94-5; Corfield, Power and the professions, pp. 1-3; Quinault, 'Warwickshire landowners',
p. 132; Cliffe, Yorkshire gentry, p. 3.
26 Practising lawyers made up 10%-15% of the Commons from the reign of James I to the mid-
Victorian period: Moir, Addled Parliament, p. 57; Henning, Commons, I, p. 8; Lemmings, Gentlemen
and banisters, pp. 181-2; Sedgwick, Commons, I, p. 145; Namier and Brooke, Commons, I, p. 126;
Duman, English and colonial Bars, p. 169.
32 E. A. WASSON
metropolitan orientation, and cultural predominance made them distinct

from the middling and lesser gentry who either did not aspire to, or
could not command, regular representation in Parliament.
II
Do the criteria for inclusion in this study capture all members of the
governing class? Lists of nobles, high county officials, families identified
as great landowners in the New Domesday book, and owners of large
country houses overlap broadly with the parliamentary elite. Virtually all
peers and Lords Lieutenant of counties between the reign of Elizabeth
and the twentieth century were included.27 A survey of high sheriffs from
the middle ages until 1831 in 13 randomly selected counties revealed
that families repeatedly picked for this office usually appeared among the
parliamentary elite as well.28 Parliamentary families held 70 per cent of
the land in estates of over 2,000 acres worth /2,000 per year or more,
and 91 per cent of the estates worth /10,000 annually or more, listed
in Bateman's compilation of the New Domesday survey in the 1870s. If
a family owned a large estate, its members were almost always politically
active.29 A survey of major country houses in Cheshire, Dorset, Glouces-
tershire, and Warwickshire suggests that about three-quarters of such
estates were owned by families in this study.30 Stone and Stone made a
painstaking survey of large houses in three other counties based on the
size of floor plans. About 36 per cent of their sample of houses were at
one point or another owned by parliamentary families.31 A new study
of Northamptonshire houses by the Royal Commission on Historical
Monuments that used political, economic, and social criteria to select
important buildings can be compared with the list in which under half
the estates were owned by parliamentary families published for that
county by Stone and Stone; the proportion was four out of five of the
Royal Commission's houses.32
I found only 16 families with seats in one of the three counties studied
by Stone and Stone which were members of the parliamentary elite and
not in possession of a large country house on their list. The latter number
27 Sainty, List of lieutenants.

28 PRO, List of sheriffs. 84.5% of families with four or more sheriffs were included. The office
had a variable history both by region and over time, but even after the position lost prestige,
established families continued to serve. Magnates did not generally serve as sheriffs, which made
the office largely the preserve of the gentry, or aspiring gentry.
29 Wasson, 'House of Commons, 1660-1945', p. 642. Most of the non-parliamentary families
owning estates worth C10,000 p.a. were Roman Catholic, modest gentry who had recently inherited
merged estates, or recently successful businessmen who had just entered the landed elite.
30 De Figueiredo and Treuherz, Cheshire; Oswald, Country houses of Dorset; Kingsley, Country houses
of Gloucestershire; Tyack, Warvickshire. It is not easy to tell why some houses were included in their
lists of major houses, and these figures must be treated as very rough estimates only.
31 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, p. 273.
32 Heward and Taylor, Country houses of Northamptonshire. Some of the remaining 20% were
medieval houses that had fallen on hard times by the modern period. Included in the RCHM study
were seats of peers, baronets, sheriffs before 1700, houses visited by monarchs, and those taxed for
17 or more hearths c.1660-74. Because the RCHM excluded the Soke of Peterborough, the Stone
list has been adjusted accordingly for the purposes of comparison.
suggests that using large country houses and regular membership of

Parliament as measures of elite status uncovers the same core of peers
and greater gentry, but the fact that two-thirds of the Stone and Stone
sample did not overlap with the parliamentary elite indicates that their
research dug a good deal deeper into the middle range of landowners
than did mine. This is an important point, because critics of the Stone
thesis of a gentry largely closed to entrants from business backgrounds
have argued that the rate of new entry into the landed class was most
abundant and speedy at the lower levels of county society. New men
were liable to begin modestly, and it often took several generations of
marriage to heiresses or liquidation of commercial assets after a final
cutting of ties with business to build up a large estate.33 As the studies
of Bateman and surveys of large country houses show, the governing elite
was the top layer, and thus in theory the most remote from the counting
house and the most inaccessible to the parvenu. At the top level business
entrants ought to be few and far between. This study should reveal an
elite even more closed to commercial wealth than the wider range of
owners investigated by Stone and Stone.
Because the idea of family continuity is central to the aristocratic ethos,
studying those who were able to elect three or more MPs or gain a
peerage provides us not just with a sample but with the universe of the
most powerful dynasties in the kingdom, 'the governing class par excel-
lence'.34 Old, landed families such as the Greys, Leghs, Lytteltons,
Onslows, Percys, Waldegraves, and Wallops, had a special advantage in
securing seats in the Commons and continued to be elected until the
twentieth century.35 But newcomers found admittance as well. Member-
ship in Parliament was the most verifiable indicator of social status
available to historians, free from the problems that hampered previous
research.36 Analysis of parliamentary families also has the immense advan-
tage of providing a national picture, not a mere sample based on what
were often unique regional experiences.
III
To test for the openness of this elite to penetration from various social
and economic categories, we need to look at new entrants from landed,
official, professional, and business backgrounds. However, a few words
of caution are necessary. Quantitative studies can resemble Victorian
phrenology: bumps and humps sometimes only accidentally coincide with
reality. The changing size of Parliament was not always in proportion to
population growth. Regional variations can be drowned in a national pool
of data. English society was a highly complex and overlapping organism
and those who would search for perfection in the analysis of social
33 Spring and Spring, 'English landed elite', p. 151; Thompson (above, n. 7), p. 990; idem,
Landowners, capitalists and entrepreneurs, pp. 142-3.
4 Bindoff, 'Parliamentary history', pp. 122, 125.
35 Spring and Spring, 'Social mobility', p. 349.
36 Namier, Crossroads of power, p. 5; Colley, Namier, pp. 82-9.
34 E. A. WASSON
mobility, even among such a well-documented group as the nobility and

gentry, are chasing a chimera. Hybrid fortunes derived from a variety of
sources, which makes categorization difficult. What of a family once well
established and then fallen on hard times that re-emerged as 'new'?
Younger sons who founded fortunes but descended from old families
pose a similar problem. A wife's inheritance, not his own acumen, was
often the making of a lawyer or businessman. The Fitzwilliams of Milton
were forgiven their commercial origins because their neighbours mis-
takenly believed they possessed ancient lineage.37
When does the sparrow or vulture acquire the spirit and plumage of
the peacock? My research into family and county histories revealed
examples of commercial and professional entrants to the landed elite who
continued to take an active part in the founder's business two and even
more generations after the first MP was elected and a country seat
purchased.38 Here we must acknowledge that we are dealing with an
inexact science and move on. Despite wild gyrations in the financial
condition of many families, they often sustained high social status over
many centuries.39 Younger sons enjoyed advantages of education and
family connections that usually render calling them 'new' misleading. On
the other hand, old families that completely lost their foothold on the
slopes of gentility and recovered as drapers or soap makers must be
counted as fresh arrivals. Most fortunes had a central source, however
diverse or exotic the part played by secondary elements. Taxonomic
problems and changes in the status and definition of careers over centuries
complicate social analysis, but there is a consensus among most historians
about broad social categories.40 As to the question of which generation
to count as 'new', the problem is resolved here by using first election to
Parliament as the criterion for entry. This eliminates subjectivity and
makes it possible to compare rates of entry from different categories with
the only other major longitudinal study so far attempted (the Stones'
country house elite) and upon which Stone has rested such important con-
clusions.
IV
Before the sixteenth century we may know the date when a family
acquired its first manor, who family members married, and the offices
Finch, Wealth of five Northamptonshire families, pp. 100, 188-9.

38 For a discussion of which generation should be counted as full members of the elite, see S
and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 224, 239; Christie, British 'non-elite' MPs, pp. 4, 18-21, 27, 29, 34-6,
72, 128; Gillette, 'New aristocrats', chs. 6-8, 10; Habakkuk, Marriage, debt, and the estates system,
pp. 477, 573, 580.
39 e.g. Larminie, Wealth, kinship and culture, pp. 7-8.
40 See Stone, Crisis of the aristocracy; Stone and Stone, Open elite?; Rubinstein, Capitalism, culture,
and decline; idem, Men of property; Christie, British 'non-elite' MPs. Harling and Mandler, 'From
"fiscal-military" state to laissez-faire state', pp. 61-2, makes a good point concerning social definitions,
but I question some of the examples. Whatever help he may have received from his father, Ricardo
was a commercial 'new man' in the eyes of his contemporaries. To say Francis Baring did not have
a commercial outlook is highly debatable.
they held, but the process by which they became rich is often irrecover-
able. Knightly careers, local office, inheritance, successful litigation,
embezzlement, liveried service, careful husbandry, exploitation of min-
erals, operation of fulling mills and iron forges, piracy, thuggery, and
luck made landed gentlemen.
Of all families in this study, 42 per cent fall into the 'landed' origins
category, that is they entered the parliamentary elite as landowners
supported by the profits of agriculture. Most of this group achieved
gentry status before the Tudors came to the throne, and nearly half had
their first MP elected before the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. This means
that we do not know a lot about the original methods by which a
substantial portion of the governing class achieved high status. Three-
quarters of the families of 'landed' origin purchased estates half a century
or more before their first MP was elected. The English elite of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was full of old families. The notion
that the ruling class was entirely remade after Henry VII's accession is a
myth.41 A large core of ancient dynasties remained among the peerage,
some surviving until the twentieth century.42 Great families, often growing
more prosperous and prestigious over time but important even in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and frequently retaining their original
patrimony, provided continuous political and social leadership. Many of
their names are familiar to any student of English history: Berkeley,
Cavendish, Courtenay, Herbert, Howard, Lowther, Manners, Pelham,
Stanley, and Talbot.
The founders of some 'landed' families were undoubtedly businessmen
on horseback. From the earliest times the elite was both open and diverse
in origins, ranging from kulaks to colliers. But because so many of the
landed category of entrants were in place by the end of the middle ages,
the extent to which commercial activities contributed to their rise is
hidden. The fact that comparatively few landed families achieved gentry
status by means of agricultural profits after Bosworth suggests that the
'thousands' of new country gentlemen that some historians believe rose
from the ranks of the yeomanry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
remained modest in their resources and rank.43 After the accession of
Henry VII, families could rarely rely on farming alone to lift them into
the elite.
Furthermore, when the election of a family's first MP was delayed by
several generations after the acquisition of landed status, I counted their
social origins under the rubric 'land' even though their original wealth
came from commerce, office, or law. This masking of the real source of
the money leads to an under-estimation of non-landed origins, but pro-
vides a fair means of comparison with the Stone data, which also ignored
41 Kendall, Yorkist age, p. 465; Hey, Oxford guide to family history, p. 127; Cornforth, 'Flintham
Hall', Country Life, 166 (1979), p. 2374.
42 Stone, Crisis of the aristocracy, p. 759; Pine, Story of the peerage, p. 268.
43 Stone, Crisis of the aristocracy, p. 190; Mingay, Gentry, p. 48; Holmes, Augustan England, p. 15.
36 E. A. WASSON
the social origins of founders more than one generation previous to the
first purchaser of a country house.
Table 1 contains a comparison of new entrants to the elite of country
house owners in three counties studied by Stone and Stone with the
national elite of parliamentary families. We have seen that the two studies
use different criteria for inclusion. The dataset used by Stone and Stone
is a small sample of a large group of families many of whom did not
have national political standing. The present study surveys over 15,000
individuals who composed the smaller and more elite body of the govern-
ing class. There is, however, a major overlap between the two groups.
Almost all of the parliamentary families would have been part of the
Stone list had every English county been surveyed by them.
Table 1. Percentage of new entrants to the English elite by source of wealth,

1386-1879
Origin of fortune 1386-1579 1580-1639 1640-1699 1700-1759 1760-1819 1820-1879
W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S

Landa 47 29 51 45 32 35 32 27 19 41 13 42
Office 7 44 7 19 4 13 2 15 8 8 0 7
Lawb 11 10 15 16 22 16 17 31 26 11 19 8
Business 27 17 25 19 42 36 49 27 46 41 68 43
Unknown 8 0.6 0.6 0 1 0
Notes:a For my figures this includes business, law, office, and other entrants who elected their first MP more than
25 years after establishing the foundation of their fortunes.
bIncludes the other professions, but the vast majority were lawyers or judges.
Sources: W: the present study; S&S: Stone and Stone, Open elite, tab. 6.2
Table 1 reveals broadly similar findings for 'landed' origins until the
mid-eighteenth century, when a wide divergence develops.44 This is
significant not only as an indicator that the parliamentary elite recruited
less and less from existing landed families and offered more rapid accept-
ance to non-landed wealth, but also because it directly contradicts the
contention of Stone and Stone that English elite society became more
exclusive during this period.45 As we shall see below, the expansion of
commercial and industrial enterprise during England's imperial era
reshaped the hereditary elite from the eighteenth century onwards.
Families could rise high by earning the personal favour of monarchs and
magnates. Attendance at the royal court provided access to information
and influence that could be used by clever men to lever their own
fortunes. Few careers were better suited to create great wealth rapidly
than responsibility for large sums of government money in this context,
"The discrepancy may arise in part because Stone included all owners at the beginning of his
sample, while I counted new entrants 1386-1579, and because the tight restraint of no more than
one generation allowed between entry to the landed elite and first MP masks non-landed origins.
45 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 15, 257-8.
the more uninhibited and grasping a man's character the better. Local
office and noble service were more common, if slower, routes to riches,
but became much less frequent by the early seventeenth century.46
The sixteenth century was the golden age for new men rising by office.
Roughly twice as many families entered the elite in the mid-sixteenth
century as during any other span of two decades in history, four to five
times the average before or after the Tudor period. The new civil
administration gave men an opportunity to found families. Stone and
Stone list office as the source of nearly half of all families rising into the
country house elite in the early and mid-sixteenth century, an astonish-
ingly high figure47 (see table 1). This is a case, perhaps, where the use
of square footage of country house floor plans may be most misleading.
Many medieval and early Tudor houses were not large or were poorly
documented. Huge 'prodigy' houses were a product of this period, and
as the richest new men were likely to build on the largest scale, the
figure of 44 per cent may tell us only that office was the most profitable
route to social mobility and not necessarily the chief producer of new
families. Furthermore, 'new' families such as the Arundells, Careys,
Knollyses, Paulets, Russells, and Sidneys may have risen high in royal
service and enlarged their houses as a consequence, so bringing them
into the range of the criteria for entry used by Stone and Stone, but
these families had 'arrived' socially before the sixteenth century, and had
sat as knights of the shire and been accepted into the elite during
medieval times.
The two studies show a greater similarity in the proportion of families
rising by office after 1580, although the Stones' numbers remain higher
until 1760. Both surveys found the same proportion in the later eighteenth
century when war and imperial expansion offered a new array of opport-
unities for the talented and those lucky to accumulate great fortunes.
However, with the fall of Napoleon and the end of 'old corruption', it
became virtually impossible to build up a substantial estate from the
profits of office, as my figure shows dramatically.48
VI
The status, emoluments attached, methods of monitoring admission into,

and number of activities included under the heading of the professions
changed over the centuries more radically than any other social category.
However, although there was a sprinkling of physicians, heralds, bishops,
and admirals, the overwhelming majority of families in this category rose
through the law. Ninety per cent or more of all professional entrants
were lawyers until the 1560s. Except for two brief periods in the 1580s
and 1 620s they remained the predominant profession until the Resto-
46 Saul, Scenes from provincial life, pp. 70-2; Coss, Lordship, knighthood, and locality, p. 13
Wilson, English nobility, p. 17; Aylmer, King's servants, p. 81; Cliffe, Yorkshire gentry, pp. 86-90.
47 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, tab. 6.2 and p. 257.
48 Rubinstein, 'End of "old corruption"'; Harling, Waning of 'old corruption'.
38 E. A. WASSON
ration, when military personnel briefly overtook them. Otherwise lawyers

usually remained the largest category of professional entrants.
Historians debate the extent to which men entering the legal profession
came from gentle backgrounds.49 Some of the greatest families in the
elite sprang in a single generation from very modest beginnings to great
wealth and status through the law. But the flow of lawyers into the elite
was not evenly distributed, as table 1 demonstrates. Until 1580, 11 per
cent of all new entrants to the parliamentary elite were from legal
backgrounds. Stone found much the same. Our numbers for the next
century appear vaguely similar, but if one looks more closely significant
differences are concealed behind the broad trends. The Stones and others
see the first half of the eighteenth century as the peak period of legal
entry into the elite, while my data show the troubled middle years of the
previous century as the time of greatest opportunity. A few Lord Chancel-
lors made spectacular fortunes in the eighteenth century, but the data
for recruitment of parliamentary families show a serious decline among
lawyers from after 1660 until 1800.50 During the next 30 years, when
the proportion of legal entrants in the Stone sample shrivelled, more
lawyers launched parliamentary families than at any time since the Resto-
ration. Lawyers also continued to be able to source the finance to found
families late into the nineteenth century, but in smaller numbers.
Both Stone and Holmes argue that we should direct our attention to
the great increase in the importance of the professions in English society
in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. According to
Stone's figures, nearly half (46 per cent) of all new entrants into the
country house elite between 1700 and 1759 came from fortunes founded
in law or associated careers in office.5' My data indicate, however, that
law and office provided far greater numbers to the new entrant category
in absolute terms during the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth
century, not later. Twice as many new families emerged during the Tudor
period as in any other comparable time span, but the rate of entry from
business was also high in absolute terms during this period. Thus, as a
proportion of all sources of entry, office and the professions combined
produced less than 20 per cent of new members of Ithe elite from the
middle ages until the end of the Victorian period. This group never
exceeded 30 per cent of all entrants in any given 60-year period. Only
the world of business had the capacity to turn out new fortunes in large
numbers and formed an ever-increasing percentage of all entrants from
the sixteenth century onwards.
49 Prest, Rise of the barristers, pp. 94-5; idem, Professions in early modern England, pp. 9, 88-91;
Lemmings, Gentlemen and banisters, p. 163; Ives, Common lawyers, pp. 30-2; Miles, ' "Haven for the
privileged" '; Duman, English and colonial Bars, pp. 16, 19; Stone, 'Spring back', p. 168, n. 2; Spring
and Spring, 'English landed elite: rejoinder', p. 851; Christie, British 'non-elite' MPs, p. 30; G.
Holmes, Times Lit. Supp., 10 Aug. 1990, p. 851.
50 Lemmings, Gentlemen and banisters, pp. 152, 155; Stone and Stone, Open elite?, p. 197;
Ditchfield, 'Lord Thurlow', p. 66.
51 Holmes, Augustan England, passim; idem, Making of a great power, p. 74; Stone and Stone, Open
elite?, tab. 6.2.
VII
Throughout English history men of commerce were regularly absorbed

into landed and political circles. From the twelfth century onwards rich
and distinguished members of the bourgeoisie became landed and entered
the aristocracy. London merchant families began to attain knighthoods
in the thirteenth century. The wars of that period created opportunities
for military contractors and government financiers who could make large
amounts of money and earn the gratitude of the king. The heralds were
authorized to grant arms to merchants from the fifteenth century onwards.
Only a small proportion of the City of London merchants and an even
tinier number of those from Bristol, Hull, Exeter, York, and Norwich
produced big landed families. However, as time progressed, more and
more important parliamentary families owed their origins to trade. In the
fifteenth century the capital of merchant colossi could easily surpass that
of the wealthiest lawyers, and in absolute numbers and as a proportion
of entrants to the parliamentary elite this remained true throughout the
period of this study (see table 1).52
50
45-
40 -
35 -3
30-
20-
15-
S 10-
2
5-
0 0 I 0 0 0 0 0I0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 0 000 0 0IC 0O

~ L(~ (~ L( L( ) 'IC 'IC 'IC 'IC 'IC V- >- I>- I>- 1- 00 00 00 00 00
Date
Figure 2. New entrants from business backgrounds by date of first MP (per

two decades), 1400-1899
Sources: as fig. 1
Figure 2 shows a significant drop in new business entrants between

1460 and 1520. There were only two entrants in the decade 1500 to
1509, the lowest recorded number between the accession of Edward II
52 Ives, Common lawyers, pp. 327-8; Grassby, 'Personal wealth of the business community
8. Habakkuk argues (Marriage, debt, and the estates system, p. 420) that merchant fortunes tended to
be modest and usually not comparable to the fortunes of Lord Chancellors, but he provides no
statistics to back up his assertion and there were far fewer Lord Chancellors than merchants.
40 E. A. WASSON
and the First World War. This accords with a period of low economic
growth and population decline. The economic crisis hit business harder
than land. A strong revival came after 1520. The number of new business
entrants rocketed upwards as did other categories. By the mid-sixteenth
century it was unusual for a merchant of great standing who had a son
not to invest in landed estates.53 One-fifth of all business entrants between
the middle ages and the First World War joined the parliamentary elite
in the Tudor period. The number of families entering in 1550-9 was the
highest number of commercial entrants in any single decade between
1310 and 1910. As with the professions, the early years of Elizabeth's
reign witnessed a radical falling off in new entrants, followed by a modest
recovery during her later years. The numbers began to rise again until
1700 with the peak decades being the 1620s and the 1690s.
Several patterns emerge in the origins of the business entrants during
the Tudor period. Clothiers did particularly well, especially in the 1550s.
However, founders of parliamentary families came from almost every
conceivable type of background. Grocers, fishmongers, merchant tailors,
privateers, shipbuilders, tanners, wine merchants, drapers, goldsmiths,
coal fitters, ironmasters, army victuallers, mercers, silk merchants, and
gunpowder manufacturers all succeeded in entering the elite. The young
apprentice, Edward Osborne, founded his fortune upon the rescue of his
master's small daughter whom a careless nurse allowed to tumble out of
a window into the Thames. He was Lord Mayor in 1583, MP in 1586,
and launched the line of dukes of Leeds.54 Many of the most successful
commercial men moved from a small provincial town to London to
expand business opportunities before returning to the countryside to buy
an estate. Big towns such as Bristol and Norwich and smaller ones such
as Dorchester, Chesterfield, and Tiverton all produced a share of new
entrants. This national perspective is a useful corrective to the focus on
London found in most analyses of the mercantile elite. We know far too
little about the rise and entry into landed society by men from towns
such as Fowey, Wells, and Ipswich as well as by successful industrialists
in the countryside. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fortunes
were increasingly derived from overseas trade, and finance, but there
were also innkeepers, revenue farmers, moneylenders, and saddlers. Glo-
bal warfare enabled government contractors rapidly to acquire grandee
status. The East and West Indian trade, banking, and brewing produced
important families in the eighteenth century as did shipping, railways,
chemicals, textiles, steel, and newspapers in the nineteenth.
With the exception of the sharp economic downturn in the 1730s,
business produced an average 12 or 13 new entrants per decade through-
out the eighteenth century. A number of studies of London aldermen in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries suggest that fewer City busi-
nessmen were leaving commerce and investing in land after the civil war
and after the middle of the eighteenth century. My data tell us nothing
53 Bindoff, Commons, I, p. 445.

4 Hasler, Commons, III, pp. 156-7.
about the proportion of successful men who converted their fortunes into
land during this period. It is entirely possible that an increasing number
found other safe means to invest and that more rich men's sons and
grandsons began to constitute permanent City dynasties. However, recent
research suggests that aldermen are not necessarily a typical sample of
all successful businessmen, and that a substantial number of great mer-
chants or their sons continued to purchase large landed estates.55 The
data in this study show that significant numbers of commercial families
entered the parliamentary elite well into the nineteenth century, and that
most of them became landed.56 Enactment of electoral reforms from
1832 onwards made it more difficult for both established and new families
to sustain membership of the Commons. A groundswell antithetical to
hereditary privilege in politics meant that as the nineteenth century
progressed the number of entrant families qualifying for inclusion in this
study declined. Therefore the drop-off shown in figure 2 between 1860
and 1899 can be taken only as a partial picture of the rate of social
mobility within the elite. However, those who succeeded in accumulating
enough wealth to support entry into Parliament and established dynasties
with traditional aspirations for public service continued to come in ever
larger proportions from the business world.
VIII
The findings of this study offer an opportunity to examine conclusions

reached by a variety of historians about the entry of 'new men' into the
elite. For example, Christie's work on non-elite MPs in the eighteenth
century is confirmed by my data. We both see acceleration in numbers
of business entrants during the later Georgian period linked to successful
imperial struggles and mercantile growth. We both see government service
and the professions as much less important producers of new men than
commerce and industry. We both see an important shift in the social
backgrounds of MPs even before the enactment of electoral reform in
1832 with an ever increasing percentage of MPs drawn from non-landed
backgrounds.57 This finding contradicts the joint argument of Harling
55 The most important studies are Lang, 'Social origins and social aspirations', pp. 28-9, 40, 45;
Rogers, 'Money, land and lineage', pp. 438, 444-52; Andrews, 'Aldermen and big bourgeoisie',
pp. 359-67; Earle, Making of the English middle class, pp. 152-7; Horwitz, ' "Mess of the middle
class" revisited'; Grassby, 'English merchant capitalism', pp. 92-3. See also Stone and Stone, Open
elite?, p. 222; Habakkuk, Marriage, debt, and the estates system, pp. 557-9, 571-3, 615-6; Wilson,
Gentlemen merchants, pp. 19-20, 228, 230; Clay, 'Henry Hoare', p. 113.
56 Rubinstein argues that nineteenth-century businessmen were less likely than their predecessors
to purchase estates: Men of property, pp. 170, 177-8, 213-7; idem, 'New men of wealth'. Stone
agrees: Open elite?, pp. 206, 214-7, 220, 291, 403, 423. This position has been challenged by
Habakkuk, Marriage, debt, and the estates system, pp. 365-81, 465-73, 554, 563, 571-2, 589, 596-8,
600-1, 616; by Thompson, Landowners, capitalists, and entrepreneurs, pp. 140-70; and in numerous
other articles.
57 Christie, British 'Non-elite' MPs, p. 206 and passim.
42 E. A. WASSON
and Mandler, that the composition of the political elite changed 'only
marginally' in the early nineteenth century.58
Rubinstein asserts that Britain's economy was primarily a service and
commercial one and not dominated by manufacturing even at the height
of the industrial era. He bases this proposition on research which seems
to show that the great fortunes of the nineteenth century were earned in
commerce and finance rather than coal, iron, and textiles. He further
argues that this was reflected in the fact that industrialists were pro-
portionally under-represented in political circles. Wiener, Ingham, and
Stone individually also believe that the new elite was composed primarily
of bankers and merchants and not of industrialists. This idea supports
the thesis that signs of self-assertion by industrialists which could have
radicalized and modernized English society were successfully opposed by
a City-Bank-Treasury nexus.59
Table 2. Numbers of English parliamentary families deriving their

fortunes from business, 1708-1885
1 708-1770 1771-1832 1833-1885
Origin of fortune N % N % N %
Commerce and finance 70 84.3 66 71.2 31 50.8

Industry 13 18.6 26 28.3 30 49.2
Such assumptions are not supported by this study. Table 2 shows that
industry produced a significant proportion of all business entrants to the
political elite in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and
nearly half during Victoria's reign. Both Perkin and Spring are right to
challenge Rubinstein's analysis.60 There were still banking and mercantile
fortunes of great proportions being made, but industry was overtaking
commerce and finance as the real generator of new entrants to the ruling
class as early as 1820. Among the progenitors of important parliamentary
families who acquired landed estates and began to elect MPs were the
Peels (first MP 1790), Arkwrights (1813), and Guests (1826), followed
by smaller fry such as the Scotts (1780) and the Fosters (1831). After the
Reform Act many more prominent industrial families began to establish
themselves within the elite. They included the names of Pease (1832),
Crossley (1852), Williams (1853), and Wills (1880), attended by a flotilla
of lesser families such as the Stantons (1841), Cheethams (1852), Heaths
(1874), and Priestleys (1885). And this excludes Scottish families such
58 Harling and Mandler, 'From "fiscal-military" state to laissez-faire state', p. 64; Stone a
Open elite?, tab. 6.2.
5 Rubinstein, Men of property, pp. 61-8; idem, 'Structure of wealth-holding', pp. 76, 85, 88-9;
idem, Capitalism, culture, and decline, pp. 24, 145-7; Wiener, English culture, pp. 128-9; Stone, 'Spring
back', p. 173; Ingham, Capitalism divided?, pp. 15-39.
60 For problems with Rubinstein's data see Pahl, 'New rich, old rich, stinking rich?', p. 232;
Spring and Spring, 'Social mobility', pp. 339-42; Perkin, Rise of professional society, pp. 71-3, 257-8;
Howe, Cotton masters, pp. 91-5.
as the Bairds (1841) and Tennants (1879) or Northern Irish industrialists

such as the Mulhollands (1874).
It is true that the number of new entrants into the elite was declining
in absolute terms after 1830 due to the difficulty which families encoun-
tered in getting elected under the new franchise. But there were more
new families entering the elite in 1880-99 than there were in 1720-40.
As figure 2 shows, the number of business entrants was still healthy
compared with the situation in the late sixteenth or the early eighteenth
century, and it is the proportion of this group who derived their fortunes
from industry that is at issue here. Furthermore, there was rarely much
delay between the establishment of large business fortunes and election
of first MP during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and thus
there is little likelihood that the figures indicating rate of entry are
distorted by lengthy intervals of social acclimatization.
The most important difference of opinion among historians with regard
to the composition of the aristocracy hinges on the 'openness' of the
elite to commercial wealth whatever its category. Beckett found that of
the 700 or so largest estates in the United Kingdom listed in the New
Domesday survey of the 1870s no more than 7 per cent had derived
from business fortunes.61 Stone believes that throughout English history
'relatively few' rich merchants from London founded new families in the
landed elite. His data on Northumberland and Northamptonshire show
that the presence of business entrants was always 'negligible', while in
Hertfordshire, close to London, there were more, but he sees them as
'merely transients'. He believes businessmen did not buy as much land
or aspire to the trappings of gentility in the way that men from more
genteel backgrounds did. 'The traditional concept of an open elite-open
to large-scale infiltration by merchant wealth-is dead.' No more 'than
a thin trickle', 'a small handful', of merchants were buying country seats
and attempting to acquire the accompanying status and prestige of landed
gentlemen. 'The real story of the English elite is not the symbiosis of
land and business, but of land and the professions, just as in the rest
of Europe. '62
Stone's thesis rests on the finding that over a period of 340 years only
one-third of the new entrants in his three-county sample were busi-
nessmen.63 Critics have noted that 33 per cent is actually quite a high
figure for penetration to the highest reaches of a traditionalist landed
aristocracy and more than enough to justify the term 'open'.64 Stone
acknowledges that many lesser gentry who were later able to purchase a
country house large enough to qualify for inclusion in his study may
61 Beckett, Aristocracy in England, p. 79.

62 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 217-8, 221-2, 225-8, 280, 402-5, 423. Stone sets up a false
dichotomy between the 'genteel' pursuits of office and the professions, intimately allied with landed
society in origins and values, as contrasted with the middle classes of merchants, tradesmen, and
yeomen. He offers no supporting evidence for this bi-polar system. See Prest, Professions, p. 20.
63 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, p. 194.
64 Spring and Spring, 'English landed elite', pp. 154-5; Perkin, 'Open elite', p. 499; Thompson,
'Desirable properties', p. 164.
44 E. A. WASSON
have originally entered the gentry via business, and that most of his
'landed' entrants had non-landed wealth in their backgrounds. He also
admits that if one looks at the fathers of purchasers of houses, his data
show a picture that 'more closely approximates to the traditional paradigm
about the English landed elite'.65 These admissions undermine his thesis.
As critics pointed out: 'an open gentry is an open elite'. 66
Ix
The data collected for this national study show that there was an intimate
and increasing connection between landed society and wealth created by
business focused in Parliament, which served as a mechanism to confirm
acceptance of the recently arrived families and emulsify new and old
money. Both types of wealth were largely represented there from the
middle ages until the First World War.67 This interpenetration caused
consternation among some of those already at the top of the social scale.
The laments of established families over what they perceived to be
excessive admittance of 'ignobles' into their midst were voiced over
many centuries.68
Stone and Rubinstein individually see the worlds of business and land
as separating at an increasing rate in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. This study and much anecdotal evidence suggest otherwise.
Not only did the landed governing class and the commercial community
enjoy a close and-despite the vociferous protests of snobs-harmonious
relationship in the Georgian era, but there is also much evidence to
suggest that a fusion of agrarian capitalism, commerce, and finance in
the pursuit of empire characterized the Victorian period.69
Penetration at the very top of the landed order was by no means
uniform. At the apex, it was usually slow. Entry to the aristocracy was
regulated by a Dutch door opened only at the lower end. However, the
closure line was not near the bottom where Stone admits a flow of
newcomers did exist. The entrance was always at least halfway ajar, with
plenty of room for the nouveaux riches. In only one decade between the
65 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 208-10, 224, tab. 7.3.
66 Spring and Spring, 'Social mobility', p. 347.
67 Many historians have long since noticed the interconnectedness of land and business: Jenk
'Glamorgan politics, 1789-1868', p. 7; Christie, British 'non-elite' MPs, p. 9; Macfarlane, Origins of
English individualism, ch. 7; Hexter, Reappraisals in history, pp. 71-116; Saul, Knights and esquires,
p. 62; Campbell, English yeomen, p. 104.
68 Turner, Men raised from dust, pp. 1, 3, 14, 130; Carpenter, Locality and polity, p. 96; Crouch,
Image of aristocracy, p. 4; Hasler, Commons, II, p. 334; Rogers, 'Lancashire and the great agricultural
depression', p. 268; Langford, Public life, pp. 9, 39-40; Cannon, Aristocratic century, pp. 15-7; Wasson,
'Crisis of the aristocracy', p. 303; Berkeley, Anecdotes, I, p. 352; Clark, Diaries, p. 7.
69 Stone and Stone, Open elite?, pp. 218ff., 224-5, 424; Rubinstein, Capitalism, culture, and decline,
pp. 140-1, 160; idem, Men of property, pp. 166, 219; idem, 'New men of wealth', pp. 143-5. For an
excellent analysis of this question, see Thompson, Landowners, capitalists, and entrepreneurs, pp. 143-
4; idem, 'Landed aristocracy and business elite', pp. 267-79; Spring and Spring, 'English landed
elite', p. 155. See also Colley, Britons, p. 56; Langford, Public life, pp. 310, 313; Wilson, Gentlemen
merchants, p. 220; Jenkins, Making of a ruling class, p. xviii; Earle, Making of the English middle class,
pp. 7, 86. For gentlemanly capitalism see Daunton, ' "Gentlemanly capitalism" and British industry',
pp. 477, 484; Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism.
civil war and the twentieth century did the number of MPs from families
with two or more centuries of parliamentary service exceed 50 per cent.
The proportion normally averaged in the mid-forties. A remarkably steady
13 per cent of families with five MPs or fewer were new entrants at any
given point in the three centuries following the execution of Charles I.
Among families who elected six or more MPs, about 700, similar in
number and nature to Beckett's group mentioned earlier, 25 per cent
(not 7 per cent) had business backgrounds. A group of about 150
aristocratic dynasties whose names and histories are well known sustained
their position at the pinnacle of the social elite over many centuries with
little inflow after the mid-seventeenth century. But outside that small
circle of grandees, among the lesser nobility and greater gentry, parvenus
constantly entered by an open door.
Most old families did not feel threatened because they could be
promoted higher in the peerage, and the new entrants wished only to
emulate them and sought their acceptance and approval, which actually
heightened the security and authority of the elite. It was not necessary
to have massive penetration at the very highest level for the lower ranks
to believe social mobility was possible.70 The process strengthened the
aristocratic system by bringing in fresh blood, demonstrating social
fluidity, and defusing tension. The stream of business entrants into the
elite flowed through the course of English history, broadening and deepen-
ing as it went. It is one of the chief continuities in the national story.
The ruling class was regularly invigorated by infusions of the spirit
of enterprise.
Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware
70Trainor, Black Country elites, p. 79; Wrightson, English society, p. 22; Briggs, 'History as communi-
cation', pp. 53-4; Wood and Wood, Lancashire gentleman, p. 32.
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The Penetration of New Wealth Into The English Governing Class From The Middle Ages To

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The Penetration of New Wealth into the English Governing Class from the Middle Ages to

the First World War

The penetration of new wealth into

decline.3 As a result, much effort has been expended on measuring social

In the 1970s when regular publication of the volumes of the History of

( Economic History Society 1998

social origins must supplement its work by tracking hundreds of family

8 For a discussion of the under-utilization of prosopographical research to answer questions

( Economic History Society 1998

1558- 1640 1660-90 1715-54 1754-90 1790- 1820-32 1832-67

Figure 1. Percentage of the House of Commons composed of members from

Status and political authority were closely linked in England. Loss of

C Economic History Society 1998

ceremony probably involved the coming together of more wealth than at

16 Rubinstein, Men of property, p. 168.

C Economic History Society 1998

? Economic History Society 1998

? Economic History Society 1998

metropolitan orientation, and cultural predominance made them distinct

27 Sainty, List of lieutenants.

? Economic History Society 1998

suggests that using large country houses and regular membership of

mobility, even among such a well-documented group as the nobility and

Finch, Wealth of five Northamptonshire families, pp. 100, 188-9.

? Economic History Society 1998

? Economic History Society 1998

Table 1. Percentage of new entrants to the English elite by source of wealth,

Origin of fortune 1386-1579 1580-1639 1640-1699 1700-1759 1760-1819 1820-1879

W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S W S&S

? Economic History Society 1998

The status, emoluments attached, methods of monitoring admission into,

ration, when military personnel briefly overtook them. Otherwise lawyers

? Economic History Society 1998

Throughout English history men of commerce were regularly absorbed

0 0 I 0 0 0 0 0I0 0 00 0 0 00 0 0 0 000 0 0IC 0O

Figure 2. New entrants from business backgrounds by date of first MP (per

Figure 2 shows a significant drop in new business entrants between

? Economic History Society 1998

53 Bindoff, Commons, I, p. 445.

? Economic History Society 1998

The findings of this study offer an opportunity to examine conclusions

? Economic History Society 1998

Table 2. Numbers of English parliamentary families deriving their

1 708-1770 1771-1832 1833-1885

Commerce and finance 70 84.3 66 71.2 31 50.8

? Economic History Society 1998

as the Bairds (1841) and Tennants (1879) or Northern Irish industrialists

61 Beckett, Aristocracy in England, p. 79.

? Economic History Society 1998

? Economic History Society 1998

Tower Hill School, Wilmington, Delaware

? Economic History Society 1998

Clark, A., Diaries (1994).

? Economic History Society 1998

C Economic History Society 1998

Sedgwick, R., The House of Commons, 1715-1754, 2 vols. (1970).

? Economic History Society 1998

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