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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
An ultra-slow motion serial whose episodes appear at intervals of twelve months needs a recapitulation of the story so far, however excellent the retentive capacity of scholars in comparison with soap opera audiences. The characters in question are the landowners, great and not so great, and the landed families who were already wellestablished on their estates and in their country houses in late Victorian Britain: and also the newcomers who have continued, throughout the twentieth century, to purchase landed estates and country houses. The main plot concerns the structure and distribution of landownership, and I have suggested that reports of the virtual disappearance of great estates in the last hundred years have been greatly exaggerated. There have been great changes, but while some individuals or entire families have fallen off the boat others have clambered aboard, so that in the 1990s perhaps one-third or more of the land of Britain is held in sizeable estates of 1,000 acres and upwards, compared with radier over one-half in the 1890s. The changing composition of the cast of landowners, and the wildly fluctuating fortunes of particular members of the cast, have fascinated many observers of the social and political scene, and these features provide the sub-plots. The undoubted decline of landed and aristocratic political and social predominance, leading to the virtual elimination of their influence on public life, and the equally undoubted decline, impoverishment, and extinction of some once great and famous landed families, have tended to become confused as cause and effect in some accounts.
1 Burke's Peerage (1949 edn.), sub Sandwich. The move served its purpose, since the 9th earl survived until 1962, comfortably beyond the reach of the rule subjecting gifts made less than 5 (previously, 7) years before death to estate duty. In another sense the eldest son frustrated his father's intentions by renouncing the peerage in 1964, unavailingly since he, the former viscount Hinchingbrooke, failed to regain a seat in the Commons in the 1964 election. What happened to the Huntingdonshire estate is not clear: Debrett's Distinguished People of Today (1990 edn.), sub Montagu, Victor Edward Paulet.
2 Oman, Carola, The Gascoyne Heiress (1968), 50–1Google Scholar.
3 Thompson, F. M. L., ‘English Landownership: the Ailesbury Trust, 1832–56’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. XI (1958), 123Google Scholar.
4 Thompson, F. M. L., ‘The End of a Great Estate’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. VIII (1955), 50Google Scholar.
5 Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (1963), 72–3Google Scholar. Belloc, H., Compute Verses (1970), 207Google Scholar, poem on Lord Lundy written in 1907.
6 John Bright's original phrase, in a speech at Birmingham in 1858, was: ‘This excessive love for the balance of power is neither more nor less than a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy of Great Britain’: Morley, J., The Life of John Bright (1913), 274Google Scholar.
7 The figures are derived from a sample, amounting to approximately 10 per cent of the ‘population’, of holders of ‘old’ hereditary titles (those created before 1885) who died between 1951 and 1960: Who was Who, 1951–60, all names under the letters B, D, R, and T; and from a second sample, amounting to approximately 15 per cent of the ‘population’ of holders of similarly ‘old’ titles who were living in 1990: Debrett's Distinguished People of Today (1990 end.), all names under the letters A, B, and C. These two samples are used extensively in this paper and are not subsequently referenced in detail. Hollingsworth, T. H., The Demography of the British Peerage, Supplement to Population Studies, XVIII (1964)Google Scholar, Table 11, 20, found high rates of ‘never married’ for all cohorts born between 1700 and 1874 (a range of 13% to 21%), a drop to 10% for the 1875–99 cohort and a rise to 13% for the 1900–24 cohort; his figures relate to a much larger universe which includes the younger sons and grandsons of title-holders.
8 144 first marriages have been contracted by holders of ‘old’ titles living in 1990, of which 16 were to wives belonging to equally ‘old’ landed and titled families.
9 Thompson, , Landed Society, 320Google Scholar. Burke's Peerage (1949 edn.), sub Sassoon. The Sunday Times, ‘Private peer who inherited £118 million and a distaste for public prying’, 16 Dec. 1990, 10Google Scholar. Rubinstein, W. D., ‘British Millionaires, 1809–1949’, Bulletin Institute of Historical Research, XLVIII (1974), 219Google Scholar. Dictionary of Business Biography, II, 255, 264 (Ellerman, )Google Scholar.
10 The Sunday Times Supplement: Britain's Rich, the Top 200, 2 April 1989, 57, valued the 6th marquess of Cholmondeley at no more than £45 million, and dropped him altogether from the 1990 list.
11 The Times, Saturday Review, 9 Nov. 1991, 16Google Scholar.
12 The Times, 9 Nov. 1991, 18Google Scholar. May Goelet was known as ‘America's richest heiress’ in 1903: Montgomery, Maureen E., Gilded Prostitution: Status, money and transatlantic marriages, 1870–1914 (1989), 162Google Scholar.
13 Consuelo was thought to have brought a fortune of Sio million with her in 1895: Montgomery, , Gilded Prostitution, 167Google Scholar. The 11h duke of Marlborough m(1) 1951 Susan Hornby, divorced 1960, m(2) 1961 Mrs Tina Iivanos, former wife of Aristotle Onassis, divorced 1971, and 111(3) 1972 Rosita Douglas: Debrett's Distinguished People.
14 I owe information on the £200,000 portion of Lady Helen Vane-Tempest-Stewart (which comes from her father's will, 6th marquess of Londonderry, d. 1915) to Dr Didier Lancien, University of Toulouse.
15 Montgomery, Gilded Prostitution, on which the following para. rest.
16 Montgomery, Gilded Prostitution, supplies data for ‘seriously rich’ American brides on 42–3 for 18 who were in the list of New York's 400, and on 123–38 for wealthy individuals from outside New York. It is difficult to pinpoint the very wealthy among interwar marriages: the families of Chase, Guggenheim, Post, Sears, Wendell, and Whitney have been counted.
17 Thompson, F. M. L., ‘English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century: I’, ante, 40 (1990) 14Google Scholar.
18 The list of 110 surviving large landowners in Britain in 1990 has been compiled from entries in the current Who's Who and Debrett's Distinguished People, which still in many cases specify an acreage owned; and from Perrott, R., The Aristocrats (1968)Google Scholar, amended and updated in the light of specific references in The Sunday Times: Britain's Rich, the Top 200 (1989 and 1990), and Paxman, J., Friends in High Places (1990)Google Scholar. The Carnarvon fortunes may have been in need of refreshment in 1922 after the 5th earl's Tutankhamen excavations.
19 There are 374 millionaires who died 1900–49 listed in Rubinstein, ‘British millionaires’, of whom 66 held inherited titles and were established landowners. Of the remaining 208, 110 received hereditary titles, and of those 86 have been traced in Burke's Peerage, Who was Who, and Debrett's Distinguished People. Those who remained commoners probably had a different marital experience, and it is likely to have been one with fewer contacts with high society.
20 Burke's Peerage (1949 edn.), Debrett's Distinguished People. Orr, W., Deer Forests, Landlords, and Crofters (1982), 193Google Scholar. Bass already had an estate near Burton in 1873. The 1st lord Burton left £1 million in 1908.
21 Lt-Col. W. E. G. A. Weigell has an entry in Burke's Landed Gentry (1937 edn.), of no ancestry, but his father had returned from Australia, where he was born, and in 1866 married Lady Rose, 2nd dau. of the nth earl of Westmorland, and can be assumed to have had an entrée into society and to have been wealthy. Lord Ashton left £10.5 million in 1930; Lord Rhondda £1.1 million in 1918; Lord Woolavington £7.1 million in 1935; and Sir John Maple, 1st and only bt., £2.1 million in 1903. Earl Peel later succumbed to the temptation of owning a large sporting estate in Wensleydale.
22 Anthony Eden m(1) 1923 Beatrice Beckett, divorced 1950, and m(2) 1952 Clarissa Spencer Churchill. W. H. Smith left £1.7 million in 1891, and his son, 2nd viscount Hambleden, left £3.5 million in 1928; lord Glentanar £4.3 million in 1918; viscount Cowdray £4 million in 1927; lord Gretton £2.3 million in 1947; the 2nd lord Phillimore, with a legal fortune, £2 million in 1947; Sir Charles Cayzer £2.2 million in 1916; lord Melchett £1 million in 1930; and Sir William Gervase Beckett £1 million in 1937.
23 Elizabeth Sutherland-Leveson-Gower is countess of Sutherland in her own right by the terms of the Scottish earldom of c. 1235, while the dukedom passed to a kinsman on the death of her uncle, the 5th duke, in 1963. She, and Joan Swinburne, inherited estates; in the case of Scarborough and Somers the family seats (the disposition of the land is not known) passed to the kinsmen who inherited the titles.
24 Based on analysis of the marriage partners of all daughters of the 86 millionaires, deceased 1900–49, who have been traced; the marriage partners of all holders of hereditary titles in the 1951–60 sample (56 first marriages, 10 in group never married); and the marriage partners of all holders of hereditary titles in the 1990 sample (171 first marriages, 17 in group unmarried).
5 Thompson, , ‘English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century: I,’ supra, 5th ser, XL (1990), 23–4Google Scholar.
26 Codrington, , Debrett's Distinguished People; 2nd duke of Westminster, Burhe's Peerage (1949 edn.)Google Scholar.
27 Quoted in a profile of Lord Carrington, The Independent, 16 11 1991, 16Google Scholar.
28 Lord Walter Campbell, 1848–89, 3rd son of 8th duke of Argyll, was a stockbroker:Fleming, G. H., Victorian ‘Sex Goddess’: Lady Colin Campbell (Oxford, 1989), 101Google Scholar. For farming, see below, 23, and Thompson, , ‘English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century, IV’, infra. III (1992)Google Scholar.
29 Data on occupations and careers have been drawn from the self-descriptions which constitute entries in Who's Who and Debrett's Distinguished People, and it is possible that some individuals suppress some information, or consider some periods in their lives not worth mentioning. On the other hand, some, e.g. nth duke of Marlborough, find it interesting to record details like membership of the 1982 House of Lords bridge team vs. the Commons, suggesting that the self-recording impulse is strong.
30 There are no reliable sources of information on the current landholdings of former landed families which have sold or parted with much, but not all, of the former estates. Where the present title-holder retains the traditional family seat, or has a house in the same parish, it is reasonable to infer that some of the nineteenth-century estate has survived.
31 There are some cases in which company directorships, and full-blown business careers, have been vital to survival: the 7th lord Camoys has been able to re-purchase the family seat, Stonor Park, and estate because he worked for Rothschilds and has been chief executive of Barclays de Zoete Weld and managing director of Barclays Merchant Bank. More normal are the directorships (G.E.G., and Christie's) acquired by 6th lord Carrington (Buckinghamshire landowner) after his resignation as Foreign Secretary. One of the longest list of directorships belongs not to a landowner, but to Lord (Spycatcher) Armstrong, who holds 14.
32 Another major difference is that these functions are not monopolised by the ‘old’ landowners, but are shared with the ‘great and the good’ in general, who include many large landowners of more recent (post–1885) origins, as well as many non-landowners.
33 One-fifth of the 1990 large landowners use the description ‘landowner’ in their entries in Debrett's Distinguished People, as do just under 10% of the larger group of 1990 holders of hereditary titles.
34 Contemporary analyses of the distribution of shareholdings deal, understandably, in anonymous size groups, and do not name names. Historical analysis is dependent on public records that have a very low, and erratic, coverage, and on a handful of private papers which chance to contain relevant information: Collinge, J. M., ‘“Probate Valuations and the Death Duty Registers”: Some Comments’, Historical Research, LX (1987), 240–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cannadine, D., The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), 130–6Google Scholar, summarises the handful of known cases of diversification into portfolio investments.
35 Julian Byng makes his living as a barrister, farmer, and racehorse breeder.
36 Paxman, , High Places, 30—9Google Scholar. The V & A exhibition in 1975, The Destruction of the Country House, 1875–1975, was an important event in the formation of ‘heritage’ opinion. In the introduction to the book of the exhibition Sir Roy Strong referred to the buoyant and optimistic decades, for country houses, of the 1950s and 1960s, giving way to gloom and threatened ruin in the early 1970s, and called for ‘consideration and justice’ for country-house owners, who are ‘the hereditary custodians of what was one of the most vital forces of cultural creation in our history’, 8, 10.
37 There is an in-house, descriptive, history of the National Trust, and an adequately informative centenary history is awaited. Meanwhile the best, and most entertaining, source is in the quartet of James Lees-Milne's diaries: Ancestral Voices (1975), Prophesying Peace (1977), Caves of Ice (1983), and Midway on the Waves (1985).
38 Viceroys and Governor-Generals (of India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa) in the interwar period included, from the ranks of the landed aristocracy: earl of Lytton, earl of Halifax, viscount Goschen, marquess of Linlithgow; duke of Devonshire, earl of Bessborough, earl of Athlone; lord Forster, lord Stonehaven, lord Gowrie; earl of Liverpool, Sir Charles Fergusson, 7th bt, viscount Galway; earl of Clarendon.
39 The phrase comes from The Sunday Tones, ‘What's in a Name?’ 26 May 1991, Section 3, 1.
40 The Sunday Times, 26 May 1991, mentions that Major Malcolm Gomme-Duncan had already been obliged to sell his family house and small (400 acre) estate at Dunbarney, Perthshire, and that lord Alexander of Tunis (son of the Field Marshal) was faced with selling his home in Wandsworth Common, because of Lloyds' troubles.
41 Cannadine, , Decline, 398Google Scholar, quoting from Brandon, R., The Dollar Princesses (1980)Google Scholar.
42 Lord Ashburton still owns the Alresford and Stratton Park estates in Hants., and his eldest son has been chairman of Baring Bros, since 1974. Whitbread still owns the Southill Park estate of 10,800 acres: Debrett's Distinguished People.
