Open elite? England (1540-1880)

This book sets out to test the traditional view that for centuries English landed society has been uniquely open to infiltration by new families made rich by trade, office, or the professions. Far-reaching consequences, from avoid f bloody revolution to the the avoidance pioneering success of England's Indus tribalization and its relative economic decline since 1880, have been held to follow from this distinctive characteristic since the theory first gained c I currency in the sixteenth century; yet the question of its historical validity has never been fully fully explored.

The present study ranges over three and a half centuries between two great upheavals in landed society, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the Agricultural Depression, and is based on an examination of the landed elites of three cou counties at at varying distances from the capital: Hertfordshire, Northampton shire, and Northumberland. Analyzing the patterns of conservation and acquisition of property, and consequently political influence, within the elite, the authors describe the strategies of marriage and inheritance evolved by older families to preserve their nerve their positions. They establish that the number of people selling property was always relatively small, and the number of newcomers from trade or business equally small and socially unimportant; and gest how this radical new assessment they suggest of elite mobility affects current paradigms of English historiography.

The second sec houses these section of the book considers the families lived in. Owning a 'seat" of suitable size was an essential criterion for entry into the elite. and the houses themselves came to be closely identified with the name and status of the families who maintained them. In an important new approach, the authors. quantify and analyse the subtle transformations which took place as the number, size, and architectural appearance of large houses changed, with the aesthetic and social ideals which shaped them.

The authors have for the first time provided a quantitative basis for analyzing the nature of English landed elites. But they have also enriched and deepened the study, lifting it above mere quantification by the provision of numerous case-studies and examples. The result is major re-assessment of the social, economic, and political history of England since the Reformation.