What are landed gentry?
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The term "landed gentry", although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used of the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, eventually these terms became complementary, in the sense that their definitions began to fill in parts of what the other lacked. The historical term gentry by itself, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. The phrase "landed gentry" referred in particular to the untitled members of the landowning upper class. The most stable and respected form of wealth has historically been land, and great prestige and political qualifications were (and to a lesser extent still are) attached to land ownership.
Landed gentry
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The landed gentry, or simply the gentry, is a largely historical British social class consisting in theory of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It was distinct from, and socially "below", the aristocracy or peerage, although in fact some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers, and many gentry were related to peers. They often worked as administrators of their own lands, while others became public, political, religious, and armed forces figures. The decline of this privileged class largely stemmed from the 1870s agricultural depression; however, there are still a large number of hereditary gentry in the UK to this day, many of whom transferred their landlord style management skills after the agricultural depression into the business of land agency, the act of buying and selling land.
Landed gentry
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The designation "landed gentry" originally referred exclusively to members of the upper class who were landlords and also commoners in the British sense – that is, they did not hold peerages – but usage became more fluid over time. Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in countries that maintained a colonial system; the term is employed in many British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India. By the late 19th century, the term was also applied to peers such as the Duke of Westminster who lived on landed estates. The book series "Burke's Landed Gentry" recorded the members of this class. Successful burghers often used their accumulated wealth to buy country estates, with the aim of establishing themselves as landed gentry.
Landed gentry
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The primary meaning of "landed gentry" encompasses those members of the land-owning classes who are not members of the peerage. It was an informal designation: one belonged to the landed gentry if other members of that class accepted one as such. A newly rich man who wished his family to join the gentry (and they nearly all did so wish), was expected not only to buy a country house and estate, but also to sever all financial ties with the business which had made him wealthy in order to cleanse his family of the "taint of trade". However, during the 19th century, as the new rich of the Industrial Revolution became more and more numerous and politically powerful, this expectation was gradually relaxed. From the late 16th-century, the gentry emerged as the class most closely involved in politics, the military and law. It provided the bulk of Members of Parliament, with many gentry families maintaining political control in a certain locality over several generations (see List of political families in the United Kingdom). Owning land was a prerequisite for suffrage (the civil right to vote) in county constituencies until the Reform Act 1832; until then, Parliament was largely in the hands of the landowning class.
Landed gentry
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Polish landed gentry (, from "ziemia", "land") was a social group or class of hereditary landowners who held manorial estates. Historically, "ziemianie" consisted of hereditary nobles ("szlachta") and landed commoners (). The Statutes of Piotrków (1496) restricted the right to hold manorial lordships to hereditary nobility. The non-nobles thus had to either sell their estates to the lords or seek a formal ennoblement for themselves (not an easy task), or had their property taken away. A rare exception was the burgesses of certain specially privileged "ennobled" royal cities who were titled "nobilis" and were allowed to buy and inherit manorial estates and exercise their privileges (such as jurisdiction over their subjects) and monopolies (over distilleries, hunting grounds, etc.). Therefore, in the "szlachta"-dominated Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth there was almost no landed gentry in the English meaning of the term, i.e. commoners who owned landed estates. With the Partitions these restrictions were loosened and finally any commoner could buy or inherit land. This made the 20th-century Polish landed gentry consist mostly of hereditary nobles, but also of others.
Polish landed gentry
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The popularity of "Burke's Landed Gentry" gave currency to the expression "Landed Gentry" as a description of the untitled upper classes in England (although the book also included families in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, where, however, social structures were rather different). An alternate name was employed by the publishers of a similar, though less genealogical, series, known as "Walford's County Families", wherein the term "county family" referred more or less to the same people Burke covered by the term, "landed gentry". They were also known as the upper ten thousand.
Landed gentry
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Gentry (from Old French "genterie", from "gentil", "high-born, noble") are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. In the United Kingdom, the term "gentry" refers to the landed gentry, the majority of the land-owning social class who were typically armigerous (having a coat of arms), but did not have titles of nobility. "Gentry", in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to landed estates (see manorialism), upper levels of the clergy, and "gentle" families of long descent who never obtained the official right to bear a coat of arms. The historical term "gentry" by itself, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a specific society, yet a single definition nevertheless remains desirable. Linguistically, the word "gentry" arose to identify the social stratum created by the very small number, by the standards of Continental Europe, of the Peerage of England, and of the parts of Britain, where nobility and titles are inherited by a single person, rather than the family, as usual in Europe.
Gentry
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In the history of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, "gentry" is often used in English to describe the Polish landed gentry (, from "ziemia", "land"). They were the lesser members of the nobility (the "szlachta"), contrasting with the much smaller but more powerful group of "magnate" families (sing. "magnat", plural "magnaci" in Polish), the Magnates of Poland and Lithuania. Compared to the situation in England and some other parts of Europe, these two parts of the overall "nobility" to a large extent operated as different classes, and were often in conflict. After the Partitions of Poland, at least in the stereotypes of 19th-century nationalist lore, the magnates often made themselves at home in the capitals and courts of the partitioning powers, while the gentry remained on their estates, keeping the national culture alive.
Gentry
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The landed gentry is a traditional British social class consisting of gentlemen in the original sense; that is, those who owned land in the form of country estates to such an extent that they were not required to actively work, except in an administrative capacity on their own lands. The estates were often (but not always) made up of tenanted farms, in which case the gentleman could live entirely off rent income.
Gentry
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So devastating was this for the ranks formerly identified as being of the landed gentry that "Burke's Landed Gentry" began, in the 20th century, to include families historically in this category who had ceased to own their ancestral lands. The focus of those who remained in this class shifted from the lands or estates themselves, to the stately home or "family seat" which was in many cases retained without the surrounding lands. Many of these buildings were purchased for the nation and preserved as monuments to the lifestyles of their former owners (who sometimes remained in part of the house as lessees or tenants) by the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty. The National Trust, which had originally concentrated on open landscapes rather than buildings, accelerated its country house acquisition programme during and after the Second World War, partly because of the widespread destruction of country houses in the 20th century by owners who could no longer afford to maintain them. Those who retained their property usually had to supplement their incomes from sources other than the land, sometimes by opening their properties to the public.
Landed gentry