Joining the Gentry

by Maria Grace

The Regency era gentleman was a fairly rare bird. During the era, the gentry class only made up about one and one half percent of the British population. When the rising merchant class had the means to join the elite group, they jumped at the chance. Still, the process was not as easy as simply buying their way in. The transition into the gentry class could take several generations to complete since inherited wealth, especially that related to land ownership, still offered higher social standing than earned wealth.

The Pathway to Gentry Standing

For those not gently born, the pathway to gentry status began with earning money, ideally a very great deal of it. However, wealth alone did not offer real status. It had to be turned into the trappings of the gentry: land, education, and connections.

Arguably, the most significant of these was the purchase of land. And by land, not just a small parcel would do. A yeoman farmer’s plot of fifty acres or so would only grant the status of a “respectable farmer”, not a gentleman. To be part of the gentry, a man needed at least three hundred acres, preferably already fashioned into an estate.

Photo credit: amandabhslater via Visualhunt / CC BY-SA

What is an Estate?

Through the Georgian era, estates were largely self-sustaining economic entities. The most obvious feature of an estate was the grand house where the master of the estate and his family lived and conducted their business. Houses might stand for generations, but changes in fashion, architecture, and gardening meant an estate owner might spend a great deal on bringing the house and grounds up to modern, fashionable standards.

While the house might be the most obvious feature, the more significant ones were those that provided income and sustenance to the owner. A home farm provided food and necessities for the family in residence, as well as the servants who lived with them. Tenant farms and rental properties provided the majority of a gentleman’s income. Natural land resources like trees (lumber), coal, fishing, etc. could supplement incomes. These passive forms of income separated the gentleman from the working class whose hands were soiled by paid work.

Acquiring an Estate

Large land owners were a very exclusive group. By the end of the eighteenth century, half the farm land of Britain belonged to only about five thousand families. (Lane, 2005)

How much did it take to acquire an estate?

In 1801, a one hundred acre estate (not enough to make one part of the gentry, though) in Sussex sold for £3,500. (Donnelly, 2012). In general, an estate would be priced at about thirty times the income it produced. So, an estate producing £1000 a year would sell for approximately £30,000.

To put these numbers in perspective, during the era, the edge of poverty was approximately £50 a year. A shopkeeper might make £150 a year. A comfortable middle class income was £250 while just a quarter million families made a very comfortable £700 pounds or more per year. In 1801, only the top one percent of the population made more than £800 a year. (Morris, 2014)So, it was just a very small fragment of the population who could aspire to land ownership.

Land Ownership was not Enough

Simply owning an estate was not sufficient to grant entry into the upper classes. A family was not part of the gentry until members of the gentry accepted them as part of their social equals. Socializing together was important, but intermarriage was the surest sign of acceptance. Before that could happen, all financial ties with the business that brought in the wealth—commerce, colonial endeavors, manufacturing, military, finance—had to be severed and the family seen to live in a “good sort of way.”

A man aspiring to the gentry class would ensure his sons, especially the eldest, received a gentleman’s education. At Cambridge or Oxford he would be taught the classics, at the not insubstantial sum of £300 a year. Perhaps more significant, the exposure to his social betters would allow him to develop the necessary social graces to mingle with the upper crust.

Photo via Visualhunt.com

While his expensive education would not actually provide useful instruction in how to manage an estate, it would afford him the opportunity to rub shoulders with others sons of the gentry, establishing connections that could serve him well throughout his life.

Not surprisingly, a daughter’s education was secondary, but if there was money available, she might be sent to a “finishing school,”  or girl’s seminary, to complete the education her mother would have begun at home. Training in French and Italian, dance, music, and deportment would be aimed at making her a “social asset” for her future husband—a man whom she might well meet through a brother’s connections. For a daughter, good manners and an excellent dowry were even more important than a pretty face and figure for social mobility.

Once the next generation was sufficiently acceptable to be marriageable to the gentry class, and an estate (and hopefully fortune to go with it) were inherited, the transition to gentry class could be considered complete.

The Importance of Owning Land

To the modern perspective, the emphasis on land over actual wealth seems perplexing. What made land so significant?

In the centuries leading up to the Regency era, people existed in a largely subsistence economy. Crops were difficult to grow and, for most, producing enough for personal use was an achievement. To grow more than one needed was truly a show of success and required a significant amount of land.

Growing crops for market helped shift the economy from a subsistence to a market economy, and helped solidify the mystique of land ownership. Land ownership became a prerequisite for social power. Only land owners could vote. Masters of large estates often served as local magistrates, presiding over civil and certain criminal complaints. They also frequently served as church wardens managing tithes to the local rector and maintaining the parish church.

Thus, land afforded not only economic power, but social standing and influence as well, making it the natural vehicle of the upwardly mobile nouveaux riche to make their impact upon society.

References

Colburn, Henry. A new system of practical domestic economy: founded on modern discoveries and the private communications of persons of experience. London: Printed for Henry Colburn and Co., 1823.

Davidoff, Leonore, and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.

Donnelly, Shannon. "Regency Coin — What Did it Cost?" Shannon Donnelly's Fresh Ink. January 14, 2012. Accessed March 2, 2017. https://shannondonnelly.com/2012/01/14/regency-coin-what-did-it-cost/.

Jones, Chris. "Land Ownership." In Jane Austen in Context , 269-77. Cambridge: University Press, 2005.

Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen's World: The Life and times of England's Most Popular Novelist. 2nd ed. London: Carlton Books, 2005.

Morris, Diane. "Mr. Darcy Was a Second-Class Citizen." Moorgate Books. August 10, 2014. Accessed March 20, 2017. http://www.moorgatebooks.com/08/mr-darcy-was-a-second-class-citizen/.

Savage, William. "The Path to Landed Gentry Status." Pen and Pension. October 05, 2016. Accessed March 10, 2017. https://penandpension.com/2016/10/05/the-path-to-landed-gentry-status/.

Sullivan, Margaret C., and Kathryn Rathke. The Jane Austen Handbook: Proper Life Skills from Regency England. Philadelphia, PA: Quirk Books, 2007.

Wilson, Richard, and Alan Mackley. "Founding a landed dynasty, building a country house: the Rolfes of Heacham in the eighteenth century." In Counties and Communities: Essays on East Anglian History: Presented to Hassell Smith. University of East Anglia: Norwich: Centre of East Anglian Studies, 1996.

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Though Maria Grace has been writing fiction since she was ten years old, those early efforts happily reside in a file drawer and are unlikely to see the light of day again, for which many are grateful.

After penning five file-drawer novels in high school, she took a break from writing to pursue college and earn her doctorate. After 16 years of university teaching, she returned to her first love, fiction writing.

Click here to find her books on Amazon. For more on her writing and other Random Bits of Fascination, visit her website. You can also like her on Facebook, or follow on Twitter.

The Gentrification of Food - Dining in the Stuart Era

by Deborah Swift

'Ah, what an excellent thing is an English Pudding!'

Memoirs of Maximilien Misson - 1690

Townend, a 17th century Yeoman's House

After the dissolution of the monasteries in the previous century, vast swathes of land were sold off and developed by landowners, creating a new breed of landed gentry. Medieval monastic ideas of managing the land were swept away, and new and prosperous estates created. From the beginning of the seventeenth century this affluence (for the few at least) enabled more trade and travel abroad, and more visits to the capital, allowing foreign influences and the fashions of the Court to spread.

This absence from home provoked Parliament to issue proclamations urging landowners not to shirk their duties, but to to return home. The proclamations were largely ignored, though, and the well-to-do flocked to fashionable London - to its theatres, coffee shops and markets.

London soon became the centre of a burgeoning demand for foreign delicacies, and new and tantalizing tastes. In the seventeenth century the lady of the house was expected to keep up with these ideas and a rash of recipe books were published in this century. The French court was enormously influential and France was the most common source of the new ways of cooking. the term 'A la Mode' (in fashion) was used to describe the new French way of cooking. Below, a recipe book from 1660.

'she and I, to go to a French house to dinner, and so enquired out Monsieur Robins, my perriwigg-maker, who keeps an ordinary, and in an ugly street in Covent Garden, did find him at the door, and so we in; and in a moment almost had the table covered, and clean glasses, and all in the French manner, and a mess of potage first, and then a couple of pigeons a la esterve, and then a piece of boeuf-a -la-mode, all exceeding well seasoned, and to our great liking; at least it would have been anywhere else but in this bad street, and in a perriwigg-maker’s house'

Samuel Pepys 12th May 1667 

What they ate

Previously, in the provinces, the diet of the poor had remained basic, being built around bread, coarse hard cheese, and meat and fish where available. Now for the rich, deer parks and fish ponds supplied venison and fish (which for religious reasons had to be eaten at least once a week). It was thought that rabbits did not breed well in the wild and so pillow mounds were constructed as easy places for rabbits to dig their warrens. Rabbit was a popular pie.

For the poor, potage (soup/stew) continued to be the staple diet. About half the population could afford to eat meat every day, but the poorest could only eat it once a week. Meat and fish were preserved by salting. Commonly eaten meats were mutton, pork, beef, venison and chicken or game-birds - such as pigeon, and partridge. Potatoes from Virginia were grown on rich estates, but were considered a novelty.Turnips, parsnips and beans provided the 'filler' in a meal, along with bread. A new interest in gardening in this century led to a wide range of fruit being grown. See this article about women gardening in the 17th century.

In this period the English pudding as we know it was invented. Up until this time puddings were always savoury, made of off-cuts and trimmings of meats forced into animal gut. Tying sweet ingredients into a muslin cloth - the 'pudding cloth' became very popular and soon spread through the whole country.

The Meals

There were three main meals, breakfast, a mid-day meal and supper, taken in the early evening. Breakfast was whatever was available - cold meats, leftovers, bread, washed down with weak ale. There were only two or three courses. each course comprised a variety of sweet and savoury dishes in a kind of buffet. The final course was a 'banquet' of sweetmeats and fruit, and was the ideal opportunity to sample small rare fruits from abroad or marchpane (marzipan) flavoured with spices from the Indies. At supper a single course was usual, made up of numerous dishes. In the era before refrigeration, people were more concerned about waste, and much food was recycled.

The Dining Room

The Great Hall had been the place for eating in previous centuries. Everyone ate together, but seated in hierarchical order. Now a new fashion for privacy from the servants emerged, and the dining room was born. Usually converted from a parlour, these became of great importance. It was the beginning of the idea of 'upstairs and downstairs' which persisted until the Edwardian era. Typically, the dining room was designed to display wealth and status. Embossed gilded wallpaper, fancy ceiling mouldings, ornate fireplaces, and a table full of sparkling cutlery and plate were essential. 

Above is the restored Dining Room at The Merchant's House in Marlborough. The design, dating from 1665 but only re-discovered in 1991, was probably inspired by silk wall-hangings imported by Thomas Bayly from the Netherlands. Tho our taste, the large vertical stripes over a dark green background, is probably very odd. The decoration even covered the doors! The surviving probate inventory of 1690 lists "12 Turkeywoorke Chairs". In 1672, 60,000 of these were were manufactured in London alone, so they were obviously very popular. (figures via the Merchant's House website).On paintings of the period these Turkish 'carpets' were often seen used as tablecloths and cushions.

Dining tables and furniture were dark, heavy and hard-wearing. Benches were often set either side of a table to eat, individual chairs were reserved for the rich. Though at the end of the Stuart period oak was scarce from The Civil War and building ships to fight the Dutch, and lighter softer woods made it easier to maker individual chairs.

 by Willem Claesz.
A leg of ham, partly-peeled lemon and slices of bread on pewter platters,
a berkemeier, an upturned tankard, a silver-gilt cup and cover,
and other vessels on a partially draped table
signed and dated ‘·HEDA· 1655·’ 

Table Settings

If you sat down at table you would find your food served on a wooden or pewter plate. Pewter was used to make drinking cups, dishes, serving platters and plates. Pewter is an alloy of tin, lead and copper and a very soft metal. It was maintained and polished by servants burnishing it with sand to remove the scoring of cutlery. The poor, however, still used wooden plates. Some rich men had silver plate, kept in a 'plate cupboard'. in 1670 Prince Rupert purchased five dozen silver plates from Alderman Blackwell. Each plate weighed nearly 18 ounces, making the plate worth at least £300 ($425) - a fortune 

Forks? What be they?

The laudable use of Forks

Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy,

To tghe sparing of napkins.' 

Ben Johnson 1616

Plate was also an investment that could be melted down if you needed ready cash - something which was often the case in the English Civil Wars. In the early 17th century, a three-tined fork appeared for the first time, as before this time, most forks were two-pronged, and used to hold down a cut of meat. Apparently, Montaigne, writing in the 1570 mentions forks, but says he rarely uses them. It was only when people wanted to equip a dining room for guests that they became more common. Because forks could spear the meat, the knife evolved to have a more rounded shape like the ones we use today.

17th century table setting

Main Sources: 

Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England - Peter Brears

Stuart Cookery - English Heritage

Food in England - Dorothy Hartley

The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Interested in food history? Try http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.co.uk/

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'Spirit of the Highway' is the stand-alone second part of the Highway Trilogy for teens (and adults!) based on the real life and legend of Lady Katherine Fanshawe, highwaywoman.

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