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Who were the urban gentry? Social elites in an English provincial town, c. 1680–1760

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2011

JON STOBART
JON STOBART
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, University of Northampton.
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Abstract

This paper explores the identity and social worlds of the ‘urban gentry’ of Chester as they developed from the late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century. In place of the political and cultural definitions which characterise analyses of this group, it takes the self-defined ‘occupational’ titles of probate records as a starting point for an investigation into the background and activities of those styling themselves ‘gentleman’. Central to their identity were networks of friendship and trust. These reveal the urban gentry to have been closely tied with both the urban middling sorts and the rural gentry: a position which at once reflected and underpinned their particular situation within eighteenth-century society.

Qu'étaient les membres de la gentry urbaine ? l'élite sociale d'une ville anglaise de province, c. 1680–1760

Cette étude cherche à définir en quoi consistait le milieu identitaire et social de la gentry urbaine à Chester, et comment il a évolué entre la fin du XVIIe et le milieu du XVIIIe siècle. Au lieu de s'appuyer sur des définitions politiques et culturelles classiques concernant ce groupe, nous avons eu recours aux termes qu'employaient les membres de la gentry pour s'auto-caractériser. Les titres et occupations qu'ils évoquent pour eux-mêmes dans les dossiers de succession et testaments offrent un bon point de départ pour explorer les arrière-plans et activités de ceux qui se disent gentleman. Leurs réseaux d'amitié et de relation de confiance jouaient pour eux un rôle identitaire central. Il ressort de ce travail que la gentry urbaine était étroitement liée à la fois au milieu ordinaire de la ville et à la gentry de la campagne: cette position met immédiatement en lumière et sous-tend la particularité de cette élite sociale au cours du XVIIIe siècle.

Wer war die städtische „gentry“? eine soziale elite in einer englischen provinzstadt, ca. 1680–1760

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Entwicklung der Identität und Lebenswelt der „städtischen Gentry“ in Chester vom späten 17. bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. An Stelle der politischen und kulturellen Definitionen, mittels derer diese Gruppe normalerweise charakterisiert wird, geht er dabei von den selbstgewählten „Berufstiteln“ in Nachlassakten aus, um die Herkunft und die Aktivitäten von Leuten zu untersuchen, die sich selbst als „Gentleman“ darstellten. Von zentraler Bedeutung für ihre Identität waren Netzwerke der Freundschaft und des Vertrauens, die deutlich machen, dass die städtische Gentry sowohl mit den städtischen Mittelschichten als auch mit der ländlichen Gentry eng verbunden war – mithin eine Position, die ihre besondere Situation in der Gesellschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts widerspiegelte und zugleich befestigte.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 2011 , pp. 89 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

ENDNOTES

1 Berrow's Worcester Journal, 8 October 1772.

2 For earlier periods, see, for example, Jenny Kermode, Medieval merchants. York, Beverley and Hull in the later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998). For analyses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Penelope Corfield, ‘The rivals: landed and other gentlemen’, in N. Harte and R. Quinault eds., Land and society in Britain, 1700–1914. Essays in honour of F.M.L. Thompson (Manchester, 1996), 1–33; Paul Langford, A polite and commercial people: England, 1727–83 (Oxford, 1989), 66; Philip Jenkins, The making of a ruling class. The Glamorgan gentry, 1640–1790 (Cambridge, 1983), 196–212; James Rosenheim, The emergence of a ruling order. English landed society, 1650–1750 (Harlow, 1998), 1–12; Tosh, John, ‘Gentlemanly politeness and manly simplicity in Victorian England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 12 (2002), 45–72CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Laurence Klein, ‘Politeness for plebes. Consumption and social identity in early eighteenth-century England’, in Anne Bermingham and John Brewer eds., The consumption of culture, 1600–1800 (London, 1995), 362–82.

3 Margaret Hunt, The middling sort: commerce, gender and the family in England, 1680–1780 (Berkeley, 1996), 2–5; Helen Berry, ‘Sense and singularity: the social experiences of John Marsh and Thomas Stutterd in late-Georgian England’, in Henry French and Jonathan Barry eds., Identity and agency in England, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke, 2004), 178–99; G. E. Mingay, The gentry. The rise and fall of a ruling class (Harlow, 1976), 7–8.

4 See Mingay, The gentry, 7; Peter Borsay, The English urban renaissance. Culture and society in the provincial town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989), 225–56.

5 Corfield, ‘The rivals’, 5.

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8 Penelope Corfield, ‘Class by name and number in eighteenth-century Britain’, in Penelope Corfield ed., Language, history and class (Oxford, 1991), 108–10.

9 Guy Miège, New state of England (5th edn; London, 1699), 149.

10 See Corfield, ‘The rivals’, 14–16; Lorna Weatherill, Consumer behaviour and material culture in Britain, 1660–1760 (2nd edn; London, 1996), especially 166–90; Amanda Vickery, The gentleman's daughter. Women's lives in Georgian England (New Haven, 1998), 13–37, 161–94; Jenkins, Making of a ruling class, 196–9; Borsay, English urban renaissance, 225–56; Klein, ‘Politeness for plebes’, 364–5.

11 These terms appear in 1665 and 1717, respectively: see Corfield, ‘The rivals’, 9.

12 Francois-Ruggiu, Joseph, ‘The urban gentry in England, 1660–1780: a French approach’, Historical Research 74 (2001), 249–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Beckett, The aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986), 108–17, 121–8; Mingay, The gentry, 14; French, Henry, ‘Social status, localism and the “middle sort of people” in England, 1620–1750’, Past and Present 166 (2000), 78–82Google Scholar.

13 Everitt, Alan, ‘Social mobility in early modern England’, Past and Present 33 (1966), 56–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Corfield, ‘The rivals’.

14 Quoted in Mingay, The gentry, 7.

15 See John Smails, The origins of middle-class culture: Halifax, Yorkshire, 1660–1780 (Ithaca, NY, 1994); Leonora Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (London, 1987).

16 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, recognises the presence in Chester of a resident gentry drawn from the landed elite, but then fails to include these men in his analysis of the ‘urban gentry’ of the town.

17 Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, 14.

18 McInnes, Angus, ‘The emergence of a leisure town: Shrewsbury, 1660–1760’, Past and Present 120 (1988), 53–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Borsay, The English urban renaissance. For details of the changing economy and built environment of Chester during this period, see Stobart, Jon, ‘Shopping streets as social space: leisure, consumerism and improvement in an eighteenth-century county town’, Urban History 25 (1998), 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Jon Stobart, ‘County, town and country: three histories of urban development in eighteenth-century Chester’, in Peter Borsay and Lindsay Proudfoot eds., Provincial towns in early modern England and Ireland (London, 2002), 178–86.

20 See R. G. Wilson, Gentleman merchants. The merchant community in Leeds, 1700–1830 (Manchester, 1971); Smails, Origins of the middle class; Davidoff and Hall, Family fortunes.

21 John Herson, ‘Victorian Chester: a city of change and ambiguity’, in Roger Swift ed., Victorian Chester (Liverpool, 1996), 13–51.

22 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, especially 258–9.

23 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, 250; Corfield, ‘The rivals’, 10–11.

24 See, for example, French, ‘Social status’, 78–82; Shani d'Cruze, A pleasing prospect. Social change and urban culture in eighteenth-century Colchester (Hatfield, 2008), 100–147.

25 There were ten individuals styled in their probate records as ‘gentlemen’ who were also aldermen or councilmen: row (d) in Table 1.

26 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, 251.

27 For details, see C. P. Lewis and A. T. Thacker eds., A history of the County of Chester: volume 5 part 1 – The City of Chester: general history and topography (London, 2003), 58–64.

28 Stobart, Jon, ‘Personal and commercial networks in an English port: Chester in the early eighteenth century’, Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004), 283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 The Clerk to the Pentice was in effect responsible for the legal business of the city. See Lewis and Thacker, History of the County of Chester, 59.

30 Cheshire and Chester Archives (hereafter CCA), Chester Assembly Books, A/B/2/125, A/B/2/147, A/B/3/31v, A/B/3/52v, A/B/3/81v.

31 Beckett, The aristocracy in England, 108–28.

32 Parrott, , ‘Manchester attorneys: occupation, communication and organization’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire 88 (1992), 87–9Google Scholar; John Addy ed., ‘The Diary of Henry Prescott, LL.B., Deputy Registrar of Chester Diocese. Vol. I’, Lancashire and Cheshire Records Society 127 (1987), vii.

33 Penelope Corfield, Power and the professions in Britain, 1700–1850 (London, 1995), 80.

34 The success of this strategy can be judged from the fact that at least three captains stationed at the castle were honoured with the epithet ‘esquire’. See CCA, WS1714 William Pennington; WS1744 William Ridsdale; WS1751 George Crofts.

35 This kind of propertied leisure formed the basis of many eighteenth-century definitions of gentility, although recent analyses have tended to link the landed gentry and the upper echelons of the middling sort under the broad heading of ‘polite’ society. See Langford, Polite and commercial people; Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, 13–37.

36 See Richard Steele, The conscious lovers (1722/3), quoted in Corfield, ‘Class by name and number’, 107.

37 CCA, WS1693 Matthew Anderton; WS1685 Henry Jackson; WS1726 John Hicock.

38 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, 269.

39 Corfield, ‘The rivals’, 7–8. Only 845 gave an occupation whilst an unknown figure refused to even respond to the heralds' summons.

40 CCA, WS1702 John Grosvenor; WS1710 Richard Minshull; Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, 253–4. It is interesting that Ruggiu makes little reference to such men in his subsequent analysis, which is unfortunate since their inclusion gives a rather different picture of the composition and values of the urban gentry.

41 See Hunt, The middling sort, 17; Mingay, The gentry, 5–13.

42 Leases and mortgages are sometimes included in inventories, but rarely in the eighteenth century. They were largely absent from those analysed here.

43 Some gentlemen owned substantial rural estates. Edward Hinks, for instance, had land in the neighbouring villages of Boughton, Christleton and Guilden Sutton, as well as a house on Eastgate Street in Chester. Others, including Henry Birkenhead and John Starkey, seem to have held no real estate. See CCA, WS1688 Edward Hinks; CCA WS1689 Henry Birkenhead; WS1685 John Starkey.

44 CCA, WS1723 John Kendrick; WS1715 William Starkey; WS1729 Joseph Bowker.

45 CCA, WS1716 Peter Cotton; WS1743 John Ridge; WS1713 Isaac Tipping; WS1680 John Vernon; WS1693 Seth Mort.

46 Thorstein Veblen, The theory of the leisure class. An economic study of institutions (1899); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste (1984).

47 See Vickery, Gentleman's daughter, especially chapters 5 and 6.

48 For surveys of the ownership of goods, see Weatherill, Consumer behaviour; Mark Overton, Jane Whittle, Darron Dean and Andrew Hann, Production and consumption in English households, 1600–1750 (London, 2004); Bruno Blondé, ‘Cities in decline and the dawn of a consumer society. Antwerp in the 17th–18th centuries’, in Bruno Blondé, Eugénie Briot, Natacha Coquery and Laura Van Aert eds., Retailers and consumer changes in early modern Europe (Tours, 2005), 37–52; Andersson, Gudrun, ‘A mirror of oneself: possessions and the manifestation of status among a local Swedish elite, 1650–1770’, Cultural and Social History 3, 1 (2006), 21–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 ‘The Connoisseur, No. 58’, in The Gentleman's Magazine, March 1755, 112. The comment comes in a piece concerning the problems of raising troops to fight the French and argues for the drafting of such ‘idle and mischievous creatures’ along with other disruptive groups such as foxhunting squires.

50 Jenkins, Making of a ruling class, 199–201; Overton et al., Production and consumption, 111, 114.

51 CCA, WS1689 John Farrar.

52 See Weatherill, Consumer behaviour, 167–71.

53 CCA, WS1683 John Ridge; WS1726 John Hicock; WS1693 Matthew Anderton; WS1736 Abner Scholes; WS1724 Thomas Moreton.

54 CCA, WS1691 William Raven; WS1716 Francis Harpur; WS1683 John Ridge; WS1685 William Cooke.

55 Mark Girouard, Life in the English country house. A social and architectural history (Harmondsworth, 1980).

56 See, for example, Matthew McCormack, The independent man (Manchester, 2005).

57 Erickson, Bonnie, ‘Social networks and history. A review essay’, Historical Methods 30 (1997), 149–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 For interesting overviews, see Duncan Watts, Small worlds: the dynamics of networks between order and randomness (Princeton, NJ, 2003); Albert-László Barabasi, Linked: how everything is connected to everything else and what it means (New York, 2003); Charles Tilly, Identities, boundaries, and social ties (Boulder, CO, 2005); Linton Freeman, The development of social network analysis (Vancouver, 2004).

59 See, for example, Ojala, Jari, ‘Approaching Europe: the merchant networks between Finland and Europe’, European Review of Economic History 1 (1997), 323–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stobart, Jon, ‘Information, trust and reputation: shaping a merchant elite in early 18th-century England’, Scandinavian Journal of History 30 (2005), 298–307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; d'Cruze, Pleasing prospect, 100–47; John Haggerty and Sheryllyne Haggerty, ‘Merchant networks in Liverpool, 1750–1810: efficiency, power and control’, Annual Conference of the Association of Business Historians, University of Liverpool, July 2009.

60 Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and piety in an English village: Terling, 1525–1700 (London, 1979), 75–9; d'Cruze, ‘Middling sort’, 190; Johnston, J. A., ‘Family, kin and community in eight Lincolnshire parishes, 1567–1800’, Rural History 6, 2 (1995), 179–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Jon Stobart, ‘A settled little society of trading people? The eighteenth-century retail community of an English county town’, in Bruno Blondé, Eugénie Briot, Natacha Coquery and Laura Van Aert eds., Retailers and consumer changes in early modern Europe (Tours, 2005), 198–9.

62 Stobart, ‘A settled little society’, 208.

63 Stobart, ‘Personal and commercial networks’, 283.

64 Woolcock, Michael, ‘The place of social capital in understanding social and economic outcomes’, Isuma: Canadian Journal of Policy Research 2 (2001), 13Google Scholar.

65 See d'Cruze, ‘Middling sort’; Bourdieu, ‘Forms of capital’.

66 CCA, WS1686 William Wilson.

67 For example, CCA, WS1727 William Williams; WS1760 Nathaniel Wilson.

68 CCA, WS1680 George Mainwaring; WS1702 Thomas Browne; WS1716 Peter Cotton.

69 CCA, WS1689 John Farrar. Desperate debts were those where there was no realistic hope of repayment.

70 Stobart, ‘Personal and commercial networks’; Stobart, Jon and Hann, Andrew, ‘Retailing revolution in the eighteenth century: evidence from north-west England’, Business History 46, 2 (2004), 171–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Woolcock, ‘The place of social capital’, 14.

72 CCA, WS1685 John Gleave; WS1688 Edward Hinks; WS1686 William Wilson; WS1692 George Buckley.

73 CCA, WS1709 Peter Williams.

74 Stobart, ‘A settled little society’, 208; Stobart, ‘Personal and commercial networks’, 283.

75 CCA, WS1705 Thomas Haddock; WS1742 George Ball.

76 CCA, WS1746 Charles Mytton; WS1758 William Littleton; WS1790 George French.

77 Chester Central Library, MF 5/3, Plan of the City and Castle of Chester: A. de Lavaux, 1745. See also Jon Stobart, ‘Rus et urbe? The hinterland and landscape of Georgian Chester’, in M. Palmer and P. Barnwell eds., Post-medieval landscapes in Britain: landscape history after Hoskins, vol. 3 (Macclesfield, 2007), 114–15.

78 CCA, WS1683 John Ridge; Chester Assembly Books A/B/3/180.

79 Parrott, ‘Manchester attorneys’; Brian Anderson, ‘The attorney and the early capital market in Lancashire’, in John Harris ed., Liverpool and Merseyside (London, 1969), 50–77.

80 CCA, A/B/3/41v, A/B/3/93. See also Stobart, ‘Personal and commercial networks’, 283–4.

81 CCA, A/B/4/145, A/B/4/130v.

82 CCA, Chester Assembly Books A/B/3/84v, A/B/3/94v; WS1697 Thomas Cowper; WS1716 Peter Cotton; WS1760 Robert Murrey.

83 CCA, WS1688 Edward Hinks; WS1692 George Buckley; WS1690 Geoffrey Malbon; WS1716 Peter Cotton.

84 See Jenkins, Making of a ruling class, 205–11; Rosemary Sweet, The writing urban histories in eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 1997), especially 187–236.

85 See Stobart, ‘Rus et urbe?’; Berry, ‘Sense and singularity’.

86 Ruggiu, ‘Urban gentry’, 253–4.

87 See introduction to the diary in Addy, ‘The Diary of Henry Prescott’. See also J. Addy and P. McNiven eds., ‘The Diary of Henry Prescott, LL.B., Deputy Registrar of Chester Diocese. vol. II: 25 March 1711–24 May 1719’, Lancashire and Cheshire Records Society 132 (1994); J. Addy, J. Harrop and P. McNiven eds., ‘The Diary of Henry Prescott, LL.B., Deputy Registrar of Chester Diocese. Vol. III: Latin diary 9 June 1689–31 July 1690, Miscellaneous entries 1683, 1691–1707, Appendices, Indexes’, Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, 133 (1997).

88 See Whyman, Susan, ‘Land and trade revisited: the case of John Verney, London merchant and baronet, 1660–1720’, London Journal 22, 1 (1997), 16–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.