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Property Settlements, Financial Provision for the Family, and Sale of Land by the Greater Landowners 1660-1790

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Christopher Clay
Christopher Clay*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

English landed society after the Restoration, and especially after the Glorious Revolution, has an historical reputation for stability, and even if this has sometimes been exaggerated by those who have commented upon it, it is clearly merited if comparison is made with the century before 1640. Possession of a great estate undoubtedly gave the aristocratic families of the age a massive economic strength, and the period is generally portrayed as one in which the ownership of property tended to pass increasingly into their hands. So perhaps it did, although any measurement is not, and may never be, possible. Yet it is certain that there remained an extremely active land market, and no contemporary observers of the land market whose correspondence has yet been studied ever complained that there was any shortage of property for sale. Moreover an examination of the title deeds of any estate built up at this time will reveal that the supply of land for sale came not only from the lesser squires and yeoman farmers, to whom the economic climate and fiscal exactions of much of this period were notoriously unkind, nor yet only from town dwellers who had inherited country estates in which they had no real interest. The substantial gentry and great landed magnates, too, are frequently found selling land, often in very considerable quantities. It is not the intention of this article to argue that, contrary to all other appearance, this is evidence that in any sense the greater proprietors were a “declining” class, for clearly they were not.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Fall 1981 , pp. 18 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1983

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References

1 H.M.C., Egmont MSS, II, 367Google Scholar.

2 Clay, Christopher, Public Finance and Private Wealth. The Career of Sir Stephen Fox 1627-1716 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 178–83Google Scholar. Loder, G.W.E., Wakehurst Place, (London, 1907), pp. 66–68Google Scholar. North Riding RO, deeds relating to N. and S. Loftus, 17th Century to 1764, Zetland MSS. ZNK 1/2 and V/3/1. Graves, John, The History of Cleveland (Carlisle, 1808), p. 343Google Scholar.

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5 Stone, Lawrence, The Crisis of the Aristocracy (Oxford, 1965)Google Scholar, chapter X.

6 Ibid.

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11 Thomas, David, “Social Origins of Marriage Partners of the British Peerage”, Population Studies, XXVI (1972), 101Google Scholar. The proportion of all sons of peers in this cohort who did not marry was as high as 34.6 percent.

12 Clay, , “Two Families and Their Estates”, pp. 250, 256–58Google Scholar. By a debt trust is meant the conveyance of part of the estate to trustees who were to apply the income from it to the discharge of the debts until they had been paid off: then and only then would they reconvey the property to its owner.

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16 Herts. RO, account book kept by second Earl Cowper, 1740s, Panshanger MSS, A2.

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20 Sales of land to raise portions in cash did however continue to occur, albeit with diminishing frequency. In 1663, for instance, Viscount Campden sold the Lincolnshire manor of Immingham for £17,000 primarily to pay the portions of his sisters; and as late as 1717 Sir John Brownlow sold Bruton (Soms.) to pay those of his own younger children. Bristol City RO, deeds relating to Immingham, 25 June and 1 July 1663, Ashton Court MSS. AC/WO/5 (8-9). Wilts. RO, abstract of title to Bruton c. 1777, Stourhead MSS. 383/417.

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24 For the fall in family size amongst the peerage see Hollingsworth, T.H., “The Demography of the British Peerage”, supplement to Population Studies XVIII (1964–1965)Google Scholar, Tables 18 and 19.

25 Hants. RO, copy marriage settlement of 3 June 1682, Clarke-Jervoise MSS, 6M 59 (box 1, item 3). Dorset RO, marriage settlement of 7 May 1686, Ilchester MSS. D.124. Family (box 223). Wilts. RO, narrative account of relations between Henry Hoare and the Earl and Countess of Orrery, 1756, Stourhead MSS. 383/909.

26 The much lower size of portions in relations to jointures in Ireland (according to Sir John Perceval, writing in 1683, it was only 5:1 at a time when it was 10:1 or higher in England) confirms the importance of the competition from moneyed brides and the rate of interest in forcing up portions, for in Ireland moneyed men were few and the rate of interest much higher than in England. H.M.C., Egmont MSS, II, 131Google Scholar.

27 Manley, Thomas, Usury at Six Per Cent Examined… (London, 1669)Google Scholar, preface n. p.

28 Hollingsworth, “Demography of the British Peerage”, Table 42.

29 Interest at five percent on £800 is only £40 per annum, at four percent on £1200 only £48.

30 Bonfield, L.J., “Marriage Settlements, 1601-1740: the Development and Adoption of the Strict Settlement” (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1978), pp. 255–57Google Scholar.

31 Verney, F. P. and Verney, M.M., Memoirs of the Verney Family (London, 1892–1899), III, pp. 28–29Google Scholar.

32 Thirsk, Joan, “Younger Sons in the Seventeenth Century”, History, 54 (1969), 358–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Wilts. RO, abstract of title to manor of Holwell (1767), Stourhead MSS, 383/562.

34 Herts. RO, articles of agreement of 10 Sept. 1706, Panshanger MSS., F.213. Essex RO, assignment of security, 20 March 1756, Petre MSS. D/DP F.lll.

35 This point is discussed more fully in my chapter on “English Landlords and Estate Management” in The Agrarian History of England and Wales V (1640–1750) ed. Thirsk, Joan, forthcoming in 1982Google Scholar.

36 The net effect of the portion system upon landed society as a whole is hard to determine. Most of the portion money provided for younger sons was probably carried outside the landowing class, since the recipients rarely invested it in land but rather used the income to provide additional financial support to military, professional, or business careers. Much of the money provided for girls must have been retained within the class at least in the first instance, as a high proportion married other landowners, although by no means all did so. On the other hand incoming portions paid over by non-landed fathers marrying their daughters into gentry and aristocracy will have gone far to off-set these losses. On balance it is likely that there was some hemorrhage of income from landed to non-landed families, and because sales of land to pay portions were not rare, of capital too, but it may not have been large.

37 Surviving widows were very common in this period, but it should be noted that most were undoubtedly second or third wives rather than first ones.

38 Essex RO, marriage settlement of 19 July 1712, Petre MSS. D/DP F.100.

39 For an example, Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune, (Oxford, 1973), pp. 155–57Google Scholar.

40 Essex RO, marriage settlement of 10 July 1766, Petre MSS. D/DP F.115.

41 If that single younger son subsequently inherited the estate after the portion had become vested in him (as would normally do when he came of age) then he would have the right to raise the money by a mortgage of the settled estate. This was one of various ways in which tenants for life could sometimes quite lawfully raise money out of the family property for personal purposes.

42 Cooper, , “Patterns of Inheritance”, in Family and Inheritance, p. 290Google Scholar. Thomas, , “Social Origins of Marriage Partners”, 101Google Scholar. The first of these references shows that only 12.8 percent of peerage daughters born between 1600 and 1624, and of marriageable age before and during the Civil War, failed to get married, while for those born between 1700 and 1724, and of marriageable age in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the proportion was 26.3 percent.

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45 Norton, J.E. (ed.), The Letters of Edward Gibbon (London, 1956), I, 348Google Scholar.

46 See also Clay, , “Marriage, Inheritance and the Rise of Large Estates”, 511–12Google Scholar, and n.

47 Herts. RO, deeds and abstracts of title to Fitzjohn's Hall and Place Farm, Hertingfordbury, 1693-1707, Panshanger MSS. T.272-4, 280, 282, 288, 291, 306. See also Clay, , “Two Families and their Estates”, pp. 432Google Scholar et seq.

48 Kent, Nathaniel, Hints to Gentlemen of Landed Property (London, 1793), p. 264Google Scholar.

49 In practice, of course, many sales occurred for a combination of two or more of the reasons under discussion.

50 Inherited debts were an additional factor in this sale. Clay, , Public Finance and Private Wealth, pp. 267-68, 272Google Scholar.

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