Early Modern England 1485-1714: A Narrative History

by Bucholz, Robert

  Later in the century, the British economy would make another leap by becoming the first to industrialize. Even by 1714 English industry had taken the first tentative steps toward greater use of machines and mass production, stimulated by the wars and demand born of prosperity. By 1688 Englishmen and women purchased 3 million hats a year and 10 million pairs of stockings to go in 12 million pairs of shoes. These products could still be manufactured by hand, to order, in small shops, but shipbuilding on the coasts, coal-mining in Durham and the Midlands, tin-mining in Cornwall, and iron-mining in Yorkshire all required many workers in one place. More specifically, in 1711 the various royal dockyards on the Thames and south coast employed over 6,500 people. Between 1709 and 1713 Abraham Darby (1678–1717) perfected a method for smelting iron using coke (pre-heated coal) instead of charcoal. The significance of this process for the coal-rich, but increasingly timber-poor British Isles should be obvious. His family’s blast furnace in Shropshire would become the center of a thriving iron industry, with workers eventually brought in from as far away as Bristol. In 1724 John Lombe’s silk mill at Derby employed 300 women and children working two 12-hour shifts – the first real textile factory, accompanied by the exploitation of labor that went with it. The cities that would spearhead the industrial revolution – Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield – were already notable centers for the production of metal goods in 1714. By the early eighteenth century, Sheffield scissorsmiths, filesmiths, and razormakers were catering to markets in London, Virginia, Jamaica, and elsewhere. Immigrants, many of them war refugees attracted by religious toleration and free trade, were important innovators: French Huguenots and other Protestants driven from the continent by Louis XIV spurred the English porcelain, clock, silk, and paper industries. But most manufacturing still relied either on the small craftsman working with apprentices and family members in his shop; or, in the textile industry especially, the “putting-out” system, whereby a cotton factor, say, would distribute raw materials to individual housewives over a wide geographic area for spinning and weaving. Some historians have begun referring to the “industrious revolution,” in order to emphasize the many female hands that powered this household-based production, in contrast to the machinery-driven, factory production of the future.

  Such a traditional, decentralized system of manufacture depended, paradoxically, on an increasingly sophisticated system of distribution and communication. A growing service economy facilitated the movement of goods and services throughout England, making possible specialized centers such as Sheffield. A more integrated national transportation grid emerged, often with Parliament’s active encouragement. Parliamentary statutes authorized the dredging of rivers, the building of canals, and the establishment of turnpikes. Bulky items like grain and coal were shipped down the many navigable rivers or along the coasts. But cattle, always shipped to market on the hoof, needed roads. Turnpikes were toll-roads which could be much better maintained over long distances than the patchwork of back-roads maintained by parish authorities. By the mid-1650s there were regular stage services between London and Exeter to the west, Chester to the north-west, and York and Newcastle to the north. Important routes would begin, end, and cross other routes at large inns. These provided not only accommodation but food, drink, entertainment, postal services, stabling, and a place where businessmen, such as drovers who brought cattle to market or corn factors who transported grain, could make deals. Wares could also be displayed and deals made at fairs and in the great market towns. But after 1660 fairs and markets grew less necessary as the transportation network improved and as craftsmen increasingly sold their goods in established shops with a ready stock. According to one estimate, the number of market towns fell from about 800 in 1690 to just under 600 by 1720. Finally, the more remote parts of the countryside also relied on less substantial traders – peddlers, hawkers, chapmen, and tinkers – to distribute books, metalware, ribbons, and other small manufactured goods. These individuals could not afford accommodation so grand as an inn, often taking shelter in a farmer’s barn or hayloft.

  If the transportation system was developing, so were the nation’s information and credit facilities. The establishment of the London penny post and regular newspapers at the end of the seventeenth century made it possible to keep track of business in far-flung parts of the British Isles and to follow the shipping news. At the same time, some of the big goldsmith-banking houses evolved into fully fledged banks. There were 25 of these in London by the 1720s. They received deposits, paid out interest, issued notes of exchange, and made loans. Since the legal rate of interest was, for much of the period, under 6 percent, money was relatively cheap, loans readily accessible, and new ventures easy to start. Thus, by 1714 the wealthy aristocrat, successful merchant, or well-off widow had some real choices in what to do with his or her money: deposit it with a bank, or invest it in government bonds, one of the great trading companies, or one of the new stock companies which proliferated from the 1690s. New companies sold stock in products and ventures as diverse as glass bottles, convex street lights, lute strings, sword blades, burgler alarms, gunpowder, mines, and fisheries. As this variety implies, the government did not regulate the new stock market at first; nor were professional standards very high. Until the first real London stock exchange was established in 1773, “jobbers” traded stocks in the informal surroundings of Jonathan’s or Garroway’s coffee-houses. There was as yet nothing to prevent a charlatan from selling stock in a company which did not exist or had no real prospect of producing a profit. The catastrophe of the South Sea Bubble was only the most notable symptom of the “Wild West” nature of this side of economic life. Of the 93 joint-stock companies in existence in 1695, only 21 were still around in 1717. Needless to say, stockjobbers and brokers had a very low reputation. Nevertheless, here more than in any other branch of the Augustan economy, a small investment could yield a big profit in very little time. But whole fortunes could be lost just as fast.

  The ever-present sense of risk led to some modern solutions. The first insurance companies, enabling policy-holders to share their risk with others, appeared in London at the end of the seventeenth century. By the 1680s it was possible to purchase fire insurance; marine insurance, against shipping losses, came even earlier. Once again, new requirements led to informal, ad hoc arrangements which were institutionalized only after our period. Thus, Lloyd’s of London began life as the coffee-house where merchant investors and captains met; later in the eighteenth century it would evolve into the greatest marine insurance company in the world. Altogether, the initiatives described above were moving early Hanoverian England toward an integrated national economy which was also at the center of world trade.

  The Ruling Elite and its Culture

  At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the landed aristocracy (the nobility and the gentry) still ruled. The British nobility (those holding the titles of duke, marquess, earl, viscount, or baron) consisted of: about 180 English peers whose titles gave them the right to sit in the House of Lords at Westminster; about 50 Scottish peers, 16 of whom were elected as representatives to the Lords; and about 150 Irish peers, all of whom sat in the upper house of the Irish Parliament. The English peerage had expanded in size under the later Stuarts, partly because successive governments used aristocratic titles to reward powerful supporters and to ensure majorities in the Lords. Despite this expansion in numbers, the titled nobility still comprised but a tiny minority of the British population, not approaching even 1 percent. In fact, because the Whig majority in the Lords was so secure, the growth rate slowed after 1714, restricting new blood from entering the peerage. Thus, there is some sense of the upper classes “closing ranks” and distancing themselves from their inferiors at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This “withdrawal of the elite” manifested itself physically in the impressive gates and high walls which they increasingly erected around their manor houses. It was also apparent in the emotional reserve and aura of self-control w
hich they erected around their persons, having picked it up, along with a smattering of Latin, at exclusive public schools and universities. Still, the English peerage remained far more open to new men than its European counterparts. It also remained paramount in the countryside. While the days of private affinities were long gone, local government, the militia in particular, was still, in effect, at the lord lieutenant’s beck and call – as James II had found to his cost in 1688.

  The titled nobility remained prosperous, commanding, despite its small size, a very high proportion of the nation’s wealth. As we have seen, peers and their greater gentry cousins owned nearly one-fifth of the land in England, and that proportion was rising. The income of the average English peer was perhaps £5,000–6,000 a year, with the greatest magnates (the dukes of Bedford, Beaufort, Marlborough, Newcastle, and Ormond) having perhaps £20,000–40,000 by 1714. The annual incomes of Scottish and Irish peers were much smaller, averaging around £500 – a great, if not quite princely, sum. Nearly all peers relied for their wealth primarily on their landed estates, namely, the profits of agriculture and the yield from rents. As indicated above, these profits were often compromised after 1693 by the Land Tax and the depleted labor market, which kept rents and demand for food low. Nevertheless, the big estates not only weathered these difficulties, they profited from them by absorbing the holdings of those who could not do so. Moreover, as we have seen, since the middle of the seventeenth century if not before, enterprising peers had diversified. Some did well from officeholding: a great court or government place could yield anywhere from £1,000 to £5,000 a year in salary, perquisites (like the right to sell subordinate offices), or pensions. Noble families also invested in London real estate and development, the new joint-stock companies, trading ventures, canals, mines, turnpikes, and the whole panoply of government financial instruments: bonds, lotteries, and the Bank of England. Finally, all great landowning families sought to conserve their holdings by passing them on to a single heir, almost invariably the eldest son, who was usually forbidden, through a legal device called the strict settlement, or entail, from alienating any of the family property. At the same time, holdings might be extended through an advantageous marriage – sometimes with another aristocrat, sometimes into mercantile or professional wealth – or the acquisition of such land as did come onto the market. As a result of these initiatives, most noble families in England, at least, were more than able to compensate for the disappointing performance of their agricultural holdings.

  While elder sons consolidated their estates behind deer parks and high walls, the cold realities of primogeniture forced younger sons into apprenticeships costing their parents hundreds of pounds, the professions, and marriage into the middling orders. During the reign of Charles II, an Italian visitor was shocked, thinking that English nobles and gentry apprenticed their sons to “masters of the lowest trades, such as tailors, shoemakers, innkeepers.”12 In fact, while the nobility seemed to close ranks against their inferiors in general, individual families did maintain numerous connections across class lines.

  Even more than in previous centuries, their affluence enabled members of the peerage to live lives of ostentation, leisure, and grace, as well as political consequence. In fact, the century after 1660 saw the zenith of aristocratic wealth and power in England. The most prominent noble families displayed that wealth and power by erecting great baroque palaces. The years 1690–1710 saw the building or rebuilding of, among others, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire (in this one case out of public funds) for the duke of Marlborough, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for the duke of Devonshire, Petworth House in Sussex for the duke of Somerset, and Castle Howard in Yorkshire for the duke of Norfolk (see plate 26). These palaces were often designed or renovated by the greatest architects of the day, such as Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), Nicholas Hawksmoor (1662?–1736), William Talman (1650–1719), or William Kent (ca. 1686–1748). They were decorated by its greatest artists, such as history painter Louis Laguerre (1663–1721), carver Grinling Gibbons, and ironworker Jean Tijou (fl. 1689–1711). They were filled with expensive furnishings, paintings, porcelain, and books, and surrounded by elaborate formal gardens designed by men like Henry Wise (1653–1738), Charles Bridgman (d. 1738), and Kent to demonstrate that even the forces of nature obeyed the commands of their noble proprietors. For an ambitious peer, such a house embodied his wealth and taste and formed the political and social headquarters for networks of friends and followers which extended throughout the county and beyond.

  And yet, because their masters played so important a role at court and in London, these houses were only occupied by them for about half the year. From early autumn to late spring, with the possible exception of the Christmas holidays, their owners lived in London. By 1714 the landed nobility was increasingly “amphibious” between the country and the capital and at home in both. As in previous periods, the males attended the House of Lords when Parliament was in session, and some held high office. They and their families enjoyed the pleasures of the season, attending the court, the theater, the opera (newly imported from Italy about 1705), and concerts. Aristocratic men could relax at taverns, coffeehouses, and, increasingly, private clubs (see below). In order to take convenient advantage of these delights and responsibilities, British nobles sometimes built splendid London townhouses, smaller versions of their country houses, also designed and decorated by famous artists. But increasingly, they tended to settle in one of London’s growing number of smart squares often named for the families that developed them: Russell, Grosvenor, etc. By the close of the seventeenth century, some members of the ruling elite pursued a second season at the end of the summer at one of the great spas such as Tunbridge Wells in Kent, Epsom in Surrey, and, most importantly, Bath in Somerset. In fact, these long absences from their country seats may have weakened direct noble control of the localities and contributed to the perception of elite withdrawal. As our period closes, that control was increasingly devolving onto the shoulders of the gentry.

  Plate 26 Castle Howard, engraving. The British Library.

  Closely allied with the nobility – so that historians often consider them part of the same class – were the gentry (baronets, knights, esquires, and plain gentlemen). By the beginning of the eighteenth century the definition of gentility was even vaguer than it had been under the Tudors. The border separating a gentleman from a prosperous (or prosperous-looking) commoner was blurry and permeable, leading to a much more open society than in the rest of Europe. By the same token, it became increasingly difficult, at court, at a London masked ball, or while taking the waters at Bath, to tell who was gentle and who was not. The lead character in Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders (1722) discovered this difficulty when she sought to marry “this amphibious creature, this land–water thing called a gentleman-tradesman,” without realizing that her intended beau might look the part of a gentleman, but his status was all a mirage based on credit. Gentlemen no longer felt it necessary to take out coats of arms or even purchase landed estates. The end of the Stuart period saw the first “urban gentry” or “pseudo-gentry” – often wealthy merchants or professionals – who preferred town amenities to country pleasures.

  The demographer Gregory King (1648–1712) thought that there were about 16,500 gentry families in England in 1688 (see table 1),13 but modern estimates range as high as 25,000. There was a smaller number of Scottish and Irish gentlemen. Altogether, the English gentry owned over half of the country. Only the most prominent sat in the House of Commons: the British Commons after the 1707 Union had 558 members, but not all of these were landed gentlemen. By this time, the average gentleman made perhaps £500 a year, but that “average” disguises wide variations in wealth, power, and status. Historians often distinguish between the “greater gentry” and the “lesser gentry.” The greater gentry had incomes averaging over £1,000 a year, and might receive as much as £10,000–15,000. As a result, they lived like all but the greatest peers. Like their noble cousins, they oft
en possessed multiple estates; built great country houses; held a parliamentary seat or influence on one; took office, if not at the center then locally as a deputy lieutenant, sheriff, or JP; and split their time between their estates and the London season, Bath Spa, or (horse-)race meetings at Newmarket or Epsom. Walpole, with his premiership, his great estate at Houghton in Norfolk, and the splendid art collection which it held (today the core of the famous Hermitage Collection in Russia), is the most glittering example of the type.

  In sharp contrast stood the lesser gentry, whose incomes might be as low as £200. Often, they held one poor estate with a few tenants. Their local influence was very limited: they rarely held offices above that of JP or sat in Parliament, for they could not afford the cost of mounting a campaign, especially after the passage of the Septennial Act in 1716. While the lesser gentry might be consulted by the real aristocratic leaders of their counties, they would not have a determining influence. Their houses were comfortable, not spectacular; and they rarely left them to go to London. They might, however, take advantage of the growing amenities of the local county town, which, in the eighteenth century, was increasingly likely to build assembly rooms where dances, concerts, and even occasional theatrical productions might be held. Political outsiders, they tended to sympathize with the Tories.

  In 1714 as in 1485, the landed aristocracy ran the country, determined its relations with other countries, and set the tone of its culture. For most of the period covered by this book, they did so at the royal court. Until at least the 1680s, the court at Whitehall and elsewhere was the epicenter not only of politics but of government finance, and religious, social, and cultural life. It was, moreover, the great emporium for acquiring places of all kinds, not only in the household but in the Church, the judiciary, the foreign service, the revenue services (Customs, Excise, Land Tax, etc.), the armed forces, and local government. The Restoration court also provided impressive architecture, splendid parks, sumptuous decor and furnishings, dramatic ceremonies, balls, concerts, plays, the royal art collection, free meals, an endless source of gossip, and the greatest marriage market in England. In the Chapel Royal could be heard “excellent Preaching … by the most eminent Bish[ops] & Divines of the Nation,”14 as well as magnificent choral anthems and organ voluntaries by its greatest composers, Matthew Locke (ca. 1622–77), John Blow, and, above all, Henry Purcell. Their music was baroque: contrapuntally complex and heavily ornamented, it was thought to complement the awesome power of absolutist monarchs. The baroque style had its architectural counterpart in the imposing designs of Hugh May (1621–84) and Sir Christopher Wren at Whitehall, Windsor, and Winchester; the elaborate carving of Grinling Gibbons; and the ornate allegorical ceiling painting of Antonio Verrio (ca. 1639–1707). The denizens of this court were painted in the baroque style by Lely and Kneller; their conversation celebrated in the new comedy of manners being written by “court wits” such as Etherege or Wycherley; their politics and their sexual escapades satirized by poets like Rochester or Marvell. Rarely has so much talent been brought together in one place.