Mark Rothery

‘Upon your entry into the world’: masculine values and the threshold of adulthood among landed elites in England 1680–1800

Compared with studies of earlier and later centuries, discussion of masculinity in the ‘long’ eighteenth century has often concentrated on typifying discourses abstracted from conduct literature, or by reference to gender values expressed in prosecutions and publications relating to ‘deviant’ sexualities. Less attention has been given to identifying private understandings of masculine norms embedded in family correspondence. This study identifies values that were ‘routinized’ within a sample of landed families, that is, those norms rendered unremarkable by everyday rehearsal and mentioned only in passing. It focuses particularly on a ‘make-or-break’ moment in male development – sons’ departure from direct parental control. This pivotal step offered the chance to enact ideals of masculine autonomy, self-control and independence, but carried the risks of debt, disease or disgrace. This article evaluates three important aspects of the tense relationship between filial ‘entry into the world’ and parental expectations. Firstly, it explores parental understandings of this dilemma, and illustrates how fears were counter-balanced by recognition of the importance of personal autonomy within practices of elite masculinity. Secondly, it shows how families mitigated the perils of filial independence, particularly by inculcating ‘familial’ values, and selecting appropriate role models (often siblings). Thirdly, it examines sons’ responses to these efforts, and whether hidden differences of opinion were concealed beneath outward conformity. These private unpublished records demonstrate a number of insights into elite masculinity. Despite the inherent dangers involved in the process, the gentry deemed the beginnings of independence to be crucial to their sons’ development as men and negotiated the process in various ways. Ongoing support was provided by family members. Women were amongst the most important of these and mothers played a very important part in both advising and admonishing. Parents and other family members were more likely to recommend the example of living role models than to suggest particular conduct books or advice manuals. Family cultures of masculinity were apparent in this correspondence as well as the broader social assumptions about manhood that informed them, and demonstrate a greater degree of continuity in gender norms than has previously been supposed

The Reproductive Behavior of the English Landed Gentry in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Between 1800 and 1939 the average size of the English landed gentry family fell from 5.96 children per married couple to 2.25. Reproductive patterns in gentry society exhibited early signs of demographic behavior that would become the norm for the rest of the population by the mid-twentieth century. The conscious limitation of fertility has been an important component of modern society, having been linked with a series of significant developments, not the least of which is the state provision of universal welfare and education. The evolution of gentry fertility patterns also poses specific implications for understanding the national fertility decline and the history of landed society

Consumption and the Country House

This study explores the consumption practices of the landed aristocracy of Georgian England. Focussing on three families and drawing on detailed analysis of account books, receipted bills, household inventories, diaries and correspondence, Consumption and the Country House charts the spending patterns of this elite group during the so-called consumer revolution of the eighteenth century. Generally examined through the lens of middling families, homes and motivations, this book explores the ways in which the aristocracy were engaged in this wider transformation of English society. Analysis centres on the goods that the aristocracy purchased, both luxurious and mundane; the extent to which they pursued fashionable modes and goods; the role that family and friends played in shaping notions of taste; the influence of gender on taste and refinement; the geographical reach of provisioning and the networks that lay behind this consumer activity, and the way this all contributed to the construction of the country house. The country house thus emerges as much more than a repository of luxury and splendour; it lay at the heart of complex networks of exchange, sociability, demand, and supply. Exploring these processes and relationships serves to reanimate the country house, making it an active site of consumption rather than simply an expression of power and taste, and drawing it into the mainstream of consumption histories. At the same time, the landed aristocracy are shown to be rounded consumers, driven by values of thrift and restraint as much as extravagant desires, and valuing the old as well as the new, not least as markers of their pedigree and heritance.

Inheritance events and spending patterns in the English country house: the Leigh family of Stoneleigh Abbey, 1738-1806

This article analyses the everyday spending patterns of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, in relation to inheritance, demography and trusteeship. The analysis makes use of a large dataset of receipted bills along with various other types of accounts and legal documents. We show that several factors contributed to the survival and flourishing of the Leigh estates. These included, first, moderate levels of spending by successive owners of the family estates, punctuated by periodic surges in spending following inheritance events, second, demographic factors, and, third, the responsible management of the estate by trustees during periods of minority. This analysis illustrates that careful economic management, rather than conspicuous consumption, was the defining feature of wealthy landed families such as the Leighs

Fashion, heritance and family: new and old in the Georgian country house

ABSTRACT This article explores the material culture of the eighteenth-century aristocracy through a detailed analysis of the Leigh family of Stoneleigh Abbey. Drawing on a succession of detailed inventories and a large collection of receipted bills, the article explores changes and continuities in the spatiality of material culture at Stoneleigh and, in particular, the ways in which old and new coexisted through the differential construction and use of domestic space. On the basis of this evidence we argue that conspicuous consumption and positional goods were only one aspect of methodologies of distinction in the complex semiotics of status expressed through country house interiors. Rank, dignity and lineage were also expressed through older goods and goods with ‘patina’ value.

Constructing the scaffolding: the National Census and the English landed gentry family in the Victorian period

Abstract The family is the fundamental unit of society and was an important focus for identity, affection and sociability amongst landed élites. Historians of landed society have generally been reticent about studying the gentry family in any depth. This has been partly due to a general reliance on published biographical and genealogical sources as well as a focus on the estate rather than the family in archival material. A more fundamental understanding of gentry society will require greater levels and depths of knowledge relating to the structure and relationships of the family. In order to achieve this on a broad and representative scale new sources and methodologies will be required. This article provides an evaluation of the census enumerators books as a source for studying landed society and suggests a number of avenues for future research.

Communities of kin and English landed gentry families of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This article focuses on the kinship networks of the landed gentry of Devon, Lincolnshire and Hertfordshire in the modern period. Using national census household returns, the visitors’ books of a Devon gentry family and correspondence the article reveals dense and meaningful kinship networks centred on the main country house but also woven into the wider familial world of the gentry. Whenever possible, the inheritance of landed estates passed through the male line. But kin networks were bilateral, founded on both birth and marriage, on relations both through the male and the female line. Kin relations provided a range of services within a culture of visiting, epistolary practice and affection, which generated close and cherished family ties.

Making Men: The Formation of Elite Male Identities in England, c.1660–1900

The power and status of English male elites were not merely inherited at birth but developed through everyday interactions with family, peers and guardians. Much of these conversations were conducted through correspondence. In this fascinating Sourcebook, Mark Rothery and Henry French present a unique collection of letters which together trace this construction of gender and social identities. The Formation of Male Elite Identities in England, c.1660-1900: • reveals the lifelong process of shaping and managing manliness via a range of social agents • illustrates continuities and changes in the values associated with the landed gentry over the course of the period, and within the male lifecycle • charts the process from school and university, through to experiences of travel, courtship, marriage and work • provides a detailed Introduction to the letters, editorial guidance throughout, questions to stimulate discussion, and helpful suggestions for further reading