A student of History some years ago pointed out that his researches had shown that those landed families which possessed estates near London tended to lose them more rapidly than those whose lands were further away. It was suggested that their owners, or their eldest sons, were able too easily to visit the extravagant capital where they spent more money than they could afford and thus had recourse to mortgages or post-obits which impaired their fortunes and led in due course to the disposal of the ancestral acres. Queen Elizabeth, who expected the Landed Gentry to work hard in their own parishes at unpaid administrative duties firmly discouraged their visits to London and the philosopher who examines the decline in the wealth of the Landed Gentry may be tempted to remark that that decline has become more rapid with the improvement in the means of communication in this kingdom. Certainly the reign of King George V which saw a marked improvement in roads and a large increase in motor-traffic also saw a great acceleration in the break-up of landed properties, and a change in the habits of the Landed Gentry who under the pressure of the ever-increasing demands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the local rate-collector found that their decreasing rents made it impossible to maintain the spacious habits of life and the large houses of their predecessors. The result has been that in many cases country houses have been let, or sold to become schools, homes, clubs or public institutions or, where the growth of urban areas had impaired their amenities, pulled down for their materials. Thus we find that many owners, even among those who have retained their estates, do not live in the mansions or manor houses of their fathers but are content to inhabit a dower-house, or the house formerly set aside for the Agent for the estate, or a converted farmhouse. More often, however, a land-owner who has parted with his ancestral house, becomes an absentee proprietor, although in a few instances families have retained their manor houses and grounds and have sold the rest of their estates. It is, however, safe to assert that in most cases where families are still able to retain their land they do so because they have resources other than their rent-rolls on which to rely and many men hold ancestral acres for sentimental reasons at some expense to themselves largely out of what they earn in various walks of life.

Time was when many of the Landed Gentry were able to live on their rents and could also afford to put their younger sons into the Services - no small matter in the days when a Commission in the Army had to be purchased - or the Church, and left it to the sons of those younger sons to enter the Professions or return to the Commerce from which so many of the Landed Gentry had drawn their fortunes in the first instance. In less opulent Scotland, a Laird's brother was often a merchant and the Laird himself was sometimes a Minister or an advocate. M. Andre Maurois recently said:-

"En Angleterre, le systeme feodal fut sans rigidite. Quand le commerce donna a la bourgeoisie sa premiere periode d'importance, la noblesse devint commercante, te en meme temps le commercant devint noble. L'acces de la noblesse etant ouvert, et d'ailleurs les fils cadets des nobles retombant parmi les bourgeois, un grand bourgeois ne peusait pas a faire une politique anti-aristocratique, mais a fonder lui-meme une grande famille."

Often the "grande famille" which the fortunate bourgeois founded was content to enter the Landed Gentry; sometimes, however, it won its way to the Peerage and the absence of any rule in any of the three kingdoms about ebengeburtigkeit made it possible for a Peer to marry a commoner's daughter, or a commoner to marry a Peer's daughter, without any question of "morganatic marriage" or diminution of the status of the individual or the issue. To this is largely due the fortunate absence of any noble caste in this country and the consequent number of the cross-references between BURKE'S Landed Gentry and BURKE'S Peerage.

The impartial student of family history as a whole, who is able to dissociate himself from the fortunes or misfortunes of any particular line of Lairds or Squires will recognise that the reign of King George V witnessed no more than an acceleration of that process of disintegration and renewal which has affected the Landed Gentry as a class from before the time of the Norman Conquest. Thanes there were in those days and of these only a very few survived after the Conquest as tenants-in-chief holding directly of the Crown in England; but some of them continued to hold their lands of one or other of the novi homines who came in as "Companions-in-arms of the Conqueror" as the old phrase runs. Other families came in as the followers of those "Companions," for the founders of "Norman" families were not always either Norman or noble, and the nice ears of some of the descendants, even of the best of them, have at times been shocked at the impoliteness of the original nicknames applied to ancestors who would themselves have smiled to see the polite development during later centuries of the Norman equivalent of "Fat-Chaps" or "Big-belly," into the respected nomenclature of to-day. The wastage by warfare, whether internecine or international, tended to throw land into the possession of heiresses who transferred it by marriage to newcomers, for the valuable Royal right of wardship enabled the Crown to provide for impecunious supporters by granting the hand of a suitable heiress in marriage. This was one way in which the process of renewing the Landed Gentry was effected. The entry of the sons or grandsons of merchants into the class began earlier than might have been expected; but for many years its chief recruits were those men who had been fortunate in a campaign abroad or had been lucky enough to find themselves on the winning side in a civil war at home. These men, however, did not make large fortunes. Richer men were those who survived the hazards which beset old-time trade, or bought wisely when monastic lands came into the market after the Dissolution, or took advantage of older families which had to sell land at a sacrifice to meet fines for "recusancy" after the Reformation, or raise money to "compound" for "malignancy" during the Commonwealth. Still richer were those who had made fortunes as Army Contractors in Marlborough's Wars or had enjoyed the proceeds of some patent-office in the days when both the Law and public opinion tolerated proceedings which would not now pass the Auditor-General. What even in these days would be accepted as satisfactory fortunes were brought home later in the 18th century by the sugar-planters of the West Indies and the "nabobs" of the East Indies who bought landed estates and Seats in Parliament so lavishly that the price of the latter rose to such a figure as to cause marked annoyance to those Peers and others who had to rely on the acquisition of or retention of "pocket-boroughs" to maintain the influence of their families or the predominance of their Party in Parliament and had no more than rents, royalties, crown Pensions or the Funds on which to draw for the purpose. But none of these earlier recruits to the Landed Gentry, no matter how fortunate they had been in war, politics, commercial ventures to India or the Levant, or in sugar, or tobacco could rival the prodigious wealth which was acquired by individuals who had engaged successfully in industry or in the exploitation of collieries, gold or other mines abroad, oil-wells, or banking during the last half century. From among these the Landed Gentry of to-day has been largely recruited and the expenditure of some of these new-comers on improving the amenities of the estates which they purchased has been immense. Complaint has however been made that in some instances the new-comers have looked upon their country-houses as no more than holiday retreats to be used at appropriate seasons for relaxation or sport and have disregarded the tradition which demanded a great deal of public service from the owner of the Hall or the Manor. Others, on the contrary, have assumed the obligations with the privileges of their new estates and have in most praiseworthy fashion shouldered the burden of public work in the parishes and counties of their adoption. In this connexion readers of Kipling's story of An Habitation Enforced will remember the difference drawn by a tenant-farmer between "some gentlemen" and "the gentry" who "keep on pretty much as they was used to."

Part 2.