Successive heralds and armorists have written at length on the nature of gentility, contriving artificial qualifications for recognition as gentry, and different degrees within its ranks. This sort of definition is elusive, and people eventually concede to the common theory, quite irrelevant in this context, that anyone who behaves as a gentleman is a gentleman. Fox-Davies described the landed gentry as the "untitled aristocracy", with which he compared the peerage, baronetage and knightage, the "titled aristocracy". This distinction by no means relegates the landed gentry to a steerage position within the aristocracy; BURKE'S Peerage and BURKE'S Landed Gentry are companion and complementary works. This is emphasized by the fact that of the hundred and two marriages contracted by the heads of one hundred random landed gentry families, fifteen have been with daughters of peerage families, and thirty with those of other landed gentry families. However, it is not the purpose either of this article, or of BURKE'S Landed Gentry, to set up as an arbiter of gentility, but to put forward some suggestions as to what constitutes this body of people apparently sufficiently definable to bracket within the collective title of landed gentry.

Perhaps the surest plan to adapt would be to enquire who are the people in BURKE'S Landed Gentry. In the random sample already mentioned from the three volumes of the 18th Edition, one hundred families have been extracted, and the worldly position of the current head of each family has been examined in detail. First and foremost, let us see how many of these people are landed. Sixty-six are described as "of" somewhere. While some of these places may have been disposed of before the edition was completed, and others may be of insufficient merit to have a place in the heading, there appear to be a number of families possessing considerable secondary estates and houses not forming part of the title of an article. We can therefore conclude that approximately sixty-six per cent of these families are landed in some degree, varying perhaps from a small park and a couple of tenants to an estate of many thousand acres. It is hard to define the term "landed" in more than a general way, but perhaps, even where the acreage is small, it implies a sense of deep-rootedness in one particular place. This sixty-six per cent may be compared with eighty-seven per cent of the same hundred families one hundred years ago, fifty-nine per cent two hundred years ago, and forty-six per cent in 1672. Only three families in this one hundred have never at any time been landed, but all three have distinguished themselves signally in other fields than the landed. If one bears in mind the full title of the earliest editions of the Landed Gentry, namely BURKE'S Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, or Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank, but uninvested with heritable honours, one can only commend the inclusion of such families. One of the three has furnished the country with no less than six admirals (three of them knighted), two generals, an air commodore, and two more knights, both eminent public servants, not to mention a host of distinguished lesser civil and colonial servants, soldiers, sailors and clergymen. Another has produced an eminent surgeon, who was also a pioneer of life insurance, a surgeon-general, a high court judge, and a distinguished soldier. The third has produced three cabinet ministers, one of whom was also Prime Minister.

Of course, the representatives of most of the sixty-six families still landed are and have been involved in other activities besides the running of their estates, either as the result of being landowners on whom various local duties are incumbent, or totally isolated from the rural scene. The armed forces head the list of subsidiary occupations, with a rear admiral, a major-general, thirteen other serving or retired army officers, and an air marshal. In addition to these there are numerous wartime or reserve appointments in the services. Other occupations cover a much wider field; public service is still to the fore, providing a colonial servant, a retired Indian Civil Servant, and a home Civil Servant, as well as one Member of Parliament and two former Members of Parliament. The learned professions are represented by a clergyman, two barristers (one a recorder before the 1971 Courts Act, the other also an author), and one solicitor; the technological age has produced two scientists and a mechanical engineer. Several landowning heads of families are engaged in business of one sort or another; there are two brewers, two stockbrokers, a banker, an insurance broker, a jute merchant, a shipowner, and four describing themselves simply as company directors. Therefore of the sixty-six families whose representatives may be described as landed, roughly sixty-seven per cent are or have been engaged in some other specific profession or occupation. There are undoubtedly others who have not submitted complete details of their careers, and there are probably more company directors than the four who supplied this information. These figures illustrate the usefulness and versatility of the landowning gentry as a class. However, it must be remembered that we have been dealing only with the landed sixty-six per cent of the families chosen, and as these one hundred families (except for the three already mentioned, who obviously rank with the other ninety-seven) are all of landed stock, we should return perhaps to the entire one hundred.

The heads of families in this random selection which though not definitive, is broadly representative of the whole 18th Edition, may be found engaged in virtually any imaginable activity. To take the learned professions first again, the clergy are sparsely represented now, supplying only one head, compared with none in 1872, six in 1772, and two in 1672 (of whom one was an archbishop). None of these figures are high, but it must be remembered that in the past, at least, the eldest son and heir was expected to manage his inheritance, while the younger sons entered the church, and were often presented to a family living. The paltry figure for 1972 may be illustrative of the gradual relaxation of the established church as the only church, and the general religious apathy of the present day and age. However, active clergy may be found frequently in the cadet lines of landed families; one family even boasts two bishops (TIARKS formerly of Foxbury, Volume I), while in another there are four parish priests and a bishop (MARTINEAU of Clapton Court, Volume III). Curiously enough it was the last family which produced the great Unitarian divine, Dr. James Martineau (1805-1900), and his sister Harriett (1802-1876), the celebrated political economist and journalist, who left her head to the Phrenological Society. The law provides a further ten representatives of landed gentry families, two of them judges, five barristers and three solicitors. This compares with three judges, eight barristers and no solicitors one hundred years ago, and reminds us that the attorney's profession was once neither gentle nor learned, whereas nowadays there are few professions more acceptable and respectable than that of a solicitor. In fact some of the most distinguished solicitors' dynasties may be found in the Landed Gentry, particularly notable being the FARRERS of Ingleborough, and the TROWERS of Stanstead Bury, both in Volume III. The medical profession is not represented at all in the random one hundred families, and only one head in 1870 and another in 1770 were medical men. Some other professions are also unrepresented, although they have been pursued by the current head in the past. For instance the heads of two families in 1772, and of one in 1672, were architects, a profession combined easily with the running of a country estate, which they were as anxious to improve for themselves as their clients were for them to adorn their new estates with a building in the contemporary style.

The armed forces form a class of their own, and with so many subdivisions and offshoots definition of military service sometimes presents a problem. Of those heads living in 1970, seventy-three per cent have served at some time in the armed forces, the two world wars, national service, and the expansion of the reserve forces accounting for the bulk of these. One hundred years ago only nineteen per cent of the contemporary heads had served in any branch of the armed forces, though the percentage was slightly higher earlier in the century. The figure is smaller in the eighteenth and seventeenth centuries, but of course surviving records are most incomplete. It must also be remembered that before the days of conscription the navy and army, as the church its clergy, drew their officers mainly from amongst the ranks of the younger sons, who had to carve out a career for themselves. The figures already quoted for serving and regular officers among the heads of the sixty-six per cent landowning families still apply, and in addition there are two captains and one commander in the Royal Navy, as well as several junior officers in the three services.

The realms of business and industry are too extensive for me to make more than general observations from the available statistics. There are two stockbrokers and two insurance brokers, and seventeen company directors. Of these there are the two brewers, the two bankers, the jute merchant and the shipowner, already mentioned, while the other eleven are connected with a wide variety of concerns from manufacturing car tyres to chocolates, and designing aeroplanes. It can be assumed that there are more than seventeen company directors in all, but in general only leading and well known companies are mentioned in BURKE'S Landed Gentry, and it is of such companies that these seventeen are directors. In 1870 there were nine company directors or merchants, in 1770 there were eighteen merchants, and in 1670 there were nine, though these figures, particularly the early ones, are only approximate. However, they do point to the proliferation of successful eighteenth century mercantile houses, on whose prosperity many of the great Victorian landed families throve. Often the nature of the business is undisclosed, and there are several concerns which not only are unrepresented now, but have been surpassed by more modern industrial methods. In 1770 there were two potters, two wool merchants, a coal merchant and leather seller, a maltster and cordwainer, a pewterer, an ironmaster, and a shipwright. Often more than one commodity was dealt in or manufactured by even a small firm, so that the separation of various trades becomes difficult.

Learning, apart from the three learned professions already mentioned, is represented on the amateur side by two Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries of London, which compares with one Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1870 and two in 1770. There are no Fellows of the Royal Society of London, though there was one in 1870, and one in 1770. There is one astronomer and one composer. On a more professional level within the realms of teaching, there appear to be no academics today, though there were three (one a professor) in 1870, and three (one a professor and Vice-Chancellor) in 1770. It might be appropriate here to examine where the landed gentry have been educated. Within the one hundred families selected, the schooling of all but six is known. Of these one is a lady, and another was educated privately, while the remaining four do not specify any school. The following schools each claim one head: Ampleforth; Beaumont; Bedales; Bloxham; Bradfield; Bradford Grammar; Christ's Hospital; Downside; Edinburgh Academy; Gordonstoun; Haileybury; Lancing; Malvern; Oundle; Pownall; St. Edward's, Oxford; Stonyhurst; Taunton School, Southampton; and Tonbridge. Two heads apiece went to Charterhouse, Cheltenham, Fettes, Marlborough, the Oratory, Repton, Sherborne, Stowe and Uppingham. Radley and Harrow each educated three heads, Wellington took four, and five attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, which ceased to function as a public school in 1951. Seven heads went to Rugby, and another seven to Winchester, while twenty-nine were at Eton. In 1870 only thirty-eight schools are recorded for the hundred representatives of these families, though clearly there are many more not on record. However, of these thirty-eight one head per school went to Berwick Academy; Bradfield; Dollar Academy; Edinburgh High School; Edinburgh Collegiate School; Mercers' School, London; St. Paul's, and Shrewsbury. Three went to Winchester, five to Westminster, six to Rugby, seven to Harrow, and nine to Eton. Fifty-one per cent of the current heads in the random selection attended a University. The landed gentry have always been interested in educational reform and advancement. Those most actively engaged in this work during the nineteenth century were often Free Churchmen, against whom the doors of a regular, particularly university, education were shut. University Hall, Gordon Square was founded by a Unitarian landowner, whose son was Chairman of Convocation and Vice-chancellor of London University, and whose daughter was a founder Fellow of Bedford College, London, and founder of the Educational Guild. The Principal of University Hall from 1869 to 1885 was a junior member of a landed family. At the same time the head of a branch of this family, landed in Suffolk, was Chairman of the East End Emigration Society and on the staff of the London Working Men's College. The contemporary head of a Scottish landed family, also a leading Victorian educationalist and economist, observed that

"Only as men shall learn better to understand their own interests, or to respect those of others, shall we have peace and not war in the industrial world. And this men cannot, or will not, learn when they are men. It is before they enter on the struggle of life that this great lesson must be acquired. In our present school system their is nothing that bears on this ever so lightly. Much of it goes in the opposite direction, and creates prejudices hard to be removed" (W. B. Hodgson).

These words are of even greater topicality now than they were in 1860; it was often the landed families and their scions who pioneered mass education, and not the exploitation of the working classes as so many people nowadays wrongly imagine.

This sense of duty has always played a prominent part in the characteristics of the landed gentry. Of the one hundred families chosen, it has already been mentioned that the head of one is a sitting Member of Parliament, and the heads of two others are former Members of Parliament. In 1872 there were ten Members of Parliament, one of whom sat in Canada and subsequently at Westminster, which must be unique in Parliamentary history. In 1772 there were seven Members of Parliament, and in 1672 there were three. The number now is lower than during the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, but inevitably the abolition of parliamentary patronage and the property qualifications were unfavourable to a potential Member of Parliament with a landed background, while nowadays many of those of landed stock are obliged' to earn a living elsewhere than off the land. On a more local level, six per cent of the heads of these one hundred families are county councillors. The work they do is quite voluntary at the moment, although several changes are imminent, and it is often arduous and time-consuming. Another twenty-four per cent are magistrates, which is an equally self-sacrificing job. There were sixty magistrates in 1872, but it must be remembered that in those days a seat on the bench was very much a matter of course for a landowner, whereas now it requires considerably more time and energy than a professional farmer or landowner may be able to spare. None of the present heads in this hundred appears to have been a mayor, although among their forebears there were two living in 1870, and three living in both 1770 and 1670 who had filled this position. However, one contemporary head is a borough councillor, and another a former councillor, compared with two councillors in 1870, six in 1770 (one of these in Jever, Germany) and six in 1670 (one in Gothenburg, Sweden). While many landed families have their origins in the professions and industry, these figures show that several others have obtained social advancement through the successful pursuit of provincial trade. The landed gentry may be found filling many other positions, which, though primarily in the nature of an honour, often throw great responsibility on the shoulders of the holder. Appointments among the landed gentry as Lord Lieutenant, Her Majesty's representative within each county, and Vice-Lieutenant, his immediate deputy, have in fact increased in recent years. In 1972 the heads of three families are Lord Lieutenants, and of four Vice-Lieutenants. A century ago, among the current heads of the same one hundred families, there was only one Vice-Lieutenant, and there were no Lord Lieutenants. There are eleven Deputy Lieutenants; this appointment is completely honorary, and is awarded nowadays to people who have served their county in some distinguished capacity, such as commanding the local yeomanry or acting as High Sheriff. This last county appointment is made annually by the Crown. Thirteen per cent of the heads of the families selected have been High Sheriffs, while in 1872 there were twenty-three heads who had served in this capacity, and in 1772 there were eight. It is a position occupied generally by someone who is qualified to represent the county officially, just as a mayor represents a city or borough, and can scarcely be identified with its ancient police role. It is significant in this context that of the fifty-one High Sheriffs appointed for 1972, fifteen were members of landed families, and ten belonged to families in BURKE'S Peerage.

The voluntary duties shouldered by the landed gentry are not, however, unrewarded. In 1972 the heads of five landed families are knights (one of whom has recently been created a life peer), while the heads of three families were knights in 1870, and the heads of one family and three families respectively were knights in 1770 and 1670. The head of one family in 1870 appears to have been Knight Harbinger of the Underley Habitation of the Primrose League, a local political appointment not to be confused with membership of one of the Orders of Chivalry. The heads of five families have been awarded knighthoods in foreign orders, and there are several papal and other spiritual and semi-spiritual knighthoods, many of them analogous to membership of charitable and sometimes even non-charitable institutions. Lesser honours and decorations held by heads of families in BURKE'S Landed Gentry are too numerous to relate here, but suffice it to say chat twenty-five per cent have a military decoration of one grade or another (the one Victoria Cross being held by a Lord Lieutenant), apart from numerous honours awarded for civilian achievements.

We have dealt so far with the easily categorised occupations of the heads of these one hundred families, but there is a miscellany of other employments. These include a tea planter, librarian, an authority on deer, a full-time Master of Hounds, and a merchant seaman. Even more diverse occupations can be found among the cadets of families in the 18th Edition, perhaps the most original being the current Miss United Kingdom. Most of the heads appear to be British subjects (all the landed ones are), though one is an American citizen. Of the sixty-six per cent who still own land, fifty-four own estates in England, nine in Scotland, two in Wales, and one in the Channel Islands. The places of origin of many of these families are as varied as the occupations of their representatives, and are often quite remote from the family estate. Indeed several have their roots abroad; three fled from France after the Edict of Nantes in 1685, two came from Norway, and one respectively from Denmark, Jever, Morocco, North America, Saxony and Sweden. Therefore approximately eleven per cent of these now very British families are of foreign extraction. Their lineages vary greatly in length. One dates from before 972, and another from before 1072, while six date from before 1172 and 1272 respectively, and four from before 1372. Eighteen per cent, therefore, may claim mediaeval or earlier descent. The figures subsequently rise, with eleven dating from before 1472, eighteen from before 1572, and twenty-seven from before 1672, the hundred years between 1572 and 1672 producing the largest percentage of landed gentry families. The progenitors of nineteen families were living between 1672 and 1772, and only seven families have pedigrees dating from after 1772, although all these go back well over a century. On the whole these hundred families have lineages dating from the seventeenth century, when there was an enormous expansion of trade, and the significance of a national economy began to penetrate the provinces, producing a new and affluent class easily absorbed into the ever-shifting ranks of landed society.

This great diversity of origins, occupations, and interests found among the heads of landed gentry families scarcely makes for ease of definition. The peerage and baronetage, although in general unable to boast lineages as long and as distinguished as the landed gentry, constitute a definite class from the very nature of their titles, which distinguish them from the rest of the world. In the same way lawyers, doctors and printers can be grouped into their respective professions or trades. Such clarity of definition does not pertain to the landed gentry, and it is therefore only the landed gentry themselves, and those who deal with them in their capacity as landed gentry, who really understand the constitution of this enigmatic class. Few other people are aware of any distinctive group, and would not appreciate the subtle truth of King James I, who, when asked by his nurse to make her son a gentleman, candidly replied, . . . a Gentleman I could never make him, though I could create him a Lord". The concept of a squirearchy in the twentieth century is beyond the scope of most people's imagination. For this reason it seems more valuable to have made a synopsis of the landed gentry in the 18th Edition, from which can be drawn certain conclusions, which in themselves should explain, if not define, the landed gentry and the role of the landed gentry in the second half of the twentieth century. There is no doubt that the landed gentry, when seen in perspective, is a unique and thriving class, and the fact that frequently its existence is not appreciated evokes the words of Mark Antony

"The evil that men do lives after them

The good is oft interred with their bones".

Burke's Landed Gentry undoubtedly goes a long way towards reversing this situation, by putting on record the full, varied, and often selfless lives of the landed gentry.