In Our Time - The Aristocracy

Episode Date: June 19, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British aristocracy. The Greeks gave us the word aristocracy; it takes its root from ‘aristo’, meaning best and ‘kratos’, meaning rule or power. And for more than five hundred years Britain was ruled by a class that was defined, at the time, as the best. They founded their ascendancy on the twin pillars of land and heredity and in terms of privilege, preferment, power, style and wealth, they dominated British society. As the Earl of Chesterfield confidently informed the House of Lords in the mid-18th century, “We, my lords, may thank heaven that we have something better than our brains to depend upon”. What made the British Aristocracy the one of the most successful power elites in the world? And what brought about its decline?With David Cannadine, Director of the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research and author of The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy; Rosemary Sweet, Lecturer in History at the University of Leicester; Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Professorial Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, the Greeks gave us the word aristocracy. It takes its route from Aristot, meaning best, and Kratos, meaning rule or power.

And for more than 500 years, Britain was ruled by a class that was defined or defined itself at the time as the best. They founded their ascendancy on the twin pillars of land and heredity, and in terms of privilege, preferment, power, style and wealth, they dominated British society. As the Earl of Chesterfield confidently informed the House of Lords in the mid-18th century, quote, we, my lords, may thank heaven that we have something better than our brains to depend upon. So what made the British aristocracy the most successful power elite in the world,

and what brought about their decline? With me to discuss the rise and fall of the British ruling class is David Kannady, Director of the University of London's Institute of Historical Research, Rosemary Sweet, lecture in history at the University of Leicester, and Felipe Fernandez Amesto, professorial research fellow at Queen Mary College, London. David Kandai, first of all, in broad terms, how did the aristocracy, let's take it from say a thousand years ago,

how did it grow from the time of the Norman invasion? Well, if we're taking the English and I suppose latterly British aristocracy, then we need to remember, as your opening remarks, suggest that it's tied essentially to land, land underpins wealth, land underpins political power, and land underpins high social status. And also, of course, to take it from the Norman Conquest, the other element in the early English aristocracy, the first half of your millennium, is, of course, military service, knightly prowess, chivalry, war, fighting, biffing each other, and biffing foreigners and all of that. And so I suppose the feudal origins, if we

could put it that way of our nation's aristocracy, lie in that interconnection between land and wealth and military power and military activity. Could we describe them as almost a sort of warrior class in those early stages? I think in the first instance we could, that is to say that they live and die by the sword, their men on horseback, and that's enormously important. The horse is the great military engine of power in a way. The horse is also, of course, an agrarian creature, and that ties together the land and fighting. But of course it's also the case that when they're on the winning side, as on the

whole they try to be, if they are on the winning side, they get rewarded with land. So that's the way in which military activity and landed possessions, which are the defining characteristics in a way of the early aristocracy actually come together. Is there a sense in which when William laid down his Norman state in this country and gave away these massive lands or took the massive lands from the existing people and gave them to his own chums. Did that set out the template? Did we build on that for the next 900 years, or till today even? I think in many ways we did.

That is it was a template which assumed that the king's right-hand men were landowners, were powerful figures in the localities and in the nation, and were also wealthy people of high social prestige. And in a sense, that is an aristocratic template. further reinforced by the notion that these positions, ownership of land, high social standing, wealth, power, were transferred on a hereditary basis, that is to say when somebody died,

their son inherited the title, the land, the public position. And those are, of course, the ways in which aristocracy worked, and the ways in which in some senses, perhaps even to this day, in some senses, in an attenuated form, it still does. Is there a sense in which the monarch at that time could be called Lusli's primus interparais? Yes, I think. that there was a close sense of connection

between the monarch and the great magnates, in part because the monarch relied on these people for his military support, in part because he rewarded them appropriately. And of course, that notion survives to this day. The Queen, to this day, in official communications, I think, refers to dukes, not just royal dukes, but non-royal dukes as her right, trusty and well-beloved cousins, and that sense that these are people in some sense

who share an identity based on high social rank and wealth and titles still persist. And then it gathered around itself, chivalric ideas and so and so forth. But what happened to it in the Civil War, Rosemus Witt? Well, in the Civil War, the majority of the aristocracy, of course, came out on the side of Charles I first, that they had, prior to the actual outbreak of conflict, there had been a certain number who had tried to curb some of Charles I first more absolutist tendencies, worrying that he wasn't behaving as Prima's interpare, that he wasn't paying heed to his natural counsellors and one of the leading opponents was the Duke of Bedford.

But when it actually came to the crunch, the majority of the aristocracy actually came out in support of Charles I first because they had this basic compatibility of interest that these are the natural elite and that their interests were naturally aligned with the monarchy. And so they suffered with the king and they had to sacrifice their estates

to help the king prosecute his war. And, of course, when it came to the Interregnum, the House of Lords was abolished. And it's only with the restoration that their fortunes could similarly be restored. And it was in the later 17th century, they began to reestablish their fortunes, paving the way for the sort of golden age of the aristocracy in the 18th century. When we're talking about the aristocrats here, a question I didn't address to David, because I want to move on, if we can consider it now. When we talk about the aristocracy, we're not just talking about people with titles.

it spreads further across society than that, doesn't it? I think it does. I mean, one can take a very narrow view of the aristocracy and say that it's just the period, which has the advantage that you can do nice need to place up a graphical analyses and count the number of dukes or the number of earls and whether they married commoners and how much land they held,

and you've got a finite group of people. But the aristocracy as such was really a much broader group, partly because in England, the principal of the... hereditary of inheritance was partable, wasn't partable, it was primogeniture. And so the title could only pass to the eldest son rather than to all the offspring of aristocracy. And so you have these large numbers of people who are ostensibly commoners but are very closely tied in with their landed elite. And so together these comprise a much larger group. And

you also have a large number of landowners who may not necessarily have. a title, but have a similar lifestyle and similar wealth and would alive themselves naturally with titled elite. Is there a sense in which in the second half of the 17th century, the aristocrats became extraordinary powerful for two reasons? They had not chopped off the king's head. They were guiltless regicide. They were not the people who'd done that.

And they were very active in what we like to call the glorious revolution, the bloodless revolution, not quite right, of 1688, but they were instrumental. So by the end of the century, they had done a great deal to earn themselves respect as a governing elite, as well as a landed elite. Yes, I think they made a lot of capital out of that, particularly in the 18th century. And the fact that the Levellers and the 5th Mollickemen and the Diggers had called for the abolition of aristocracy enabled them to cast anybody who questioned the right of the aristocracy to rule in that same light, and they certainly gained credit, I think, from the fact that they had been instrumental in bringing about the glorious revolution. The invitation to William of Orange came from leading members of the aristocracy,

and because the glorious revolution turned out the way it did, they were able to consolidate that. And because William VIII was a foreigner and an absentee monarch for a large extent, as was Georgia First and George's second, and Queen Anne being a woman, wasn't able to take the same kind of directive role. The aristocracy were able to assume a much more prominent place in the government of a nation, and were able to establish their place as rulers, the natural rulers. And this becomes a very important part of a sort of self-perception

of the aristocratic elite, that they are naturally born to govern. And this becomes part of a material which they use to criticize Georgia Third in the latter part of the 1816. century. Philippa Fernandez, one of the things the British aristocrats did was to pay their taxes, unlike the French and other European aristocracies. Is that something that's significant as far as you're concerned?

Well, I think one of the things that makes states effective is their ability to screw taxes out of their subjects. And it's certainly true that when you get aristocracies collaborating with, other power centres in states, and in the early modern period, that usually means aristocracies collaborating with the crown. Then you get a generally improved state of fiscal effectiveness. And you can very crudely say the reason why England isn't a very effective state by the standards of other European monarchies in the 16th and 17th centuries is because you don't have that collaboration. And in the 18th century, it is effective.

because you do. But I mean, I think we've got to the 18th century rather kind of rapidly, Melvin. I mean, because if you gave back to what David was saying, he's described really interesting, sort of what he calls a nexus, which you could express as a kind of linked series of causes, couldn't you?

You've got prowess, which is how, you know, you start being an aristocrat, you're good at fighting or, you know, good bully, good thug. That gives you land. because you conquer it or you're given it as part of a gang and you conquer a realm and you divide it up in the way Melvin was talking about William or conqueror dividing up England. Say, prowess gives you land, land gives you wealth and wealth gives you power.

That's all perfectly understandable. But what's very difficult to fit into this is the hereditary principle, which everybody who's contributed to the programme so far has acknowledged is absolutely vital part of aristocracy. I would have thought that was the problematic. thing. One really wants to know is why does this apparently superficially irrational ingredient

gets added in to the others? And why doesn't this country and other European countries generally have a system in which may power, land, well these things can flow

more openly in medieval and modern times. Why are they linked to the hereditary principle? That seems to me to be a really interesting question. Well, I thought people like, you were here to answer it. I mean, the idea, let's take the idea of primogenitor, which was very serious,

i.e., everything goes to the eldest son, keeps the estate intact, keeps the title in place, provided you get an eldest son, if you have a son, away you go. Was that a big part of the defining quality of the British aristocracy? Well, I think Razor was absolutely right about that. I mean, to me, that's why, I mean, one of the great problems of British history, compared with that of other European countries is why are the British, say, fixated about the country? Why has the aristocratic landed nexus been so durable in this country? Why does it still influence the way people behave?

You know, why a property price put it very crudely? And it's still ridiculously high in this country compared with other European countries. And I think it is an interesting peculiarity idiosyncrasy of British history. And I think that Reismar is right that it needs all to do with. primogeniture. In England, you can't, you know, your ticket to being an aristocrat is inheriting the family estates. And if you don't do that, if you were one of these unfortunate younger sons, you can very rapidly, you know, in a generation or two, undergo derogation. Whereas on the continent on the hell, this doesn't happen. You get a much stronger emphasis on the, the, the

heritability of nobility. through blood than you do in England. And even in the early modern period, there are lots of poor aristocrats and landless aristocrats in European monarchies. My favorite story is that of an aristocrat in Thuleau-Réal in the 17th century. He had the legal status of an aristocrat.

He had the fiscal exemptions which went with it. He had the quarterings on his scutcheon. He had no trace of Jew or Muir in his. blood, you know, by all the standards of respect in the day, he was an aristocrat. But by profession, he was a bootblack. And, you know, that fiscal exemption was enjoyed on the profits of his boot backing business. Oh, I mean, take an example of Napoleon. Is Napoleon an aristocrat and his father's a lawyer?

Well, you know, by the traditions of the monarchy in which he lived at the time, he was. But in England, being a lawyer would be considered a bourgeois profession, and you'd be hard put to maintain your aristocratic status unless you also acquired land. David, would you like to comment on what's been settled on? Yes, I want to put in a word, I think, for the 17th century, and in a sense to try to tie together what Rosemary and Philippe have been saying, they won't approve, I suspect, but I'll have a go. I mean, I do think that the evolution from this essentially warrior caste

to this governing class of the 18th century is pivotly accomplished in the 17th century. 17th century Britain pioneers in a way and not aware that it's doing it, or East England does, notions of revolution. The House of Lords was abolished, something that hasn't happened since. House of Lords was abolished in the mid-17th century. Lands confiscated. It looks as though the aristocracy, the military aristocracy's number is up. And yet what, of course, happens, as Rosemary mentioned,

is that in the late 17th century, they reconstruct themselves and reinvent themselves and re-legitimate themselves very successfully, consequent upon the restoration in 1660 and the glorious revolution of 1688. Not as this military knightly class fighting each other, but now, in a sense, as a national governing elite. So they benefit in a way from the 17th century in a manner that in the mid-17th century

could not have been foreseen. And the real loser in the 17th century is the monarchy. So that the rearranged nexus in the 18th century of the crown and the aristocracy is that the aristocracy is now in a way a much more powerful partner. And that brings in this new post-shevary, post-military aristocracy in England, which as it were completely recovers their position, the middle of the 17th century at the time of the Civil War seemed seriously in jeopardy. Whereas, of course, in other European countries, the revolutions come much later in 1917 or 1789 or whatever and have a much more devastating effect on the aristocracy than was the case in England. Registry.

Yes, and the aristocracy in England were certainly very conscious of this comparison with the European nobility is that they had much stronger presence in government vis-a-vis a monarch than in, for example, Russia or Prussia or even France, wherever aristocracy were employed as servants of the crown, but certainly didn't enjoy the same kind of legislative influence, for example, as they were able to exercise through the House of Lords and through the House of Commons, which, although being aristocrats, they couldn't sit in, they could place their younger sons in,

and they could place their relatives in and which they could control indirectly through their influence. And this becomes increasingly marked over the 18th century that in the course of the century, more and more seats in Parliament are brought under the influence of the aristocracy. And they really consolidate their control over the two houses of Parliament and the cabinet and dominate the political system. Well, I mean, in spite of David's hope that he'd provoke disagreement,

I'm sorry, I just have to concur with my fellé panelists. But I just wonder whether you wouldn't have a great insight into aristocratic mentality at Melbourne, because you sit in the House of Lords and are a peer of the realm. You hobnob with a lot of these guys on a daily basis, not as many of them as you did before the House of Lords reforms. I mean, now that this land power nexus no longer exists, certainly not in anything like the way it did. in the period that David and Razmary have been talking about. Do you think that aristocrats have re-evaluated the way they think about themselves?

Do they now have a more continental way of seeing themselves? Have they shifted back to thinking about heredity, about the nobility of blood now that they're more in the position of, you know, rural oboeuvres and younger sons in the early modern period? I'm not going to. I don't contribute my own experience to this program. I try to sort of get other people's views and that's the deal. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm not going in that direction. David, can we talk more about the idea of land?

Felipe touched on it very strongly in his opening remarks a few minutes ago. We have a landed gentry. We've got these remarkable figures, 700 odd people owning three-quarters of land, those sort of staggering facts. And the land became massively important. what did it get, and they out monarch monarchs, isn't they? They were richer and so, that one of them. So can we just go into that a bit more deeply? Well, the key to this, of course, is that we're talking here about pre-industrial economies,

and pre-industrial economies are by definition largely, not exclusively, but largely agricultural economies. So agriculture is the key mode of production, and agriculture therefore provides the largest and, of course, most permanent form of wealth in land. So that that's the sense in which land is so crucial that in pre-industrial economies, land is the most significant economic asset and therefore, of course, the most significant form of wealth. So the more of the land you have, the more of that you have.

And one of the things we haven't mentioned here which connects with this is, of course, we are talking about hugely unequal societies here. That is to say, where the majority of people are very poor, very badly educated, have little direct or even indirect power. So if you own large chunks of land, that gives you an enormous amount of wealth. And from wealth, you are able to get a decent education. You're likely to live longer. You'll be healthier.

You will ride horses. You will live in great houses. And through the House of Lords and the House of Commons, this will give you a direct input into governing the country. And so land underpins all of that. And even as late as the middle of the 19th century, something like 7,000 families in Great Britain owned two-thirds of the land of this country. And so that gave them an enormous amount of power and influence and prestige. And even although by then, of course, the Industrial Revolution had been going for 100 years,

that ownership of land still carried with it by then a wholly disproportionate amount of wealth and power and status. It conferred that on the owners. And they began to move in because it's interesting to remember, which you brought to the attention of the discussion, that the Irish trolle was abolished. So we had a period where they were, and then they reconstructed themselves very, very quickly and put themselves in, align themselves completely differently within the state.

But I would suggest, Rosemary, perhaps even more powerfully than ever before. And in the 18th century, they move into London, particularly with their own palaces. And with the great London houses built of the great families, the Devonishes and the Cavendishers, they take over squares, the onslaes and that, and they just take the place on. And they compete, they vie with. They can look down on the palace of the monarch. the monarch himself or herself? Yes, well, we don't just move in.

They create London. They create the West End. And before the 18th century, the centre of London and the most fashionable area had been around the Strand. But in the 18th century, it moves west, the development of the West End, which was land, which was owned by the aristocracy. And they develop this area

because of its proximity to Westminster and to Parliament. And so you get a new centre of gravity within London and a whole new cultural and social life which is being developed around the fashionable West End of London. And the aristocracy are building their townhouses. They're not palaces like you'd get in the continental capitals that very few of their houses which the aristocracy live in are actually sort of detached large palaces. They construct these very elegant terraces round squares which we're familiar with still today despite the damage which has been inflicted by modern development.

and they develop these areas of London, which are specifically designed for the kind of social networking and social life, which lies behind the basis of this political elite, that not only is it an elite which is very powerful because of its basis in land, but it's very powerful, I think, because of its social cohesion and the common cultural identity and the common ethos, which is developed through, this perennial round of activities through the London season

and also through the educational system as well. These are all people who've gone through the same handful of public schools, the same experience of Oxford or Cambridge and the Grand Tour. And then they come and they congregate in London and they have this, by the end of its century, very hectic kind of social life where everybody has to be in London for the season until it gets too hot and too smelly and unpleasant.

And they will disperse back to their country States. As David pointed out in one of his articles or books, I can't remember now, which the literal interrelationship in the British aristocracy, the marrying into each other's families did create a very big core. In what way Philippa, are we, towards the end of the 18th century? Do we have an

aristocratic mass in this country, which is markedly different from that in other European countries? Well, I think so, yes. I mean, you know, the reason I asked you my impertinent question and it wasn't just a polite attempt to bring you into a conversation from which I feel you are often honourably, you know, to self-excluded. You know, there's a serious point here, which is obviously a point about how far you need to have the nexus that David describes,

in particular that connection with the land in order to have an aristocracy, in order for the concept to be meaningful and to survive. And it does seem that, you know, one of the peculiar arreities of the English aristocracy is that you do rather more need that nexus in this country than elsewhere. And you know, you could ask a very interesting question about the description of the aristocracy that Reism has given us to the 18th century. Why didn't the English aristocracy turn into something more like a Western European urban aristocracy? Because obviously in Eastern Europe the situation was very different where you had a completely different kind of social and economic context in which land and blood were both very powerful elements in the aristocratic ethos. wasn't the case in Western Europe. And one wonders why in England the aristocracy didn't become more urbanized than it did. Why did it remain focused on its rural responsibilities and its rural wealth?

And that's where I do see this peculiar feature of the English aristocracy subsisting. I suppose the element which might be relevant here, which hasn't cropped up so far in the conversation, which I think has been rather absent from the scholarship in general, is that there could be a demographic principle at work here. One of the curious things about the aristocracy in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period is it's amazingly rapid turnover. You know, families die out with extraordinary rapidity.

when you consider these the most privileged people in society, you'd expect them to be the best fed and the most protected from disease and stuff, you'd expect them really to be more demographically viable to have greater longevity and greater fertility than they really do seem to have. And in the 18th century, certainly in this country, that does seem to change. You've got, I mean, perhaps as part of a general social development, general demographic pattern, the aristocracy, are much more successful in living a long time, breeding successfully. and I think that helps to keep their links with their past going. The great stately homes that were built at this time, Blenheim Palace, for instance, and Castle Howard and Hulcombe Hall, what do they signifying, David, Canada?

Well, we are clearly in the late 17th and 18th century here as we head rapidly towards the present and the future, and one of the things that it is important to notice consequent upon the Whig Revolution of 1688, is that a particular group of families, the great Whig families who were, in some sense, is the architect of that revolution, and do very well out of it, many of them get titles.

Many of the great dukedoms of, say, Bedford or Morbara or Devonshire are related to that episode through until the early 18th century. And one of the signs of their newfound sense of confidence and grandeur is a great spate of building, Blenheim Palace being one example, the modification and extensions of Chatsworth being another Woburn, yet another Castle Howard, these great 18th century or late 17th century wig palaces, which were constructed as monuments to, this group of people who would in a sense brought about the glorious revolution of 1688.

But as Felipe said, and it's one of the great tricks that the English and British aristocracy have often been able to pull. The appeal to antiquity to a continuous lineage is enormously important in all, quote unquote, traditional societies. Venerability confers somehow authority. But much of the supposed venerability of the English-British aristocracy is fake, that is to say, things go through a female line, a state to change hands, but it's all concealed. They change their names, they add names on, they acquire other people's ancestors and stick the portraits in their own family hall.

So there's a whole cult very often of fake continuity. You know, these weak palaces in the mid-18th century were no more venerable than centre point just down the road, is now. And yet they appear to embody a whole set of traditional, historic qualities and virtues, many of which were completely phony, but they got away with it.

Can we use this point, Herosome, to describe a lot of people might think they know this and so it's maybe obvious, but it's useful to say so what sort of style were they creating for their own society and therefore to a certain extent impressing the rest of society with and perhaps impressing it on the rest of society. They were building, they were collecting, they were travelling and they were spending money rather than making money. Can we go on from there? Yes, well a large part of the aristocratic lifestyle had always been one of conspicuous consumption because it was by consumption that you demonstrated.

your wealth and your status. And so it had always been an important part of aristocratic living to live well, to live generously. And part of the aristocratic ethos had been hospitality, that these were the people who had, and therefore part of their ethos was to give to those who had not. And so you have this sort of idea of hospitality and welcoming people, all strangers to the house, which was carried on in an attenuated fashion in the 18th century of aristocratic public days, where people would come to Chatsworth or wherever and would be fed and would see round the house. And there was also this idea that the aristocracy were innately superior.

As you mentioned at the start, they were the best, and they had a role to play in society in cultivating taste, in developing society's taste. And so the Earl of Pembroke would go off on the Grand Tour and would bring back his collection of classical statues, and they would be put in Wilton House. and the public would be allowed to come and visit. Or Robert Walpole would build up his collection of paintings

and these would be regarded as not just Walpole's collection, but something which belonged to the nation at large. And in fact, there was outcry in the 1770s when it was proposed to sell these to Catherine the Great, that this was something which belonged to the nation. So the aristocracy, I think, are very clever at presenting their own tastes, their own preferences and their own collections or houses as not just something which celebrates themselves

and which benefits themselves, but something which improves the rest of a nation, which is of benefit to the rest of a nation. And when Elgin brings back the Elgin marbles, what he's saying is that he's bringing these back in order to provide models to improve the taste of the nation that he wants them to be on display for the nation to see. Do you see, Philippa just moment,

and then I'll come to you, David, do you see this aristocratic style, let's call it a aristocratic way of living? as impressing itself very deeply into the British way of doing things? Oh, sure, yeah. I mean, in other words, it wasn't just a thin layer at the top. Oh, well, I think it was a thin layer at the top, but it was unpermeable in the sense that these values could percolate through it

and transform the rest of society. And I mean, I think that, you know, always jokes in Gilbert and Sullivan about how the English name love their house of Paris, the English love, a lord. There's something in that, and the aristocracy in this country have had tremendous, I mean, disproportionate influence on, on taste. And I mean, the very fact that, you know, people still, when they think they've made a bit of money or a clawing their way up society, still affect aristocratic, traditional aristocratic lifestyle. They still get out and, you know, buy their land, even if it's only a patch of garden around their bungalow. And I do think that's a symptom of a longstanding, you know,

kind of relationship of admiration on the part of the British and their aristocracy. But, I mean, I do think that what Rosemary and David have just said are getting as close to what it is about aristocracies that can equip them to survive change, can equip them to survive economic transformations, can enable a concept of an aristocracy to endure even when that landed nexus has crumbled. And that's as collective myth. I mean, I think that's what you need. like other groups, other classes, in this respect to survive, they need to be able to identify themselves and identify one another. And for that, you need some kind of collective badge of identity. You need some set of values to which you all subscribe, which are probably instantly verifiable in mutual conversation.

The things that, you know, Rosemary has mentioned like this, you know, generosity and largesse and having a responsibility of education, those are parts, respectively, a very, very old, very ancient aristocrat. myths, the generosity of the loggis. That goes back to this chivalric myth that David mentioned right at the beginning of the program, terribly important in perpetuating aristocratic identity. We think of those Victorian gentlemen crammed, creaking into their armor for mock tournaments. But it was just as much of a myth when it began in the Middle Ages. Aristocrats really didn't conform to chivalric behavior,

but they affected this chivalric behaviour and the education element that raised was mentioned part of another, not quite such an old aristocratic myth, at least not in this country, it goes back, I think, to the Renaissance and the idea that education can enable you as well as arms. Can I just come in here? Because you would have thought that the Industrial Revolution

would have shaken the aristocracy. We were talking on this programme a few weeks ago about the Lunar Society and the influence it had, and there was not a title among them, those who belonged to the Lunar Society. And yet the fact is that it sailed through the late 18th century, way into the 19th century, not only unscathed, but plumped out in wealth, partly because of mineral rights that they got from under their land, the louthers up in cumul and the mineral rights of the coal and the iron ore and such and such,

and that was replicated all over the country. So would you say that the Industrial Revolution had no effect on this power, this governing nexus of any significance whatsoever, David? No, I mean, in the long run, clearly the Industrial Revolution is transatlution, because it brings into being a whole new way of running an economy and of generating wealth, which is built around industry rather than land. And so in the long run, that creates a whole new economic structure, which increasingly marginalises, think of the countryside march recently, which increasingly marginalises agriculture and that whole nexus which lies at the heart and root,

literally, of aristocracy. And it brings with it the working classes, the middle classes, big cities, and ultimately democracy, education for all equality to the extent that we have it and so on. And all of that, in a sense, in the very long run, is inimical to aristocracy. But in the short run, by which I mean from, let us suppose, 1780 to 1880, the aristocracy do extremely well because a large part of the first phase of the Industrial Revolution, as you've already suggested, involves doing things to the land, taking minerals from underneath it, building houses on top of it,

building ports on the edge of it, building canals through it, laying railways over it. And if you own the land, which these people by definition do, then this early phase of industrial advance, to a very considerable extent, involves generating new forms of wealth from this land which these people own, so that the greatest 19th century magnates, if one thinks of the Dukes of Westminster, the Dukes of Bedford, the Dukes of Devonshire, are by then so super-rich, not just because they own a lot of agricultural land, but because in the case of the Duke of Westminster, they own all of Mayfair and Belgravia. In the case of the Duke of Dedenshire, they own Barrow-Infernes and Eastbourne, and in the case of the Duke of Bedford, because they own Bloomsbury.

And so in the short run, by which I mean a good hundred years, and for the aristocracy, of course, that is the short run. In the short run, they do extremely well. So well indeed that when Queen Victoria goes to a party at Stafford House owned by the Dukes of Sutherland, she says to the Duchess, I have come from my house to your palace, and that's an indication of how things were. And we are talking here of the 1840s and 50s. Can we say the mid-19th century,

resume, mid-ninth century, is that some sort of high-water mark for the aristocracy? We define that before we rattle through the decline. In some senses it's a high-water mark, as David suggested, in terms of their absolute wealth. But in terms of their cultural dominance, I think the aristocracy are no longer their influences, is no longer so absolute, in that the challenge to aristocracy has already been expressed with considerable force. In the 18th century, it's very rare to find the institution of aristocracy challenged,

not least because people are worried about conjuring up memories of civil war and the abolition of the House of Lords. But it's not until the late 18th century that you actually get a challenge to the institution of aristocracy as such. it's with people like Thomas Payne and it's precipitated largely in the years of the French Revolution that you have this onslaught upon the aristocracy and then the political critique of the early 19th century leading up to political reform where you have people like Thomas Oldfield and John Wade, the author of a black book, who are actually detailing the level of corruption of the aristocracy and how many seats they control in Parliament and how much money they're draining from the state in terms of the perquisites and how much land they've disappropriated from their peasants

and have enclosed to make their grandiose parks and to build their houses. And so in the early 19th century we're actually getting quite a radical critique of aristocracy. And the towns are growing as well. I think that's another crucial factor that the primacy of land as a source of wealth and the primacy of landed influence is being challenged by the influence of towns. You've got the huge towns of Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, which are rivaling the influence in the political realm of the aristocracy.

And so although in terms of wealth, they're still enormously influential, I don't think you could call it the high point. David, you put the decline as beginning in the 1880s. Could you tell us briefly why, and then we'll try to have a summaries as to where you think the decline of the aristocracy, which undoubtedly happened in terms of power, not so much where it has taken us? Well, the declining aristocracy is like the rising middle class. You can always find a point where it's how.

happening, and I certainly agree with Rosemary that her account of the early 19th century seems to be wholly convincing. I chose to begin it in the 1880s because I thought one had to start somewhere, and I suppose I was mostly interested in the rather long story of decline in the 20th century. And it seemed to me that that particular episode of decline could be dated in the last quarter of the 19th century. That's partly because of the agricultural depression, which undermines even more than industry in a way the notion of landed wealth and values. It was partly because of the Third Reform Act, which didn't make this country a democracy, but which certainly gave the vote to a large number of people than ever before. It's also, and again it's Rosemary's point, as it were, forwarded by about eight decades, that the 1880s does see a set of popular challenges to the aristocracy,

especially in Ireland, but also in Britain as well. It sees the reform of local government, which lessens their power in the countryside. So that seemed to me to suggest, this is the period when Gladstone says, all over the world the battle is between the masses and the classes, and he'll back the masses every time. Well, that's a bit premature, but there is a period. is a sense by the late 19th century that the themes that Rosemary was mentioning about popular dislike of the aristocracy do become much more real, much more important and much

more influential and become, as it were, the influential narrative for the rest of the 19th century and the whole of the 20th? Philippe, is there the idea of the British aristocracy being anti-intellectual? Is that a myth or do you think that's a reality? And do you think there was an intellectual challenge to it, which was very strong? I think you could draw a contrast between the British aristocracy and other Western European aristocracies in these terms because the British aristocracy is more rural, less urban, and is therefore self-exiled from a lot of centres of culture. But I don't think it's fair to say that the aristocracies genuinely anti-intellectual tradition in this country.

On the contrary, I mean, although you were right that there were no aristocrats amongst the lunatics of Birmingham, You know, there were a lot of aristocratic savants, even in England in the 18th century. I mean, that's why an ornery is called an orrary. It's off the Earl of Orrary. And aristocrats have always been important patrons of learning since the Renaissance, since this rehabilitation of education as one of the defining features of someone who's genuinely of noble character and noble qualities. But, I mean, I think that although, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to dissent

from what David and Rosemary have said. I do think it's important to remember that although there's this political critique of the aristocracy in the 19th century in this country, which Rosemary describes, and there's a collapse of the land power nexus in the 1880s to which David draws our attention. I don't think that necessarily means that the cultural influence of the aristocracy doesn't abide beyond and endure beyond those thresholds. I think that's proved remarkably robust and has only really become attenuated in a relatively recent period when the aristocracy themselves have really abandoned the effort to influence public taste

and have themselves cooperated in a new kind of pluralism. David, would you agree with that? Well, I wanted to say that I think there are two separate things here. I don't think the aristocracy have been, as it were, particularly for or against intellectuals. I mean, they did, after all, produce Lord Raleigh, who won the no other. Prize for Physics, and Bertrand Russell, who wasn't exactly dim, to put it mildly. So that I think that whether the aristocracy is anti-intellectual or not isn't quite the issue. I think the separate issue is how far we have come to live in the 20th century in a liberal, democratic Western world,

which may not assume that all people are created equal, but which certainly assumes notions of equality and merit, which are wholly inimical to aristocratic notions of inequality and hereditary, and the passing on of hereditary positions of power. And it does seem to me that those arguments, as it were, whether right or wrong, are the prevalent arguments of the Western liberal democratic world in which we now live. And in that world, the notion of transferring wealth or transferring power of a narrow elite which is there because it's there and it doesn't need to be justified is no longer viable. And the final evidence of that was the removal of the majority of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords four or five years ago.

So one could argue, I think, that that's the most significant event in terms of the transformation and marginalisation of the aristocracy we've been talking about. Thank you all very much. And thank you for taking the hold of that honour in such a short time. Thanks to Rosemary Sweet, David Canadine and Felipe Fernandez Amesto, and thanks to you for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com. 4.