Hello. I am writing an schoolessay about the gentry class and have a big question.
I am just wondering if anyone know if people with the title “Lord f the Manor” are defined as gentry today?
I feel that people are very critical of this title. Wikipedia writes that it is not an aristocratic title, but it must be a gentry title? I mean, in the old days (the feudal system) lords of the manor had a lot of control and power and were the “head” of the town/property.
But how is it today? Are people with this title (bought or inherited) defined as todays landed aristocracy?
wrong forum (questions go in General Questions), we’re not supposed to help with homework, hie thee back to school. You may try a paper library and its attachements, the meat librarians: they, unlike us, are supposed to help people with homework.
Great Debates really is not the correct forum for this sort of question.
I have always been a bit ambivalent about our “no homework” protocol, particularly in regards to questions that really cannot be answered by a simple search on a dictionary or encyclopedia, so I am going to send this over to General Questions and let the Mods there, with more experience in such decisions, decide whether to close it.
I am not an expert on the topic, but here is my understanding - the phrase “landed gentry” comes to mind. Gentry would be a generic term (Hence, “gentleman”) as being better than those peasants over there. It was not a specific title. “Lord” would be a specific title if given to a family/person. Also, to confuse people, “lord” was a polite form of address. Judges, mayors, and your betters were called “my lord”.
Originally, the local noble “owned” much of the land in the area and was part of the totem pole of authority descending form the king. (Charles, for example, still owns a huge amount of farmland as Duke of Cornwall(?) from the titles associated with the crown.) Hence, he was actually the local lord. As times changed, feudalism disappeared, then the guy owning the big estate was less likely to be the titular head of the village or area or even landed nobility - more likely he was some guy who made a fortune in coal or sausage-making, and the money from his factory or mine bought the nice mansion and ground; he might or might not also have bought a title, hereditary or not.
Also, British society until recently was very snobbish and class-conscious; the rich people assumed they were better that the common folk and expected the deference and politness originally only reserved for titled nobility.
So, “Lord of the Manor” does not really necessarily automatically mean anything, it’s more an expression like “Master of the house”
I always assume that the British gentry were descended from the medieval yeoman class - free farmers who worked their own lands, but were not considered lords.
I’ll go ahead and answer the question anyway, mainly because I cannot imagine that it will have any bearing on any actual homework assignment.
It is not and never was a title. Rather it was a series of rights attached to a particular piece of land. Wishful thinking by those who want to buy a ‘title’ doesn’t change this.
And, yes, in the olden days possession of a manor was usually enough to qualify the holder as a member of the gentry, although, at the lower end of the scale, others might have quibbled that it wasn’t quite enough. The dividing line between the gentry and the yeomanry was always a bit blurred.
The ‘aristocracy’ refers only to peers and their immediate relatives, and so has always been a much smaller group than the ‘gentry’, landed or otherwise. Also, the concept of a ‘landed gentry’ still has some meaning, as there are still families (some of them with peerages, others not) with substantial rural estates. But beyond that, the concept of ‘the gentry’ has become largely meaningless. Which is unsurprising now that power, wealth and status are only sometimes determined by acreage. A manoral lordship without the land is thus an irrelevance, both in terms of the old values and the new.
Both lord of the manor" and “gentry” are pretty vague concepts, but I have always understood that Lords of the Manor were pretty much the paradigmatic examples of gentry. They were landowners, with a number of tenants on their land and beholden to them, but not with enough land (or the requisite family history) to qualify as aristocracy (and thus to qualify for a seat in the House of Lords).
So yes, Lords of the Manor were gentry. (And I think, probably, most gentry were lords of manors, and their families.)
In Shakespeare’s time, as I understand it, “Gentleman” was a specific hereditary title which (assuming one’s father was not a Gentleman) could only be used when a coat-of-arms was granted by the College of Heralds. Although the applicant needed to be “worthy” and/or have worthy ancestors, a very large bribe was also normally paid.
Since the coat-of-arms (right to be “Gentleman”) conveyed little or no special legal rights, but usually entailed a large bribe, those who applied were often viewed as pretentious status seekers; hence the early “Not without mustard” parody of Shakespeare.
“Gentry” is not synonymous with “gentleman” (or-men).
In Britain, “the gentry” were the peerage (aristocracy) and the “landed gentry”- anyone who owned enough land to live off the rents. A lord of the manor would be a member of the latter group, or both, and in any event would qualify as a member of the gentry.
So, njtt is half right.
Today, the term gentry refers less to landholding and more to breeding, since tenant farming effectively no longer exists. Anyone who actually owns a manor is almost certain to qualify for the gentry, but it’s a largely meaningless term.
OK, you are saying that the aristocracy (aka nobility) is included in the genty, whereas I specifically distinguished between the two classes. Maybe “gentry” is sometimes used with the intention of including the nobility, but I do not think that is the standard usage:
Anyway, I think we are in agreement that Lords of the Manor would most certainly have been considered members of the gentry.
Not only meaningless but almost entirely obsolete, I should say. I don’t think I have ever heard anyone, in real life, referred to as a member of the gentry. If I did hear it, I would probably suspect it was being used with at least a touch of irony.
Lord Of The Manor-ships do not entitle you to call yourself Lord anything, nor would people accord you any degree of respect for having one. Until recently they were largely forgotten, as they had little relevance in the modern world, until someone recalled that they could be bought and sold. Some carry sporting rights, or mineral extraction rights, but since such titles only change hands when the rights are valueless anyway they are largely moot. One or two carry duties, such as the financial responsibility for repairing the local church.
So if a person buys a “lord of the manor”-title they will not be considered gentry? I had the impression that lords of the manor today was placed like this:
Top of the ladder: Nobility/peers - people who has a seat in the House of Lords
Next step on the latter: Lords of the manor as people having a country gentry title
But after reading what you write i guess the lord of the manor-title dosent have any value like this?
That’s the modern usage. In the 19th century, the gentry included the landed gentry- landowning commoners- and the peerage (whether landowning or not).
Not really. What made a Lord of the Manor important was his manor…that he owned a bunch of land, had a bunch of money and a bunch of tenants, so “the Squire” would be locally important enough to be able to throw his weight around. When the title is divorced from the land, though, the title doesn’t really carry any prestige.
Okay so the lord of the manor title is not a high-prestige title at all? It is just meaningless like a fake duke-title?
I understand. A lot of encyklopedias define the british upper class as “the peerage and the gentry” so i (as the big fool i am) thougt people with a Lord-of-the-Manor-title was part of the upper class (because they were defined as gentry) but now i see that it is not that easy.
After what i can understand now the only real titles of nobility people can sell and buy are Scottish Baron and Irish Baron. But of course they rank lower than peerage, but muuuuch higher than lords of the manor.