Talk:Landed gentry/Archive 1

Squirearchy
"Squirearchy" redirects to this article, which does not indicate the power of the British Landed Gentry, for instance in selecting MPs, supplying High Sheriffs and JPs, running Workhouse Unions etc. Can this be improved, please? Vernon White '''. . . Talk''' 22:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Confusing sentence
"However, the fluidity of British landed society was such that it had to be gentry; the rules of who could call themselves esquire were too strict, too exclusive, for the remit of Burke's original book."

I find this last sentence difficult to understand:

1. What does the fluidity refer to? Fluidity of title? Fluidity of location?

2. What does 'it' refer to in "it had to be gentry"

3. "The remit of Burke's original book" is obscure - this book is unmentioned earlier in the article and unexplained.

Girabbit85 (talk) 12:43, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Landed gentry vs. gentry.
As it has grown, this article seems to me to have veered at times away from its subject, landed gentry, into discussion of the separate topic of the gentry, landed or not. Shall we edit to put this right? This will involve some deletion. There is already a separate article on gentry. Chelseaboy 14:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Landed Gentry should be kept but just for for England Scotland Ireland and Wales, all the other countries should go over to Gentry which sets out to try to cover the world. Eddaido (talk) 07:40, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

This article is a bit of a mish-mash. Firstly, many titled people have always appeared in the lists of Landed Gentry (whilst some titled people were not at all landed - notably a lot of barons and baronets). Whilst the vast estates had tenant farmers or direct labour with overseers, smaller farms, especially in the 20th century, were usually farmed by the owner. I know several Landed Gentry on farms of up to 3000 acres which their families have personally farmed for at least 150 years. The only difference is that up to, say, 1920, they had a lot of agricultural labourers on their land.

Also, this article as it stands is a bit of a put-down for the yeomen farmers, who would be regarded at least since Burke's started their publications in the early 19th century, as 'Landed Gentry'. Many yeomen, depending on their holdings and what they were farming were earning more than a Vicar! A glance at the 20th century Burke's Landed Gentry editions show, particularly after World War II, that many entries are for people who have actually lost their properties (probably to Death Duties), and others, upon checking the records, have tiny bits of land.

I am surprised to see that there is a separate article for gentry! What next! Sussexman 18:03, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

This article, and some of the comments [above]], makes the fatal mistake of confusing the 'landed gentry' (who were a specific social elite within the British upper class, and who were also described as the 'great commoners') with plain 'gentry' persons who happened to own land. As a start, the landed gentry can be identified as having the following four characteristics: possessing hereditary estates; leading a leisured lifestyle; enjoying social pre-eminence (rather as celebrities do in the present); and the right to armorial bearings. Raskado (talk) 22:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Gentry
Oppose: Gentry is much wider ranging and is not specific to the British Isles. In any event, the landed gentry is a notable subject in itself. Moonraker2 (talk) 07:55, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose
Leave as is; they are two different things. Jeffrey Beall (talk) 17:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Original definition
As an average guy from California, I'm no expert on these things, but I was under the impression that the gentry were originally the next level below the nobility, generally knights who, under feudalism, received substantial land grants in exchange for knight service. Later, other big land owners were put into the same category, but only if they had the appropriate social standing. The OED3 says gentry is ultimately derived from the Latin gens (which meant something like tribe or clan). As an English word, gentry first meant ancestry, then a social rank immediately below nobility. Also, I wouldn't call it a class as that's mixing apples and oranges: before social class was invented (circa 1700 plus or minus a few decades) along with the attendant terminology (e.g., upper class, middle class) there was order and rank. Feudalism was one order with the nobility at the top and serfs at the bottom. The Church had its own order, with its own system of rank. In cities and towns, burgers had their own order and system of rank. Zyxwv99 (talk) 00:13, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Confusing reference to Virginia, India, and other colonies
I cannot tell whether this section:
 * Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in countries that maintained a colonial system; the term is employed in many British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India.

Means this:
 * (1) Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in countries that maintained a colonial system after attaining their independence; the term is still employed in many former British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India.

Or this:
 * (2) Similar or analogous social systems of landed gentry also sprang up in colonies of countries with an established landed gentry; the term was employed in many British colonies such as the Colony of Virginia and some parts of India.

If it means (1), in what is it true that the US state of Virginia still has employs a landed gentry system? Of course, we still are aware of the early Virginia social system, and descendants of those families are often aware of their strong connection to Virginia history. Is that what this means?

I can easily understand (2). If (2) was the actual intended meaning, then the article's text simply needs to be adjusted. Right now, it very much sounds like there are still functioning landed gentries in these two places. Bt1159 (talk) 15:17, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Contemporary status
The section "Contemporary status" reads like an essay and carries no citations. Hence my request for some. -- PBS (talk) 21:48, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Women in gentry
The article does not mention Dames or (the rarer) Baronetesses. Are women holding these titles, as equivalent to Knights and Baronets, members of the landed gentry? -- Willthacheerleader18 (talk) 00:08, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily - for example if they are actresses or artists. New titles are in modern times very little or nothing to do with holding land. Johnbod (talk) 01:39, 18 May 2018 (UTC)