The Gentry: Stories of the English

The Gentry: Stories of the English
Adam Nicolson

Prize-winning author Adam Nicolson tells the story he was born to write – the real story of England. It is the gentry that has made England what it was and, to a degree, still is. In this vivid, lively book, history has never been more readable.We may well be ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, but for generations England was a country dominated by its middling families, rooted on their land, in their locality, with a healthy interest in turning a profit from their property and a deep distrust of the centralised state. The virtues we may all believe to be part of the English culture – honesty, affability, courtesy, liberality – each of these has their source in gentry life cultivated over five hundred years. These folk were the backbone of England.Adam Nicolson’s riveting book concentrates on fourteen families with a time-span from 1400 to the present day. From the medieval gung-ho of the Plumpton family to the high-seas adventures of the Lascelles in the 18th-century, to more modern examples, the book provides a chronological picture of the English, seen through these intimate, passionate, powerful stories of family saga. The families have been selected from all over the country and range from the famous to the unknown. Some families are divided by politics , such as the one who took different sides in the Reformation; others destroy their inheritance through reckless gambling or investments . All of them are vivid depictions of the life and code of the gentry, and have left deep archives of family papers which the author has been able to use, often for the very first time.THE GENTRY is first and foremost a wonderful sweep of English history. It presents a convincing argument on what has created the distinctive English character but with the sheer readability of an epic novel.

Adam Nicolson

The Gentry

Stories of the English

For my daughters

Contents

Cover (#ulink_896a7309-a751-544f-b4aa-44d216436714)

Title Page

Dedication

Map

Introduction: Ungentle Gentles

Part I: The Inherited World 1410–1520

1410s–1520s

Survival

The Plumptons, Plumpton, Yorkshire

Part II: In the Renaissance State 1520–1610

1520s–1580s

Discretion

The Throckmortons, Coughton, Warwickshire

1580s–1610s

Control

The Thynnes, Oxford, Beaconsfield, Wiltshire, Shropshire and London

Part III: The Great Century 1610–1710

1610s–1650s

Steadiness

The Oglanders, Nunwell, Isle of Wight

1630s–1660s

Withdrawal

The Oxindens, Denton, Kent

1660s–1710s

Honour

The le Neves, Great Witchingham, Norfolk

Part IV: Atlantic Domains 1710–1790

1710s–1750s

Dominance

The Lascelles, Yorkshire, Barbados, Richmond and London

1730s–1790s

Courage

The Pinckneys, Wappoo and Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond, Surrey

Part V: The Failing Vision 1790–1910

1790s–1840s

Fecklessness

The Capels, London, Brussels and Lausanne

1780s–1910s

Fantasy

The Hugheses, Kinmel, Denbighshire and Grosvenor Square, London

Part VI: The After-Life 1910–2010

1890s–1950s

Renunciation