The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

Did It Even Happen?

Welcome back, and thanks for reading! Today’s article is essentially a part II to last week’s article on how the American WASP aristocracy died, and what we can learn from it to avoid such a dismal fate. This one focuses on the British aristocracy, and its much slower death over the course of the 20th century, with a focus on what we can learn from that tragic history to avoid becoming strangers in a strange land that was once our own. All those who are not yet paid subscribers: while some of this article is free, please subscribe for just a few dollars a month to support this project, get access to audio episodes, and read this article in full. As always, please tap the heart to “like” this article if you get something out of it, as that is how Substack knows to promote it! Here’s the audio version:

[Audio] The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy

As the third quarter of the 19th century drew to a dignified close, the British aristocrat was much as he had always been. Whether a member of the untitled gentry or a titled grandee, whether with a fortune near-entirely rooted in agricultural land or bolstered by urban rents, dividends, and mineral royalties, the landed elite was atop Olympus. It was secure in its wealth, political power, and social status.

This select group of a mere few thousand families—fewer than 600 peers, perhaps a thousand baronets, and five thousand or so members of the untitled gentry—collectively owned three-quarters of the agricultural land. They also, through their centuries-long patterns of accumulation and estate amalgamation,¹ owned much of the prime urban real estate and nearly all of the valuable coal, iron, lead, and tin mineral rights. Though skeptical of industrialization, they had funded the great railroads that crisscrossed the country and profited mightily from doing so. Similarly, they were heavy investors in some of the mightiest companies in the world’s mightiest commercial empire, from the Bank of England to the British East India Company.

That wealth was used to ensure the “independence” of these notable and noble families, by which they meant a leisured life largely divorced from work or the marketplace and instead dedicated to government.² This use of leisure to engage in good government not tainted by personal whims or cupidity was seen as their duty to the state and the role that justified their great holdings of land and capital.³ Their wealth was in the soil, which tied them to the nation and encouraged their continued participation in its good rule. This was true both at the local level—where they served as Lords-Lieutenant and Justices of the Peace—and at the national level—where they consistently served as Members of Parliament, Lords, and Cabinet members. By and large, the nation assented to this, though the first two Reform Bills had given the middle class something more of a say in the government.

Yet further, all of that wealth and political power made this class socially preeminent. Whether in the countryside, where their manor homes dominated the landscape and their packs of foxhounds created a lasting and idyllic picture of British country life, or in London, where Society’s gathering for The Season⁴ was the peak of life in the Metropol, it was they who set the tone and dominated the scene. Fashion, manners, art, architecture…it was they who dominated all of it, and in whose footsteps the rest of respectable society followed.

A mere half-century later, everything had changed. The great landed estates had been broken up in a reversal of centuries of accumulation.⁵ The government led by Lord Salisbury was “The last government in the Western world to possess all the attributes of aristocracy in working condition.”⁶ When its time in power ended in 1902, the period of aristocratic dominance of the government was over for good, and soon even aristocratic involvement at the local and national level was on the decline. In much the same way, the dawn of the 20th century saw the landed elite fighting against the plutocrats to maintain its place atop society and cultural life, but it had lost that position too by the interwar period. By the time World War II was over, “five centuries of aristocratic history and hegemony were irrevocably reversed in less than one hundred years.”⁷

In short, it took but two generations for a position built over centuries to be bludgeoned to pieces, and then but a generation or two longer for even its more lasting forms—namely the country house⁸ and world it represented—to whither on the vine and die.

So, what happened? How did those who were securely atop Olympus go from the wealthiest and most powerful group in the wealthiest and most powerful empire in history to a broken, dispossessed, impoverished class in the space of mere decades?

That is the story I will tell in this article, and then note in what ways this tale of why those who were once seemingly Albion’s Elect now “retain but a fraction of their once unrivaled wealth, their once unchallenged power, and their once unassailable status” is relevant to Americans, and what we can learn from it to avoid their fate. As the lessons are somewhat different than those in the WASP article, I think you’ll find it quite interesting and informative.

A Note on Sources: By far the most important book in my preparation for this article was David Cannadine’s The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy; when footnotes are cited to Cannadine, this is the book to which I am referring. Also helpful, primarily in terms of background information, were Aspects of Aristocracy by David Cannadine, The Aristocracy in England, 1660-1914 by JV Beckett, and three books by Adrian Tinniswood—The Power and the Glory, The Long Weekend, and Noble Ambitions. Finally, the article Trajectories of Aristocratic Wealth is a must-read. All of these works are superb, and well worth reading. For those who wish to just read one, Cannadine’s Decline and Fall is the best. Those interested in learning more should check out the footnotes, where I have included many more sources and a great many quotes that reinforce the claims made in this article.

How the British Landed Elite Died