United Kingdom

The Gin Act of 1751 was designed to reduce consumption of raw spirits, regarded by contemporaries as one of the main causes of crime in London. In 1752 Britain’s calendar was brought into conformity with that used in continental Europe. Throughout the continent, the calendar reformed in the 16th century by Pope Gregory XIII had gained widespread use by the mid-18th century and was 11 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which had been used in Britain. It was once believed that protests against this change—“give us back our 11 days,” crowds are supposed to have chanted—represented nothing more than parochial ignorance. In fact the adoption of the new calendar, though it ultimately benefited commerce and international relations, initially played havoc with monthly rental payments and wages in the short term. In 1753 the Marriage Act was passed to prevent secret marriages by unqualified clergymen. From then on, every bride and groom had to sign a marriage register or, if they were illiterate, make their mark upon it. This innovation has been of enormous value to historians, enabling them to establish how many Britons were able to write at this time and, by inference, how many could read.

British society by the mid-18th century

Joseph Massie’s categories

From the Hanoverian succession to the mid-18th century the texture and quality of life in Britain changed considerably but by no means evenly. Change was far more pronounced in the towns than in the countryside and among the prosperous than among the poor. The latter category was still very large; in the late 1750s an economist named Joseph Massie estimated that the bottom 40 percent of the population had to survive on less than 14 percent of the nation’s income. The rest of his calculations can be summarized as follows:

Massie’s calculations were not exact since no official census was implemented in Britain until 1800. But his figures were probably broadly correct and are the best available for this period. It is noticeable that his top three categories had close connections with the land, still the bedrock of wealth, status, and power. The greatest landowners (Massie’s 310 families) owned estates ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 acres. Many of them belonged to the peerage, that is, they were dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, or barons. Such hereditary titles, which could only be granted by the crown, carried with them the right to sit in the House of Lords. In the reigns of George I and George II there were some 170 of these peers. Almost all of them possessed fine houses in London as well as one or more mansions in the counties where their land lay. The dukes of Marlborough (Winston Churchill’s ancestors), for example, dominated large parts of Oxfordshire from their stately home of Blenheim (built 1705–30). The earls of Carlisle in Cumberland built Castle Howard in the same period, spending £35,000 on the house and a further £24,000 on the gardens. Together with the greater gentry and the squires, listed in Massie’s second and third categories, great landowners such as these owned considerably more than half of the cultivatable land in Britain.

Not all wealthy men were landowners. The foundation of the Bank of England in 1694 and other finance companies made it possible to make fortunes on the stock market, and the expansion of trade and industry forged powerful mercantile dynasties such as the Whitbreads (brewing), Smiths (banking), and Strutts (textiles). Some of these self-made families purchased landed estates to advertise their new wealth; others made do with smart town houses or country villas. But, although it was possible to be rich and influential in this society without owning broad acres, it was the landed elite that set the cultural tone and dominated positions of power in both central and local government. Every peer in the House of Lords and a majority of MPs in the House of Commons owned land. Landowners also monopolized the office of lord lieutenant. Lords lieutenant were the crown’s leading representatives in each of the English and Welsh counties. (Only in the 1790s was this office extended to Scotland.) Appointed by the king, they were responsible for maintaining law and order in their counties and for organizing civil defense measures during time of war. To assist them in these tasks, they appointed deputy lieutenants and justices of the peace—offices usually held by the squires and lesser gentry in the countryside and by merchants and landed gentlemen in the towns. None of these offices carried salaries—a clear indication that they were confined to the prosperous. But they brought with them considerable local influence and status and were often much sought after.