The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  Backed by their glorious wealth, the Horrockses sought to entrench themselves socially and politically. In 1796 John Horrocks unsuccessfully contested Lord Stanley's seat in the parliamentary election of that year; in 1798 he became a captain in the Royal Preston volunteer force; in 1801 he established his young family at Penwortham Lodge, his specially commissioned mansion overlooking the Ribble a mile outside the town; and in 1802, by virtue of an electoral pact with the Whig Earl of Derby, he achieved the status of Member of Parliament. In the same year his brother Samuel Horrocks became Mayor of Preston. Traditionally seen as the more stolid brother, Samuel Horrocks nevertheless consolidated the business, served as MP for Preston from 1804 to 1826, and erected a fashionable neo-classical mansion in the town to house his large family.25 The marriages of the Horrocks offspring illuminate the social choices of the ‘Cottontots’: John's son Peter abandoned business and married into the Kent gentry. Of Samuel's brood, Sam, the son and heir, followed commercial convention and married the daughter of his father's business partner. The younger sisters moved in the outer orbit of the Lake Poets, and eventually married into the professions. The eldest daughter, Eliza Horrocks, married into the county gentry, wedding Charles Whitaker of Simonstone in I812 – an officer and a gentleman. Well pleased with the match, Samuel Horrocks made a settlement of three thousand pounds in his daughter's favour, and Whitaker installed his bride at Roefield, a handsome town house in Clitheroe on the banks of the River Edisford.26 Although, in a famous (and possibly apocryphal) anecdote, one prominent resident found Preston ‘no longer a fitt place for a gentleman to live in’ when John Horrocks was served before him at the fish market, the Horrocks family could hardly claim to have been shunned by a snobbish county, given their marriages and political successes.27 If a cultural war was being waged, then half the county was shamelessly fraternizing with the enemy.

  Relations between land, trade and the professions were not, of course, simply a matter of intermarriage, but also of daily social interactions. A similar pattern of interpenetration emerges in the everyday social world revealed in diaries and letters. Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries record in fastidious detail her daily encounters with friends, neighbours, business associates, social inferiors and kin over a nineteen-year period. To analyse her social contacts, two years have been selected, documented by five diaries. The three diaries for 1773 reveal Elizabeth Shackleton's social life when mistress of Alkincoats, Colne, and the two diaries devoted to 1780 illuminate her social calendar when living at Pasture House, Barrowford (see Table 1, p. 394).28

  One of the striking features of Elizabeth Shackleton's social interactions is the heavy preponderance of her kin. Well over a third of social occasions and exchanges involved family members. Kin were particularly prominent at dinner-parties, in gift exchanges and in correspondence (almost half of all the letters Elizabeth Shackleton sent or received were from or to her kin). The majority of contacts with her kin involved her sons.29 Only a tiny number of diary entries record contacts with her brother and sister-in-law, Edward and Barbara Parker of Browsholme, a pattern explained by Edward Parker's disapproval of his sister's second marriage, and the resulting social punishment visited on her in particular.30 Given Edward Parker's chilly treatment of his sister, the enhanced significance of wider kin is hardly surprising. Of Elizabeth's wider kin, the physician's widow Ann Pellet maintained greater claims to gentility than schoolmaster's wife Bessy Ramsden, although both were the daughters of London merchants and both married into the professions.31 But the majority of Elizabeth Shackleton's blood kin belonged to the gentry both in the opinion of her contemporaries and by the standards of current historical investigation. Of the sixteen individuals related to Elizabeth Shackleton who encountered her or corresponded with her in 1773 and 1780, four were engaged in trade and three associated with the professions, while the remaining nine drew their income principally from land.

  Given the bias towards land among Elizabeth Shackleton's kin and their central role in her social life, it is hardly surprising that well over a third of all Elizabeth Shackleton's social encounters embraced at least one individual from the landed gentry. However, even when her kin are excluded, the gentry still figure prominently. Elizabeth Shackleton's entire corpus of diaries and letters testify to (at the very least) a nodding acquaintance with every established landed family in north-east Lancashire, though not all of them register in the two years selected. Moreover, confirming genteel status for spinsters and widows is difficult, so a total of twenty families is almost certainly an underestimate of Elizabeth Shackleton's gentry frienships. Of course, a snapshot of two years, while showing where Elizabeth's warmest relationships lay, will not of its nature demonstrate the breadth of her acquaintance, but by ranking gentry families according to the frequency of contact, the key players in Elizabeth Shackleton's social life emerge. Her close circle was made up of well-established neighbouring families, such as the reputable Waltons of Marsden Hall and the aspiring Cunliffes of Wycoller; and Yorkshire families such as the foxhunting Wiglesworths of Townhead and the elegant Listers of Gisburn Park. Her outer circle included grand county families like the Townleys of Royle and the Starkies of Huntroyde, with whom she enjoyed only very occasional personal contact, although her sons were regularly invited to their dinner-tables.32 But what place did such families occupy in landed society as a whole? Clearly, they all lacked titles. (The Listers were ennobled in 1794, after her death, as a consequence of the political manoeuvrings of the Portland Whigs.) Elizabeth Shackleton was not on visiting terms with noble families, not even with the holders of lesser titles such as knights or baronets. This absence may have been a function of locale, as baronets were thin on the ground in north-east Lancashire, but it also reflects on her wealth and status. Progressive downward mobility through both her marriages distanced her from her brother Edward Parker of Browsholme and his exalted associates. As the heir of ‘a truly ancient and respectable family’ living in an ‘old magnificent chateau, an extensive and venerable pile’, as the Gentleman's Magazine eulogized, Edward Parker enjoyed great standing in the wider county and the north, as well as in his immediate neighbourhood. He married the daughter of a baronet, ‘a prudent choice … to keep up the dignity of his family which few in this Giddy Age thinks of’, and was thus related in the female line to the nobility of Yorkshire, Westmoreland and Cheshire. Both Edward Parker and his son John were listed on the Commission of the Peace (the official register of eligible men from which the magistracy was drawn) for the West Riding of Yorkshire, while John Parker became MP for Clitheroe in 1780. Edward Parker's was certainly the milieu of the greater gentry, while his sister's social horizons were, by comparison, decidedly parochial.33

  Nevertheless, most of the gentlemen of Elizabeth Shackleton's acquaintance held some county office. Thirteen of the twenty gentry households, outside her kin, who graced the pages of her social calendar in the years 1773 and 1780, had menfolk listed on the Commissions of the Peace for Lancashire, or Yorkshire, or both. The minimum property qualification for this office was landed property worth at least a hundred pounds per annum, the basic threshold of gentry status according to Robert Walpole in political debate in 1732.34 However only six of these families, the Butlers, Claytons, Ferrands, Pattens, Townleys and Waltons, produced a Deputy-Lieutenant for their county, an office which carried the higher property qualification of two hundred pounds per annum and greater social prestige, and again only six of the families, the Claytons, Starkies, Townleys, Pattens, Waltons and Parkers of Cuerdon, boasted an officer in the militia.35 Similarly, those who were registered as having five or more male servants in the servant tax returns for 1780 were drawn from the same group of prominent county families: the Listers, Claytons, Starkies, Townleys, Pattens, Waltons and Parkers of Cuerdon. The remainder of Elizabeth Shackleton's gentry acquaintance were taxed on only a couple of servants, or escaped the tax altogether – a full seven households evaded the commissioner.36 A good number of Elizabeth Shackleton'
s gentry circle, indeed many of those to whom she was closest, fell below the more demanding thresholds of gentry substance.

  A less exclusive means of gauging the minimum wealth and status of these families is afforded by the records of the Bradford to Colne (Blue Bell) turnpike from 1755 to 1823. The basic qualification for a Blue Bell trustee was the possession of land worth at least a hundred pounds per annum. Twelve of the twenty gentry families who associated with Elizabeth Shackleton in 1773 and 1780 served as trustees.37 Thus, if the records of the Commission of the Peace and the turnpike are used in combination, virtually every family in Elizabeth Shackleton's network is encountered, confirming that most of her genteel friends were worth at least a hundred pounds per annum.38 Although she regularly encountered those families who easily passed the higher property qualification for Deputy-Lieutenant, she was not on intimate terms with them. Therefore, while clearly in contact with the principal county families, her inner circle was made up of local lesser gentry.

  7 Carr Hall, near Burnley, Lancashire. The house was the property of the Townleys, but came to the Claytons by marriage in 1755. The Claytons belonged to the county gentry, providing deputy-lieutenants and militia officers for Lancashire and being registered as having five male servants in the servant tax returns for 1780. They were wealthy enough to decamp to Bath for the Season. Carr was demolished this century.

  Moving from those families who lived principally on rents, 18 per cent of the social interactions Elizabeth Shackleton recorded in her diaries (family members excepted) involved a man who practised a profession, or his kin.39 (In only one case, that of a Bradford teacher ‘Schoolmistress Wells’, do we meet a professional woman.) However, it is important to remember that there is considerable overlap in personnel between the gentry and professional categories. Some individuals could be claimed by either camp – an unremarkable fact given the porosity of the boundary between gentry and professionals.40 Eliminating those individuals who had qualified in a profession, but did not practise, it emerges that Elizabeth Shackleton interacted with fourteen professional families in 1773 and 1780. She had the most contact with the barrister John Barcroft of Clitheroe Castle. In this case, however, the intensity of interaction was a consequence of family business dealings rather than simple friendship. In 1773 John Barcroft advised the Parker family on at least thirty-four occasions, in letters, over dinner and during overnight visits, on the civil and legal ramifications of a complicated land purchase. But in 1780, with the sale completed, he and his wife met Elizabeth only once. Other professionals she encountered had more ambiguous claims to gentility. She entertained and corresponded with the lawyer Shaws of London and Colne, a stream of curates who officiated at Colne Parish church, the Slaidburn and Barrowford schoolmasters, and three local doctors and their wives.41

  Over a third (229) of all the non-kin exchanges recorded by Elizabeth Shackleton involved an individual who was in trade. Even when business letters, calls and meetings are stripped out, there remain 190 exchanges with men and women who derived their principal income from commercial activity. However, as the case of the lawyer John Barcroft has already indicated, it is important to remember the extent to which Elizabeth Shackleton's encounters with all social groups had a ‘business’ element. In practice, offering a visiting professional some refreshment (as well as a fee) in return for his advice, differed little from the hospitality lavished on the milliner and mantua-maker. Similarly, notes written to local gentlewomen requesting information about the availability, skills and terms of fresh servants had as much of a business purpose as any letter written to a London merchant concerning the fine print of an apprenticeship. Nevertheless, in the case of trades-people, an attempt has been made here to differentiate intrinsically social correspondence from business letters, and ‘quintessential hospitality’ from that which accompanied an immediate financial transaction, in an effort to establish as unambiguously as possible the participation of commercial families in polite sociability.

  Nearly a third of all the ‘quintessential hospitality’ offered by Elizabeth Shackleton at both Alkincoats and Pasture House incorporated trades-people,42 but, of course, Mrs Shackleton did not consider herself to be on terms of equality with everybody she had to tea, supper and dinner. She encountered the retailer Betty Hartley on over twenty-two occasions in two years, more times than she met or heard from many of the gentlewomen of her acquaintance. Yet in the diaries that record these occasions, Betty was often designated ‘Betty Hartley Shopkeeper’ in a rather smug acknowledgement on Elizabeth Shackleton's part that hospitality was no natural enemy of hierarchy. Still, there was an important social difference between a retailer who received tea and condescension and a genteel wholesaler who met Elizabeth Shackleton on terms of near equality, if not superiority. A distinction between ‘the genteel Trades, all those which require large Capitals’ and ‘the common Trades’ had powerful purchase throughout the period.43 Drawing a distinction between upper and lesser trades, it emerges that bankers, merchants, manufacturers and the like accounted for over half of Mrs Shackleton's social encounters with trades-people, while retailers and craftspeople were involved in only a third of such interactions.44 Nevertheless, this analysis undoubtedly underestimates the number of merchants and manufacturers on visiting terms with the gentry, not to mention the number of gentleman who carried on an enterprise which has left no historical record. Outside the big towns, which published directories of tradesmen, smaller merchants and manufacturers are notoriously hard to identify.

  In 1773 and 1780 Elizabeth Shackleton's diaries reveal she had dealings with at least sixteen families (outside her kin) engaged in upper trades.45 Nearly half of all upper trade contacts listed in the diaries involved one commercial clan: the Bulcocks of Bishopsgate and Borough High Street, London, and Colne, Lancashire. This family ran a tailoring business in Colne and another branch of the family operated as wholesale haberdashers at three outlets in London.46 They sold John Shackleton's callimancoes and helped place out the Parker boys as apprentices; in return John and Robin Parker took on a younger Bulcock as their own apprentice, and Elizabeth Shackleton supervised the education of the young Nancy Bulcock who became a milliner (and ultimately married a London hatter). In similar fashion, practical considerations governed the measured friendship which grew up between Elizabeth Shackleton and the textile wholesalers to whom her sons were apprenticed: the hosier Mr Plestow of Bishopsgate, London, and the draper Mr Brome of Fleet Street, London.47 Of the upper tradespeople closer to home, many were every bit as wealthy as the local gentry and met Elizabeth Shackleton on terms of social equality, if not financial superiority. The Leaches of West Riddlesden Hall, Yorkshire, for instance, were rich and socially prominent. The merchant Thomas Leach owned extensive estates in the West Riding, mined and shipped coal, and opened Bradford's first bank in 1777. 48 The Wilkinsons of Maize Hill, London, and Broad Bank, Colne, were able to bid £23,000 for a local farm and kept a handsome carriage – something many of Elizabeth Shackleton's landed friends were unable to do. Moreover, of the local commercial families Elizabeth Shackleton regularly encountered, seven produced one or more men who met the hundred pounds per annum property qualification to become trustees of the Colne to Bradford turnpike.49

  In addition to polite networks of gentry, professional and greater commercial families, Elizabeth Shackleton was integrated into neighbourhood networks which incorporated farmers, artisans and labourers, many of whom were her tenants. That this was so should be no surprise. Small farmers and producers supplied her intermittently with foodstuffs and household goods, and local labourers and craftsmen found occasional employment in her house and the estate. In addition, the local community purchased her butter and rabies medicine. Most of the community could expect to receive some basic hospitality under Elizabeth Shackleton's roof, when bills and rents were paid, work delivered, grievances aired, patronage dispensed and so on. As a result, II per cent of all Elizabeth Shackleton's recorded interactions with non-kin
involved a servant, a tenant, a farmer, a worker or some combination of the four, although many of her encounters with the poorer sort in her locality may have gone unrecorded.

  The place Elizabeth Shackleton held at the junction of various networks is thrown into relief when her social interactions are analysed by region (see Table 1, p. 394). She participated in the social life of her immediate neighbourhood, engaging, as seen, with those who were manifestly her social inferiors in fulfilment of the needs and responsibilities of a local landowner. She socialized with many Lancashire merchants and professionals, but knew fewer such families from over the Pennines. Greater contact was maintained with mercantile and professional families in the metropolis, although in most cases these links were a function of preexisting local connections and kinship. At the same time, however, she participated in a gentry network which bridged the Pennines, yet this network was essentially northern and provincial. Elizabeth Shackleton enjoyed no social relationships with the London-based elite, and played no role in elite culture at a national level.

  Moving from Elizabeth Shackleton to the other major gentlewomen in this study, an analysis of social interaction of equivalent precision is thwarted by the lack of documentation. The only means of establishing the social networks of Eliza Whitaker and the Barcroft sisters is through their surviving correspondence. As Table 2 (p. 395) makes clear, manuscript letters are hardly a perfectly designed source. By comparing Elizabeth Shackleton's correspondence network as revealed in the diaries with that which can be reconstructed from her surviving letters alone, it appears that those manuscript letters which survive do not necessarily represent the full spread of a correspondence. Letters from kin, for example, are over-represented in the archives, although this is hardly surprising, given that most family collections were sorted by descendants for storage in old chests and dusty attics. Nevertheless, the proportions are not sufficiently divergent to render an analysis of social contacts based on surviving correspondence entirely meaningless. Handled with sufficient caution, statistics based on surviving letters can form the basis of some suggestive comparisons.