The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  19 LRO, DDB/22/3 (7 Sept. 1788), Will of John Shackleton, gent.

  20 See Allen, County of York II, p. 38. And Hull University Manuscripts, DDFA/1/2, 12 June 1781, Surrender, Banastre Walton of Marsden co. Lancs, and Skipwith esq, and Jane (only child and heir of George Toulson esq.).

  21 Elizabeth Barcroft and her sister Martha were co-heiresses of the estate of Foulridge Hall and Noyna, comprised of 320 acres with a yearly value of £336: LRO, DDB/62/244 (1761), Survey of lands belonging to co-heiresses of Thomas Barcroft of Noyna.

  22 Their co-residence is confirmed by a deed regarding turnpike shares: LRO, DDB/69/2 (1834). On the small inheritances of the sisters, see LRO, DDB/70/6 (1775), Will of John Barcroft of Clitheroe, gent., and LRO, DDB/70/9 (1815), Will of Matthew Wilson of Otley, gent.

  23 For confirmation, see LRO, DDB/71/4 (1803), Apprenticeship of Edward Parker to Richard Swallow of Selby, and Genealogist, n.s., 31 (1915), p. 105. Further details are in Ten Broek Runk, Barcroft Family Records.

  24 On the giant Horrocks, Miller and Co. in boom and depression, see Howe, Cotton Masters, pp. 9–10, 21, 25, 27, 316.

  25 On Samuel Horrocks's unmomentous career at Westminster, see Thorne, History of Parliament, VI, pp. 247–8, and on his mansion, see Burscough, Lark Hill, Preston.

  26 For biographical information, see J. Burke and A. P. Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry (1891–5), p. 736, and LRO, DDPd 11/81 (1745–1804), Extract of Pedigree of Horrockses of Edgeworth and Preston. The Whitaker family had been associated with Simonstone township since 1300, though Simonstone Hall was built in the early seventeenth century, see RCHM, photograph no. 33913, and VCHL, VI, p. 498. Whether Roefield in Clitheroe was owned or leased is unclear. It certainly was not the historic property of the Whitaker family; a letter to Mrs Helen Whitaker in the 1780s reveals that a Mrs A. Rigby was then in residence: LRO, DDWh/4/19.

  27 Edgecombe, Diary of Frances, Lady Shelley, p. 3.

  28 Appendix 4 discusses the construction of the data base, pp. 385–6.

  29 Of interactions with her kin, 23 per cent concerned her eldest son Tom Parker of Alkincoats and his wife Betty, while 29 per cent engaged her younger sons John and Robert Parker, resident for most of this period in London. (If anything, these figures underestimate her sons' social role overall, since no social contacts with Tom Parker, apart from letters, have been recorded for 1773, when mother and son still lived in the same house.) If kin contacts are broken down by gender, the dominance of male kin is immediately revealed. 52 per cent of the total involved men alone, a large figure when compared to the 28 per cent which involved just women, and 20 per cent which incorporated both sexes. Yet, again, this pattern might be a function of the particularity of Elizabeth Shackleton's kin network: her mother and her mother-in-law (from both first and second marriage) were dead, she had no sisters or nieces, and her own daughter did not survive infancy. This negative effect becomes apparent when the gender breakdown of social contacts with non-kin is examined. Women alone figured in 34 per cent of non-kin interactions, men alone in 53 per cent and men and women in 13 per cent.

  30 By contrast, over a fifth of all Tom Parker's social contacts in 1773, as listed in his mother's diary, involved his uncle and aunt. The sons were not implicated in their mother's disgrace.

  31 See Appendix 2, pp. 360–61. Bessy Ramsden's brothers Tom and Ned, who do not appear in the sample diaries, were respectively a London stationer and an Essex manufacturer.

  32 Numbers of encounters, in order of frequency, are as follows: Waltons of Marsden and Skipwith (94), Cockshotts of Park, Cockshotts of Bracewell and Cockshotts of Marley (33), Foulds of Trawden (18), Cunliffes of Wycoller (13), Wiglesworths of Townhead (11), Listers of Gisburn Park (8), Miss Cromblehome of Preston (8), Ambrose Walton of Carrybridge (6), Miss Elizabeth Parker of Preston (2), John Holgate of Breeze House (2), Butlers of Kirkland (2), Starkies of Huntroyde (2), Ormerods of Ormerod (2), Claytons of Carr Hall (1), Miss Dawson of Aldcliffe Hall, Lancaster (1), Benjamin Ferrand of St Ives, Bingley (1), Banastre Parker of Cuerdon (1), Pattens of Bank Hall (1), Townleys of Royle (1).

  33 For Edward Parker's obituary, see Gentleman's Magazine, 65 (1795), pt. I, p. 82. Gratification over his brilliant marriage is relayed in LRO, DDB/72/77 (7 Nov. 1753), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats. On his office-holding, consult PRO, C/234/44, Commission of the Peace for Yorkshire, 1762 and 1780.

  34 Landau, Justices of the Peace, p. 161. The Lancashire Commissions of the Peace for this period contain, among others, the names of John Clayton (1777), Thomas Clayton (1814), Robert Cunliffe (1756 and 1766), James Foulds (1756), Robert Parker (1756), Thomas Patten (1777), Pierce Starkie (1756), Edmund and Richard Townley (1777), Thomas Townley (1756). The West Riding Commissions of the Peace cite Benjamin Ferrand (1762), James Foulds (1762), Nathaniel Lister (1762, 1780), Thomas Lister (1780), Le Gendre Starkie (1780), Banastre Walton (1762 and 1780), Ambrose Walton (1762) and James Wiglesworth (1762).

  35 This may be an underestimate of the number of deputy lieutenants and militia officers in Elizabeth Shackleton's acquaintance, as the relevant Yorkshire records have not survived. For Lancashire, see LRO, QSQ/2/2–4, Property Qualifications of Deputy Lieutenants, 1757–1808; QSQ/3, Property Qualifications of Militia Officers, 1760–1803; and QSQ/4, Property Qualifications of Provisional Cavalry Officers, 1797–1808.

  36 PRO, T 47/8 (1780), Tax on Male Servants. The returns were as follows: Listers (6), John and Thomas Clayton (4 and 1), Le Gendre Starkie (5), Edward and Charles Townley (5 and 3), Thomas Patten (7), Banastre Walton (8), Robert Parker of Cuerdon (6), Benjamin Ferrand (3), James Wiglesworth (2), Lawrence Ormerod of Ormerod (2), Henry Owen Cunliffe (1). No male servants are registered for the Cockshotts of Park, Bracewell and Marley, the Dawsons of Aldcliffe Hall, the Foulds of Trawden, the Cromblehomes of Preston, or the Holgates of Breeze House. Surprisingly, the Parkers of Alkincoats and the Shackletons of Pasture House are not registered, even though it is clear from the diaries that these households employed at least two male servants. It may be that the assessors did not descend far below the level of the lieutenancy, or that families with trading interests could pass their servants off as apprentices and thus evade taxation. (I am grateful to Nicholas Rogers for sharing this material with me.)

  37 See Statutes of the Realm, 28 Geo. II, c.50 (1755), and WYRO, Wakefield, RT 13/5, Minute Book of the Bradford–Colne Turnpike Trust, 1755–1823. In addition to Elizabeth Shackleton's first husband Robert Parker, her second husband John Shackleton and her brother Edward Parker, trustees included John Clayton, John Cockshott, Henry Cunliffe, Henry Owen Cunliffe, John Dawson, Benjamin Ferrand, James Foulds, John Holgate and John Holgate the younger, Thomas Lister, Robert Parker [of Cuerdon], Nicholas Starkie, Edmund Starkie, Le Gendre Starkie, Thomas Townley, Ambrose Walton and Banastre Walton.

  38 Property qualifications indicate minimum not total income. Nevertheless, incomes between £100 and £300 were low by national standards. The political arithmetician Gregory King estimated in 1688 that a gentleman's family would enjoy an income of £280 per annum; the early statistician James Massie thought the lesser gentry worth between £200 and £600 per annum in 1759; while in 1801–3, the London magistrate Patrick Colquhoun believed the same families worth at least £700 per annum. Yet, it must be remembered that before the late eighteenth-century explosion in prices and land values the demands of northern gentility could be met with less rent than was the case in the south. Moreover, contemporary social tables are themselves a problematic source, see Lindert and Williamson, ‘Revising England's Social Tables’.

  39 The professional category has been subdivided into legal, medical, and clerical-educational occupations. Amongst these the law was clearly dominant. Social contacts with non-kin professionals and their families involved a lawyer on 60 per cent of occasions, a medic on 34 per cent and a clerical and/or teaching family in 6 per cent of cases.

  40 Arbitrary decisions about categorization have been una
voidable. For instance, although a qualified barrister, Banastre Walton has been placed in the gentry camp, because there is no evidence that he ever practised at the bar. Conversely, Dr William St Clare of Preston and Grindleton, Serjeant John Aspinall of Standen Hall, Clitheroe, and Recorder John Barcroft of Clitheroe Castle and Noyna have all been placed with the professions, since not only did each practise, but also because they all built up a professional reputation. All three men and their descendants held county offices; John Aspinall was on both the Lancashire and the Yorkshire Commissions of the Peace and served as a Deputy-Lieutenant for the former, John Barcroft was on the Yorkshire commission; and William St Clare (the younger) and John Aspinall (the younger) were both officers in the Lancashire militia. The Lancashire records are LRO, QSC/204, 1766, and QSC/207, 1777; LRO, QSQ/4/1/1–15, 1797–8. And on Yorkshire, see PRO, C/234/44, 1762 and 1780.

  41 Shackleton's contacts with professional families to whom she was not related were as follows: Lawyer and Mrs Barcroft (35), the Lawyers Jonas, Lawrence and Old Shaw (33), Dr and Mrs Midgely (17), Dr and Mrs Turner (15), Revd Wilson (1), School-mistress Wells (5), Revd Metcalf (4), Mr Sclater (3), Dr and Mrs St Clare (2), ‘The Bishop of Pendle’ (2), Revd Johnson (1), ‘The Barrowford Schoolmaster’ (1), Lawyer Moon (1), Lawyer Aspinall (1).

  42 Removing business calls and explicitly business meals from Elizabeth Shackleton's hospitality reveals 232 social interactions in her home in 1773 and 1780. Of these, 71 (31 per cent) involved a person in trade.

  43 Nelson, Government of Children, p. 306.

  44 Of 229 non-kin interactions which involved tradespeople, 128 (56 per cent) of the participants were engaged in an upper trade and 76 (33 per cent) in a lesser trade. The rest were mainly women whose status is uncertain.

  45 Friends engaged in superior trades were the Plestows (hosiers) and Bromes (drapers) of London, the Bulcocks of London and the Bulcocks of Colne (haberdashers), Mr Hill of Ormskirk (genteel purveyor of medicine), the Leaches of Riddlesden (coal merchants), the Booths of Bradford (wine merchants), the Ecroyds of Edge End (textile merchants/manufacturers), the Hargreaves family of Heirs House (cotton manufacturers), the Sagars of Catlow and the Sagars of Southfield (cloth merchants), the Parker Swinglehursts of Trawden (worsted manufacturers), Mr James Wilson (tallow-chandler), Windles of Barnoldswick (merchants), the Wilkinsons of Maize Hill (merchants) and the banker Mr Nicholas Smith of Leeds.

  46 The London haberdashery business carried on by Robert Bulcock of 28 Bishopsgate, James Bulcock of 85 Borough High Street and John Bulcock of 53 Borough High Street, is listed in numerous directories, see Appendix 2, p. 355. That this was a wholesale business is confirmed by a retailer's account book, see Kent Record Office, U 1823/35, A3, Daybook of a Draper and Haberdasher, Maidstone, 1768–73, f. 131: purchase from Messrs Bulcock and Co., Borough, 1770. I am grateful to John Styles for this reference.

  47 Establishing the nature of business activities has been harder for other local families assigned to the upper trades. In the case of the Sagar, Hargreaves and Wilson families, applying a social label has not been easy. All these families were closely associated with the wool merchants John and Christopher Shackleton. The Sagar clan was of yeoman stock and lived in the ancient halls of Whitewalls, Catlow and Southfield. Nothing of their commercial activity could be guessed from official records, yet luckily Methodist hagiography records the zeal of William Sagar of Southfield, a cloth merchant. See Laycock, Early Methodist Heroes, p. 324. A Richard Sagar of Colne sold bays and callimancos to a firm of drapers in Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1750s: Tyne and Wear Record Office, Misc. Accessions 1431/1, Daybook of Goods bought by D. and W. Wholesale Drapers of Newcastle. On their halls, see Pearson, Rural Houses, p. 155, and Baines, Lancashire Directory, 1, p. 620. Similarly, the Methodist Hargreaves clan incorporated a cabinet maker, while one branch inhabited the apparently genteel residence of Heirs House, yet they went on to establish one of the first cotton spinning mills in the district in 1784. Information on the ‘ignorant and vulgar’ Hargreaves family is in LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 49 and LRO, DDB/81/33 A (1778), f. 195. Another socially ambiguous tradesman was James Wilson. Described in some documents as a tallow chandler, he had the wherewithal to build himself a handsome mansion, and by 1824 the Wilsons of Heyroyd had risen sufficiently to feature in a published list of the Lancashire gentry. See Pearson, Rural Houses, p. 144, and Baines, Lancashire Directory, 11, pp. v–xii.

  48 Firth, Bradford and the Industrial Revolution, pp. 56–7.

  49 Trustees associated in this analysis with trade include Christopher Bulcock, Henry Bulcock, John Bulcock, James Hargreaves, Thomas Leach of Riddlesden, John Parker Swinglehurst of Trawden, William Sagar of Catlow and William Sagar of Southfield, John Shackleton of Pasture House and James Wilson. Unfortunately, the turnpike records do not assist the positive identification of commercial men, only Thomas Leach is designated ‘merchant’, while known manufacturers such as the Heatons of Ponden are styled ‘gentlemen’. Refer to Statutes of the Realm, 28 Geo. II, c.50 (1755), and WYRO, Wakefield, RT 13/5, Minute Book of the Bradford–Colne Turnpike Trust, 1755–1823.

  50 The very fact that reliable data on status cannot be found for certain correspondents suggests that most of the ‘unknowns’ were not from landed families; the gentry leave a greater historical mark than the lesser ranks. Given this, and the tenor of the letters in question, it is plausible that most of these correspondents came from commercial or professional families, although I have not assumed this in my calculations.

  51 Although convention has it that the Miss Horrockses were educated at home by governesses, Eliza Whitaker talked of ‘school fellows’, and used girlish nicknames with at least one of her pen friends, see LRO, DDWh/4/29 (17 Aug. 1813), E. Whitaker, Edgeworth, to C. Whitaker, Roefield; LRO, DDWh/4/73 (13 Aug. 1814), M. Nichols, Bewdley, to same.

  52 The northern counties rejoiced in reputable grammar and boarding schools. While statistical samples are lacking, it has been noted that the greater and lesser gentry of early eighteenth-century Northumberland, County Durham, Cumberland and Westmorland sent their sons to Newcastle Royal Grammar, Sedburgh, Hawkshead, St Bees and so on, although the famous southern public schools gained ground as the century progressed. See Hughes, North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century: The North East, pp. 341–67 and id., North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century: Cumberland and Westmorland, pp. 293–8. In the case of northern Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, polite families were served by Sedburgh, Bradford Grammar School and numerous smaller schools, but a growing trend towards the southern schools would be plausible. Until the 1780s the gentlemen merchants of Leeds sent their sons in great numbers to the Leeds Free Grammar School, thereafter most boys were sent further afield to both Dissenting academies and Anglican private schools: Wilson, Gentlemen Merchants, pp. 208–11. Similarly, Robert Parker of Alkincoats was educated at the Clitheroe school in the 1730s, while in the 1760s all his sons attended Bradford Grammar School, but went on to Winchester and a commercial academy at Northfleet. Robert's brother-in-law Edward Parker of Browsholme was sent in the 1740s to be educated at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, but he sent his own son to Eton. However, the published registers of Bradford and Sedburgh indicate that enduring loyalty to the northern schools should not be underestimated.

  53 The shared material culture of gentility is particularly striking. Mahogany from Gillows was purchased by the John Shackleton of Pasture House, Thomas Parker of Alkincoats, Edward Parker of Browsholme, John Parker of Marshfield, John Aspinall of Standen, John Clayton of Carr, Miss Cromblehome of Preston, Robert Parker of Cuerdon, Banastre Walton of Marsden, William Barcroft of Clitheroe, Henry Owen Cunliffe of Wycoller, Thomas Lister of Gisburn Park, Le Gendre Starkie of Huntroid and Miss Moon, Richard Ecroyd and Oates Sagar of Colne. Refer to WPL, 334/51, Gillows Ledger 1769–75; 334/52, Gillows Ledger 1776–80; 334/53, Gillows Ledger 1781–90.

  54 WYCRO, Leeds, TA Box 22/1 (17 May c.1731), S. Gossip, York, to W. Gossip, Lon
don. Elizabeth Parker purchased a chaise in the 1750s, but rode on horseback on occasion. She kept up the chaise as Mrs Shackleton, but was mortified when it was vandalized and by its increasingly dilapidated state ‘a most unsafe shabby affair’. The Ramsdens of Charterhouse made do with a hired post-chaise for holidays in the 1760s and 1770s; Tom Parker bespoke a new dark green chaise with a crest in 1778, but he and his new wife also rode together. Of Mrs Shackleton's rich gentry friends, the Listers had a landau in London in the 1740s, the Waltons maintained a coach and four in the 1770s, as did the Starkies of Huntroyde. The Claytons of Carr and the sophisticated Parkers of Newton each bought a fashionable new coach in 1779. The wealthy London merchants, the Wilkinsons of Maize Hill, kept ‘a handsome carriage’. A clear signal about the significance of a carriage was sent by the Gossips of Thorp Arch – William Gossip purchased a post-chaise and hired a postilion-cum-groom when he was made Deputy Lieutenant for the West Riding in 1757. The unfortunate status of older single women is exemplified by the arrangements of a Miss Frith and Sarah Tatham in the Dawson–Greene network. In 1819 they kept a chaise at a local inn and borrowed a neighbour's pony to pull it when they wanted to go out; this being much a cheaper option than supporting a donkey, as they could afford neither the pasture nor the necessary manservant. Jane Austen, who kept a donkey carriage and two donkeys at Chawton, was attentive in her fiction to the inconveniences that the careful ranks faced. In Haywood, Betsy Thoughtless, p. 433, the heroine was chagrined that her Mr Munden claimed that his estate would not permit him to keep a carriage, and expostulated ‘can you imagine I will ever marry to trudge on foot?’ On the different types of carriage, see D. J. M. Smith, A Dictionary of Horse-Drawn Vehicles (1988), and on their use R. Strauss, Carriages and Coaches: Their History and Their Evolution (1912), pp. 147–75. For a case study demonstrating the potential social impact of carriage use, see Whayman, ‘Modes of Sociability’ (Ph.D. thesis), pp. 276–324.