Christopher Thompson
I am afraid that these assertions about the transfer of
land between the nobility and gentry. The peerage in 1601 may have held less
land than in 1558 but it still held more than in 1534. By 1641, the much
enlarged peerage had far more land in its hands than in 1601. This is true even
using Lawrence Stone's highly improbable figures. The English Civil War or
Revolution was preceded by a notable shift in landed possessions towards the
peerage and by the rise of "aristocratic constitutionalism".
thehistorywoman
(http://thehistorywoman.wordpress.com/)%20On%20t
That's an interesting point. The 'rise of the gentry'
hypothesis has long been contested. However, I find it significant that
Harrington still perceived a shift of property and power towards the gentry and
yeomanry. Of course one might wonder how far this perception was influenced by
a political agenda.
2 comments:
But Harrington's argument was not "the product of an analysis of the contemporary distribution of land, because it does not claim to be" such: it was an investigation of the decline of feudal tenures and the development of freehold tenure, which made possible a state in which a Classical Republic of the kind described by Livy and advocated by Machiavelli. Scholars like J.G.A.Pocock and Judith Schklar showed as long ago as the 1950s that Tawney's view of Harrington was erroneous.
I'm not saying that Harrington's thesis is based on an exact or even correct 'analysis of the contemporary distribution of land'. But he did perceive significant changes which - as you rightly say - were caused by 'the decline of feudal tenures'. And this decline of feudal tenures gave rise to a new type of landownership and at the same time a new type of society characterised increasingly by merit rather than birth. The senators who replace the old lords in Harrington's ideal state hold their office because they are 'wiser than the rest', not by the virtue of their birth. That is what matters. Changes in property ownership produce changes in a country's power structures. In the long term freehold tenure facilitates popular participation in politics.
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