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Women, Enclosure and Estate Improvement in Eighteenth-Century Northamptonshire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2009

BRIONY A. K. McDONAGH
BRIONY A. K. McDONAGH*
Affiliation:
History Department, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9SH, UK
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Abstract

This paper examines the role of elite women in estate management, enclosure and landscape improvement in eighteenth-century England, a topic which has to date received little in the way of sustained academic consideration. The paper focuses on four women who took control of sizeable Northamptonshire estates in the 1760s and early 1770s, and demonstrates that these women were active as both managers and innovators. In examining the women's involvement in estate management, the paper explores a series of important questions about women's place in the history of parliamentary enclosure and landscape improvement, as well as women's role in eighteenth-century society more generally.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 2009 , pp. 143 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

Notes

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13. J. W. Anscomb, Northamptonshire Inclosure Acts and Awards (unpublished, n.d, at NRO).

14. I am grateful to Tom Williamson and Tracey Partida for bringing this ‘double peak’ pattern to my attention in a paper entitled ‘Explaining the Chronology of Enclosure: The Example of Northamptonshire’ delivered at Rewley House, Oxford on 17th May 2008.

15. For definitions of the English aristocracy, see Beckett, J. V., The Aristocracy of England, 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986), p. 23Google Scholar and Thompson, F. M. L., English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1963), pp. 25–44Google Scholar.

16. Erickson, A. L., Women and Property in Early Modern England (London, 1995), p. 25Google Scholar.

17. Vickery, Gentleman's Daughter, pp. 97 and 313.

18. Barron, O., Northamptonshire Families, Vol III (London, 1906), p. 371Google Scholar; Northamptonshire Record Office (hereafter NRO) archive collections list.

19. NRO, ASL 357 and 362.

20. See for example GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 58.

21. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 91 and 93.

22. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 41.

23. GRO, D3549/14/1/5.

24. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 29 and 37.

25. NRO, D(CA) 1030.

26. NRO, D(CA) 1031.

27. NRO, D(CA) 1031, 1034 and 1037.

28. NRO, D(CA) 1032.

29. NRO, D(CA) 531.

30. Cooper, N., Aynho: A Northamptonshire Village (Banbury, 1984), pp. 314–5Google Scholar; Barron, Northamptonshire Families, Vol III, p. 376.

31. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 25.

32. NRO, 364p/61, 67–70 and 501.

33. NRO, D(CA) 1031.

34. NRO, D(CA) 322.

35. NRO, D(CA) 321.

36. NRO, D(CA) 321 and 746. Emphasis added.

37. NRO, 364p/501. The book is wrongly attributed to Elizabeth (Betsy) Mordaunt (née Prowse) in a typed note at the front of the volume.

38. NRO, 364p/61.

39. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 30, 45 and 74.

40. Data based on Anscomb, Northamptonshire Inclosures.

41. Samuel Harris had served the Ashley family as their London-based lawyer from the early 1750s, while his brother Thomas was acting as steward for the Ashley estates from at least 1757. As well as serving them in a professional capacity, the Harris brothers appear to have enjoyed a personal relationship with both John and Jane Ashley, who amongst other things provided breakfasts, horses and accommodation for Samuel Harris's sons as they travelled to and from boarding school in Rugby in the mid 1750s (NRO, ASL 1122; M(F) 30 and 32).

42. NRO, M(F) 879.

43. NRO, M(F) 75, 77–80 and 87.

44. NRO, M(F) 83.

45. Hindle, S., ‘Gossip, Gender and the Experience of Authority in Early Modern England’, Continuity and Change, 9:3 (1994), 391–419CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. NRO, M(F) 165 and 166. The undated rental was made for Jane's brother-in-law Solomon Ashley and was drawn up after 1754 when Mand arrived as vicar and before 1771 when Robert Verney gave up his farm. The most likely date is soon after the death of John Ashley in 1761, when Solomon became heir to the estate.

47. NRO, ASL 165 and 363.

48. VCH Nhants V, pp. 161–2.

49. NRO, C(A) 8380, 8398 and 8401; Cooper, Aynho, pp. 178 and 314–5.

50. NRO, C(A) 8408, 8458, 8840 and enclosure volume I, p. 439; Cooper, Aynho, pp. 179 and 182. On Mary and Stephen's role as deputies to William, see also NRO, C(A) 8477 where Stephen reported to William that ‘on the subject of the new inclosures, I find him [Robert Weston, the Aynho steward] very anxious to see you, or at least us’.

51. NRO, H(W) 47–61.

52. VCH Nhants V, p. 416.

53. NRO, H(W)111 and 133.

54. NRO, 364p/65; H(W)65. The figures for the freehold land are drawn from a copy of the 1717 terrier. The accompanying map gives slightly different figures.

55. NRO, H(W)62.

56. The three men undertook to obtain an Act of Parliament to confirm their agreement, though they apparently never did so (NRO, 364p/14).

57. NRO, 364p/28.

58. I am grateful to Carol Davidson Cragoe of English Heritage for her help examining the standing fabric of the church.

59. NRO, 364p/30 and GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 32 and 36.

60. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 36; NRO, 364p/30.

61. GRO, D3549/12/1/4.

62. GRO, D 3549/14/1/2, p. 98; VCH Nhants V, p. 237.

63. GRO, D3549/14/1/2, part 3, pp. 2–3; B. Crosby, Private Concerts on Land and Water: The Musical Activities of the Sharp Family, c.1750-c.1790, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle 34 (2002), passim.

64. Kerslake, J., ‘A Note on Zoffany's “Sharp Family”’, The Burlington Magazine, 120: 908 (1978), 753–4Google Scholar

65. Ditchfield, G. M., ‘Sharp, Granville (1735–1813)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004Google Scholar; online edn, January 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/25208, accessed 30 April 2008].

66. NRO, 364p/67, f. 15; GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 49.

67. NRO, 364p/67, f. 122 and 364p/39.

68. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 74; NRO, 364p/501.

69. NRO, 364p/48.

70. GRO, D3549/12/1/4.

71. GRO, D5349/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 54 and 52.

72. GRO, D3549/12/1/4.

73. GRO, D5349/14/1/2 part 3, p18.

74. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 19; NRO, 364p/67–9, passim.

75. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 60 and 91; NRO, 364p/67–9, passim.

76. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 30 and 91.

77. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 37 and 68.

78. NRO, 364p/67, ff. 15, 40 and 120–134; /68, f. 197; and 364p/501.

79. NRO, 364p/67, ff. 121 and 120–134, passim; /68, ff. 189, 192 and 196.

80. NRO, 364p/67, f. 123; /68, ff. 190, 192, 200 and 202.

81. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 40; NRO, 364p/68, ff. 196 and 199; Williamson, T., The Transformation of Rural England: Farming and the Landscape, 1700–1870 (Exeter, 2002), pp. 67–8Google Scholar.

82. NRO, 364p/67, f. 120.

83. NRO, 364p/67, ff. 123, 124 and 128.

84. GRO, D5349/14/1/2 part 3, p. 27. None of these leases survive, but entries in the estate ledgers suggest that some were for seven years. For example, farmer Turpin replaced Battam in 1768 and took a new lease in June 1775 (NRO, 364p/67, ff. 120–1 and 128; /68, f. 194).

85. NRO, 364p/68, ff. 190, 194 and 199; GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 40.

86. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, p. 41.

87. GRO, D5349/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 40–1 and 12/1/6.

88. GRO, D3549/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 34 and 46.

89. GRO, D5349/14/1/2 part 3, pp. 43 and 46.

90. GRO, D5349/13/5/33, p. 13–4.

91. NRO, D(CA) 322, passim and 533; ASL 1226.

92. NRO, ASL 351.

93. Elizabeth had no particular connections to Norfolk, but it seems possible that she had met Kent in Fulham in the winter of 1791. The General View of Norfolk was not published until 1796 but the quotation in Elizabeth's memoirs appears after an entry dated December 12th 1791 noting how she and her sister Frances spent the winter in Fulham. Elizabeth's brother William Sharp lived at Stourton House on the High Street in Fulham, about 0.7km from Kent who rented Colehill Cottage, just off Fulham Palace Road (GRO, D5349/14/1/2, pp. 85–6; P. Horn, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Land Agent: The Career of Nathaniel Kent (1737–1810)’, Agricultural History Review, 1–16, p. 4 note; Kerslake, ‘Sharp Family’, p. 754).

94. NRO, 364p/61.

95. GRO, D5349/13/5/33, p. 20.

96. NRO, C(S)166.

97. NRO, L(C)922.

98. Baker, A. P., ‘Germain, Lady Elizabeth [Betty] (1680–1769)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10565, accessed 28 July 2008]Google Scholar.

99. NRO, SS3866. Of the more than 4,000 documents in the Stopford Sackville collection at the NRO, only four relate to Lady Germain's period of ownership.