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‘The mess of the middle class’ revisited: the case of the ‘big bourgeoisie’ of Augustan London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

ENDNOTES

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25 These men are listed in Appendices A and B. Among the principal types of primary material on which the following analysis is based are wills and inventories, livery company and joint stock records, Chancery and bankruptcy proceedings, and tax listings.

26 Excluded from the 62 are three men elected late in Anne's reign who never served. Two serving aldermen resigned, one of whom (Thomas Darwin) appears to have been in serious financial difficulties.

27 Of these 14, 10 were eldest or only sons.

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35 Appendix A, III. The parliamentary charter of the South Sea Company made Bank and united East India Company directors ineligible for the South Sea directorate. That same year, parliament also made Bank directors ineligible for the directorate of the united East India Company and vice-versa.

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39 Appendix A, V.

40 Appendix A, IV.

41 In tracing sons and unmarried daughters, the principal problem is deaths subsequent to their father's demise but before they themselves reached maturity. The principal problem with respect to married daughters is ascertaining the occupations of husbands whom we know to come from London business families but who themselves cannot be identified as businessmen.

42 The 10 aldermanic sons and kin who themselves became aldermen were two sons each of Sir Francis Child and Sir Francis Eyles; the eldest sons of Sir Ambrose Crowley, Sir Richard Levett, and Sir John Parsons; nephews of Sir Samuel Stanier and Sir Patience Ward, and Sir Charles Thorold's brother.

43 As Lang observes, the problem of tracing fathers is that the sources are more forthcoming about place than parental status. It is likely that few of the unknowns in any of the cohorts came from London business or landed families. Sources for Table 2: 1600–24 cohort-Lang, ‘Social origins’, 31; 1660–88 and 1738–63 cohorts - Rogers, , ‘Money, land and lineage’, 454.Google Scholar

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55 Samuel Heathcote was a younger brother of Sir Gilbert, Sir William Scawen was Sir Thomas's elder brother, William Gore was the eldest son and John Gore a younger son of Sir William, Owen Buckingham was the only son of Sir Owen, and Edward Jeffreys was the eldest son of Sir Jeffrey. Rowland Aynsworth and John Edmonds were, respectively, the sons-in-law of Sir John Fleet and Sir William Hedges. In addition, Hedges, by his first marriage, was an uncle of Sir Samuel Sambrooke.

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61 App. B, III.

62 Of the remaining 20 non-citizens, nine did not fragment their property; of their principal heirs, four were landed men, only one a London businessman.

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70 The usefulness of civic officeholding as a predictor of the careers of eldest sons would not necessarily hold true for mid-eighteenth-century London, for by then the flight from the freedom by substantial businessmen had escalated. Hence, a substantially lower proportion of businessmen directors of the monied companies were citizens and a substantially lower proportion of common councilmen were merchants or financiers. See Rogers, N., ‘London politics from Walpole to Pitt: patriotism and independency in an era of commercial imperialism, 1738–63’ (Ph.d. thesis, University of Toronto 1974), 312, 340–1.Google Scholar

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