¹ Ensor, R. C. K., England 1870–1914 (London, 1936), p. 119Google Scholar.

² There is a notable absence of any synthesis of the (not extensive) literature on the late Victorian and Edwardian aristocracy. Beckett, J. V., The aristocracy in England 1660–1914 (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, concentrates on the period before 1870; and Mayer, A. J., The persistence of the Old Regime, Europe to the Great War (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, adds little to our knowledge or understanding of the persistence of the British ‘old regime’. The best general works remain: Thompson, F. M. L., English landed society in the nineteenth century (London, 1963), ch XIGoogle Scholar; Arnstein, W. L., ‘The survival of the Victorian aristocracy’, in Jaher, F. C. (ed.), The rich, the well-born and the powerful (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and Tuchman, B. W., The proud tower (New York, 1962)Google Scholar. Cannadine, David has, however, set the agenda for research in part I of his Lords and landlords: the aristocracy and the towns 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980)Google Scholar; parts II and III provide the most systematic treatment yet given to the economics of the aristocracy's persistence and decline.

³ Microfilms of the marquess of Lincolnshire's papers are held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MS Films 1097–1153). Charles Robert Wynn-Carrington (1843–1928), eldest son of the second Lord Carrington, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, succeeding as third baron in 1868. Created Earl Carrington in 1895 and marquess of Lincolnshire in 1912, he is referred to by his earlier title throughout. Carrington's diary, continuous from 1889 until 1928, is the most significant item in the collection (MS Films 1100–1112).

⁴ The only recent studies are Denholm, A. T., Lord Ripon (London, 1982)Google Scholar, and the introduction to Gordon, P. (ed.), The red earl: the papers of the fifth Earl Spencer 1835–1910, vol II (1885–1910) (Northampton, 1986)Google Scholar.

⁵ Thompson, F. M. L., ‘Britain’, in Spring, D. (ed.), European landed elites in the nineteenth century (Baltimore, 1977), p. 28Google Scholar.

⁶ VCH, II, 110 and 216; Mayes, L. J.: The history of the borough of High Wycombe (London, 1960), p. 2Google Scholar; The High Wycombe directory (London, 1885), p. 1Google Scholar; Mayes, L. J., The history of chairmaking in Wycombe (London, 1960), passimGoogle Scholar.

⁷ D. Cannadine, Lords and landlords, ch II; Cannadine, D. (ed.), Patricians, power and politics in 19th-century towns (Leicester, 1982), p. 5Google Scholar.

⁸ Cannadine, , Patricians, p. 36Google Scholar.

⁹ Roberts, R., ‘Leasehold estates and municipal enterprise: landowners, local government and the development of Bournemouth, c. 1850 to 1914’, in Patricians, p. 190Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The High Wycombe directory, pp. 45–54.

¹¹ Cannadine, , Patricians, p. 7Google Scholar.

¹² Diary, 22 Feb. 1914; Reid, H., The furniture makers: history of trade unionism in the furniture trade 1865–1972 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 59–64Google Scholar.

¹³ Mayes, , History of chairmaking, p. 102Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Mayes, , History of High Wycombe, pp. 8, 33, 34, 53 and 61Google Scholar; The High Wycombe directory, p. 54; VCH, III, 115.

¹⁵ Hanham, H. J., Elections and party management: politics in the time of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, 1959), pp. 406–12Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Cited in Blake, R., Disraeli (London, 1966), p. 602/3Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Diary, 12 Aug. 1899.

¹⁸ Diary, 24 Jan. 1914.

¹⁹ [2nd] Lord Carrington to Charles Carrington, 13 Jan. 1868, cit. Davis, R. W., Political change and continuity, 1760–1885: a Buckinghamshire study (Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 217Google Scholar; Carrington to Harcourt, 20 Aug. 1882, MS Film 1121. Harcourt declined the offer, replying: ‘I have no doubt you will judge wisely well in the disposal of a patronage which in these days is valuable in proportion to its rarity’. Harcourt to Carrington, 25 Aug. 1882, MS Film 1121.

²⁰ Rosebery to Carrington, 31 Aug. 1887, MS Film 1116.

²¹ Mayes, , History of High Wycombe, pp. 25 and 37Google Scholar; Sir E. Hamilton's Diary, 11 Oct. 1903, Hamilton papers, British Library, B.L. Add MS 48681; Sparkes, I. G., High Wycombe as it was (Hendon Mill, 1975), p. 33Google Scholar.

²² Vincent, J., The formation of the Liberal Party 1857–1868 (London, 1966), pp. 7–8Google Scholar; Phillips, G. D., ‘The Whig Lords and Liberalism’, Historical Journal, XXIV (1981), 167–173CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²³ Cunneen, C., King's Men: Australia's Governors-General from Hopetoun to Isaacs (London, 1983), p. 5Google Scholar.

²⁴ Spencer to Lansdowne, 16 Aug. 1885, quoted in Gordon, , The red earl, II, 70–4Google Scholar.

²⁵ Saywell, J. T., ‘Introduction’ to The Canadian Journal of Lady Aberdeen (Toronto, 1960), p. XXVGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Cannadine, , Lords and landlords, p. 418Google Scholar. Cf. recent commentators, who have stressed the absence of rigid or ideological divisions between Liberals and Liberal Unionists in both houses: Phillips, ‘The Whig Lords and Liberalism’; Lubenow, W. C., ‘Irish home rule and the great separation in the Liberal party in 1886: the dimensions of parliamentary Liberalism’, Victorian Studies, XXVI (1982–1983), 161–80Google Scholar; Lubenow, W. C., ‘Irish Home Rule and the social basis of the Great Separation in the Liberal Party in 1886’, Historical Journal, XXVIII (1985), 125–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁷ Diary, 15 and 23 June 1909. Rosebery was a leader of these ‘rich men’. He responded thus to an entreaty from Carrington: ‘On Tariff Reform I am with you, but the tremendous direct taxation imposed by the Budget will bleed Free Trade to death’. Rosebery to Carrington, 8 Dec. 1909, quoted in diary.

²⁸ Diary, 3 Nov. 1903.

²⁹ Diary, 3 Dec. 1920.

³⁰ Carrington to Rosebery, 9 Mar. 1923, Rosebery papers, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS 10008/219–224.

³¹ ‘Random recollections of my life from public school to Privy Seal’, ch. 1, 6, MS Film 1119; Diary, 12 May and 4 June 1926.

³² There is no specific record in his accounts of election expenditure, but increased spending on ‘allowances, gifts and subscriptions’ in election years suggests an expenditure of £350 on each election between 1900 an d 1910. Carrington did not give on a large scale to national party funds until an urgent appeal for the 1924 election, for which he gave £1,000. Diary, 23 July 1924.

³³ Diary, 5 Aug. 1908. Punch described it as a ‘radical jamboree’ and noted that Carrington ‘took part in the athletic sports which preceded the speeches and came 11th in the sack race’.

³⁴ SirWinfrey, R., Leaves from my life (privately printed, 1936), p. 32Google Scholar. Winfrey, Liberal MP for south-west Norfolk 1906–22, acted as Carrington's parliamentary private secretary when he was president of the board of agriculture.

³⁵ Diary, 7 Feb. 1898 and 6 Feb. 1899.

³⁶ Diary, 5 Mar. 1896. Derby's diary reveals a similar preoccupation. He ‘felt that drink, going on the turf, and the ever-present pressures on sanity were greater risks to the political and economic future of the aristocracy, and especially to its prestige, than socialism, taxation and pressure from without’. Vincent, J. (ed.), The later Derby diaries: home rule, Liberal Unionism and aristocratic life in late Victorian England (privately printed, 1981), p. 97Google Scholar.

³⁷ Diary, 28 Jan. 1897 and 10 Nov. 1896.

³⁸ Asquith quoting Lowe: Jenkins, R., Asquith (London, 1964), p. 509Google Scholar.

³⁹ Diary, 10 Mar. 1903.

⁴⁰ Speech 8 Jan. 1889, cited in The County Council Magazine I, 1 (02 1889), 44–5Google Scholar.

⁴¹ Morley to Rendel, 29 Jan. 1889, Rendel papers, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, Rendel/MS581.

⁴² Raymond, E. T., The man of promise: Lord Rosebery (London, 1923), pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

⁴³ Hutchinson, H., Life of Sir John Lubbock (2 vols., London, 1914), I, 300Google Scholar; Diary, 25 Sept. and 11 Nov. 1891; Davis, J. H., The problems of London government reform, 1880–1900 (unpublished D. Phil, dissertation, University of Oxford, 1983), p. 211Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ The Times, 8 Nov. 1894.

⁴⁵ Ibid. 14 Nov. 1897.

⁴⁶ Diary, 5 Mar. 1904 and 17 May 1907.

⁴⁷ Clemenson defines a ‘territorial magnate’ as a landowner possessing at least 30,000 acres Clemenson, H. A., English country houses and landed estates (London, 1982), p. 7Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Carrington, , ‘The land and the labourers’, The Nineteenth Century, XLV (1899), 370Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Bateman, J., The great landowners of England and Wales (London, 1883), p. 78Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ Lack of detailed data both as to Carrington's holdings and the effects of the depression within these counties makes this unavoidably imprecise. From a sample of estates in counties including Bucks, Thompson estimated that rents fell by c. 41% between 1874 and 1898. Wycombe itself was evenly divided between arable and permanent grass; but the Vale of Aylesbury was ‘a famous pasture country’ and rents fell in the latter by only c. 20/25% between 1876 and 1895. Rents fell considerably more sharply in the Chilterns. In Lincolnshire the depression was not as severe as in Suffolk, but worse than in the pastoral areas of the North and West, with rents falling anything between 20 and 60% between 1876 and 1895. All of this accords with rent reductions of the order suggested. (Thompson, , English landed society, p. 310Google Scholar; VCH, II, 37 and 112; Copock, J. T., ‘Agricultural changes in the Chilterns’, Agricultural History Review, IX (1961), 62Google Scholar; VCH, III, 93; Olney, R. J., Rural society and county government in 19th-century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1979), p. 178Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Diary, 13 Mar. 1903. When Robert Smith was raised to the peerage in 1796 his landed credentials were impeccable. Cannon, J., Aristocratic century (Cambridge, 1984), p. 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵² Cannadine, , Patricians, p. 2Google Scholar.

⁵³ Cannadine, D., ‘The landowner as millionaire: the finances of the Dukes of Devonshire, c. 1800–c. 1926’, Agricultural History Review, XXV (1977), 77–97Google Scholar; Spring, D.: ‘Land & Politics in Edwardian England’, Agricultural History, LVIII (1984), 17–42Google Scholar. Bedford's rental from Covent Garden alone was in 1913 two and a half times Carrington's total rental. Ibid. p. 27.

⁵⁴ Martins, S. W., A great estate at work: the Holkham estate and its inhabitants in the 19th century (Cambridge, 1980), esp. pp. 60–4Google Scholar; Thompson, , English landed society, p. 307Google Scholar. Liberal peers were not immune from exaggerating their plight. Spencer lamented to Carrington: ‘As I live up to mine you may imagine how this [rent reduction] has crippled me…We have had to cut everything down…We find we cannot live at Althorp except in a corner’. Spencer to Carrington, 25 Feb. 1888 (MS Film 1121). Even Carrington believed that ‘the big landed families are tumbling about in all directions’. Diary, 5 Mar. 1896. Underneath this entry is written: ‘Note: 15 Sept. 1912: The absurdity of all this croaking is proved by the fact that Dukes are today going stronger than ever.’

⁵⁵ Cannadine, , ‘The landowner as millionaire’, pp. 78–9Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Freshfield to Carrington, 2 Mar. 1888, MS Film 1137.

⁵⁷ Diary, 23 Oct. 1896. The first of the estates to be sold were peripheral holdings in Cardiganshire and Montgomeryshire; Carrington was also left £26,000 by a cousin in 1887 (‘I never saw him but twice in my life’). Evidence of Carrington's agent to the 1893 Welsh Land Commission, Reports, Commissions (1896), XX, 248; ; Carrington to Carnarvon 21 Nov. 1887, Carnarvon papers, British Library, B.L. Add MS 60801, 13/4.

⁵⁸ Cannadine, D., ‘Aristocratic indebtedness in the 19th century: the case re-opened’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XXX (1977), 624–50Google Scholar; the quotations are from pp. 646, 647 and 640.

⁵⁹ Ernle, Lord, English farming past and present (London, 1961 edn), p. 383Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Diary, 6 May 1896.

⁶¹ See Table 3: ‘Savings effected since 1894 and benefits which will commence to accrue in 1897’.

⁶² See Tables 1 and 2.

⁶³ Spring, , ‘Land and politics’, p. 23Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ 1916 was the last year that Carrington preserved game; he calculated from his gamebooks that between 1869 and 1916 he had shot 74,530 head of game. Diary, 6 Feb. 1916. Carrington's only son, Viscount Wendover, was killed in 1915; for the estate's future this was, of course, the most important event of the war.

⁶⁵ This statement must refer to the core estates (Bucks and Lines).

⁶⁶ Diary, 29 Jan. 1919.

⁶⁷ Thompson, , English landed society, pp. 329–31 and 334/5Google Scholar; cf. Wilson, T., The myriad faces of war (Oxford, 1986), pp. 771/2Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Yorkshire Post, 15 Mar. 1920. Carrington's views on this subject were not, in fact, so clear cut (see below).

⁶⁹ Diary, 17 Sept. 1920, 1 Jan. 1921 and 24 Mar. 1924.

⁷⁰ Thompson, , English landed society, p. 332Google Scholar.

⁷¹ Diary, 17 Sept. 1920.

⁷² From information in MS Film 1111.

⁷³ Diary, 31 Dec. 1925.

⁷⁴ Diary, 15 Oct. 1905 and Carrington, , ‘The land and the labourers’, p. 370Google Scholar.

⁷⁵ Young, A., General view of the agriculture of the county of Lincoln (London, 1799), p. 414Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Carrington, , ‘The land’, p. 368Google Scholar.

⁷⁷ Ibid. pp. 368–9.

⁷⁸ Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 90Google Scholar.

⁷⁹ Diggle, J. H., The Creation of small holdings in Lincolnshire and Norfolk (King's Lynn, 1903), p. 7Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Haggard, H. Rider, Rural England (2 vols., London, 1906 edn), II, 242Google Scholar.

⁸¹ Diggle, , The creation of small holdings, pp. 7–9 and 18Google Scholar; Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 110Google Scholar.

⁸² Eversley to Carrington, 26 Nov. 1913, MS Film 1137.

⁸³ Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 110Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Carrington to Campbell-Bannerman, 5 Nov. 1905, Campbell-Bannerman papers, London, B.L. Add. MS 41212.

⁸⁵ Diary, 10 Mar. 1906.

⁸⁶ Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 32Google Scholar. Landlords were, in particular, blamed for the severe effects of the depression: according to Channing, F. A. ‘over-renting…has been the chief cause of the depression’. The truth about the agricultural depression (London, 1897), p. 93Google Scholar.

⁸⁷ James, R. R., Rosebery (London, 1963), p. 342Google Scholar (from Rosebery's memorandum against Harcourt's death duties). Carrington wrote to Ripon in 1908: ‘It was largely owing to you that we were as a party able to get a Land Policy. Spencer and Kimberley, grand Liberals as they were, never would hear of it’. Carrington to Ripon, 10 Oct. 1908, Ripon papers, B.L. Add MS 43544, 127/8.

⁸⁸ Thompson, F. M. L., ‘Land and politics in England in the 19th-century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, XV (1965), 35Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Shaw Lefevre to Harcourt, 19 Apr. 1896, Harcourt papers, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1984 dep box 21; Gladstone to Rendel, 12 Nov. 1892, Rendel MS 100.

⁹⁰ Report of the Royal Commission on land in Wales and Monmouthshire, c. 8221, Reports, Commissions (1896), XX, 895 and 899.

⁹¹ Morgan, K. O., Rebirth of a nation: Wales 1880–1980 (Oxford, 1981), p. 84Google Scholar.

⁹² Diary, 5 Nov. 1905. Carrington's friendship with Edward, which dated back to the prince of Wales' tours of Egypt and India in the 1860s and '70s, remained such that Edward told Campbell-Bannerman on the formation of the government that he ‘regarded Charlie almost like a brother’. Diary, 6 Dec. 1905.

⁹³ A century of agricultural statistics (London, 1968), p. 19Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ Herbert Samuel papers, London, House of Lords Record Office, A 155/iii, 31. For a more detailed list of typical ingredients see Channing, F. A., An agricultural policy (London, 1905)Google Scholar.

⁹⁵ Hansard, 4, clii. 23.

⁹⁶ For a typical example in the literature of the misplaced emphasis given (retrospectively) to land taxation in the Liberal programme see Douglas, R., ‘God gave the land to the people’, in Morris, A. J. A. (ed.), Edwardian radicalism 1900–1914 (London, 1974), 148–61Google Scholar. Douglas makes no mention of Carrington, ignores the English and Welsh land legislation passed between 1906 and 1908, and can therefore see the 1909 budget as ‘the first government measure designed to deal with the land problem on a nationwide scale’. Ibid. p. 154.

⁹⁷ House of lords, 7 Mar. 1912, Hansard, 5, xi. 368.

⁹⁸ Collings, J., Land reform (London, 1906, p. 243Google Scholar.

⁹⁹ Diary, 8 Dec. 1906; Carrington to Knollys, 19 Nov. 1906, MS Film 1119.

¹⁰⁰ Hansard, 4, clxvi. 867.

¹⁰¹ Diary, II Nov. and 13 Dec. 1906.

¹⁰² Floud, F. L. C., The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (London, 1927), p. 143Google Scholar. According to Perry the 1892 Act ‘facilitated the entry of the small man, par excellence the labourer, into the farming community’. Perry, P. J., British agriculture 1875–1914 (London, 1973), p. XXXVGoogle Scholar. But the number of such ‘small men’ was very small indeed. Salisbury would not agree to the introduction of compulsory powers into the 1892 Act, ‘which must end in taking land at an artificially low valuation, otherwise it will be useless’. Salisbury to Balfour, 28 Jan. 1892, Balfour papers, London, B. L. Add. MS 49690, 3–4.

¹⁰³ Winfrey to Lewis Harcourt, 3 Apr. 1907, Harcourt papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, 1986 Adds. 161/16; C. F. G. Masterman to Harcourt, 7 June 1907, ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Douglas, R., Land, people and politics: a history of the land question in the United Kingdom, 1878–1952, (London, 1976), p. 139Google Scholar; Floud, , The Ministry of Agriculture, p. 146Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁵ Diary, 23 Aug. 1907.

¹⁰⁶ Winfrey, , Leaves, p. 176.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Carrington to Asquith, 10 Apr. 1908, Asquith papers, Oxford, Bodleian Library, 11/58; I, Hansard, 5th ser (C) lviii (1379) and lx (1644).

¹⁰⁸ Diary, 31 Dec. 1907.

¹⁰⁹ Barnett, D. C., ‘Allotments and the problem of rural poverty, 1780–1840’, in Jones, E. L. and Mingay, G. E. (ed.), Land, labour and population in the industrial revolution (London, 1967), 174Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Milner, Lord, Introduction to Turnor, C., Land problems and national welfare (London, 1911), p. viiiGoogle Scholar.

¹¹¹ Ashby, A. W., Allotments and small holdings in Oxfordshire (London, 1917), pp. 87 and 98Google Scholar; A century…statistics, p. 19; Diggle, , The creation of small holdings, p. 7Google Scholar.

¹¹² Grigg, J., Lloyd George from peace to war (London, 1985), p. 317Google Scholar.

¹¹³ Rowland, P., The last Liberal governments, unfinished business 1911–1914 (London, 1971), p. 226Google Scholar. In one respect Carrington was, if anything, more radical than Lloyd George: he was prepared to consider direct government intervention in the land market. He had, in fact, bid, on behalf of the government, for Bedford's Thorney estate in 1909 and Long's estate in 1911. Thompson, , English landed society, pp. 322/3Google Scholar.

¹¹⁴ Asquith to Crewe, 7 Oct. 1911, Asquith MS 46/191–2.

¹¹⁵ Diary, 21 Dec. 1918, 12 Jan. 1919, 6 Feb. 1919, 19 Dec. 1919 and 8 Nov. 1922.

¹¹⁶ Diary, 31 Dec. 1923.

¹¹⁷ Diary, 17 Dec. 1923.

¹¹⁸ Diary, 31 Dec. 1923.

¹¹⁹ Campbell, J., Lloyd George, the goat in the wilderness, 1922–1931 (London, 1977). pp. 97–9Google Scholar.

¹²⁰ Diary, 30 July 1925.

¹²¹ Diary, 4 Aug. 1925.

¹²² Vincent, , Formation, p. 211Google Scholar.