The approach of the Gascoigne family to the management of their property has been frequently noted by historians as a good illustration of how resourceful many landed Catholic families were in developing their estate's assets and incomes and it is the contention of this chapter that something of a Catholic mindset may be discerned in the management of the Gascoigne estates under Sir Thomas Gascoigne, both before and after his conversion to Anglicanism. Since at least the 1580s successive heads of the Gascoigne family had developed a tradition that established not only the management and improvement of their estates but also made it a paramount concern. This tradition had been stressed by Sir Thomas's guardians who brought him up to recognise the importance of the family's focus on improvement in both its agrarian and industrial concerns. Rents from the numerous farms provided the greatest part of the family's income throughout the eighteenth century and in order to increase the value of his property – and by extension his rental income – Sir Thomas actively showed considerable enterprise in buying property, developing wasteland, promoting enclosure, encouraging crop diversification, and experimenting in new methods of cultivation on two model farms. The estates also included several coal mines and limestone quarries, which Sir Thomas exploited with equal tenacity (see Chapter 5). In his endeavours to improve the estates and increase his income Sir Thomas, like his forebears, was successful. Taken together with the general rise in rents nationally, the rental income of the estate increased dramatically throughout the eighteenth century. In 1715 it was estimated that the family's property in the West Riding received a rent of £402. 16s. 8½d.; by 1750 when Sir Edward Gascoigne, 6th Bart, died that annual income had been increased to an estimated £3,200. By 1810, when Sir Thomas Gascoigne died, the estate comprised some 9,708 acres in and around nineteen local settlements, and the rental income had more than tripled to some £9,649 in rack and customary rents.