To the manor born
What does the future hold for the English country squire? Adrian Leak finds out and gets to know some of history and literature’s most affable examples
What does the future hold for the English country squire? Adrian Leak investigates
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY, a genial Worcestershire squire at large during the reign of Queen Anne, is one of the great creations of English literature. His story first appeared in 1711, scattered across the pages of 30 issues of the Spectator, so we have only glimpses of the man, but the picture we have, to borrow Horace Walpole’s phrase, excels in ‘truthfulness and finish’.
At our first introduction, we see Sir Roger calling on a neighbour in the country. ‘When he comes into a house,’ we are told, ‘he calls the servants by their names, and talks all the way up the stairs to a visit.’ We can see him, chatting to the footman at the door, calling out a greeting to a servant girl he passes in the hall and then stopping on the stairs to ask after her ailing mother. We know the detail. It’s all there, unwritten, but implicit in Joseph Addison’s brief sentence.
This familiarity between master and servant, landlord and tenant, gives his conduct as chairman of the quarter sessions a particular flavour. It is generally agreed that Sir Roger is a fair and wise magistrate. On his bench, common sense sits side by side with legal precedent. He is, however, more knowledgeable about the minutiae of the law than he pretends. His elucidation of a particularly obscure passage in the Game Act gained him universal applause in the county and the widespread respect of his fellow justices.
Sir Roger is, of course, a work of fiction, but what is a fact is the prominent role played by the squire in rural society. William Cobbett, famous for his Rural Rides (1822–30), looked back with nostalgia to ‘the resident gentry, attached to the soil, known to every farmer and labourer from their childhood, frequently mixing with them in those pursuits where all artificial distinctions are lost’.
There was a wide belief in the continuity of the family at the manor and the proximity of the squire to the land, to his tenant farmers and to the labourers on the home farm. Defoe, Addison and Fielding in the 18th century and Cobbett and Trollope in the 19th perpetuate the notion of the immemorial antiquity of the local gentry. By the mid-victorian period, the ancient proximity of squire and labourer in the mud and muck of the farmyard had been replaced by the more decorous fellowship of the annual cricket match; beef and beer had given way to cakes, lemonade and parasols.
There remained, however, a sense of belonging together. A poignant witness to this solidarity can be seen on the countless village memorials to the victims of the First World War, with the names of gentry, tenant farmer and labourer sharing the same plaque on the wall in the parish church where they and their ancestors had worshipped together for more than 600 years.
On the other hand, Trollope’s Mr Thorne, squire of Ullathorne and apogee of exquisite breeding, was a denial of such solidarity. His family’s lineage receded so far into history that even those county families who claimed Norman origins were viewed by him with the quiet satisfaction of one who was confident of his Saxon descent. Mr Thorne was pleased that his family name had never suffered the encumbrance of a title.
Trollope’s squire is, of course, a comic caricature. With his contorted fastidiousness, he is, as his creator admits, a very long way from the gross rusticity of Fielding’s Squire Western. In him, the alienation of the sophisticated gentleman from the soil of his inheritance is complete. Sir Roger would not have recognised this
‘The country squire remains a defining influence upon country life in the 21st century
self-centred man with his urban affectations as a member of his own class.
It’s more likely that Sir Roger would have recognised Tony Last, the tragic figure in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful
of Dust. This 20th-century version of the country squire has many of de Coverley’s characteristics. His indulgent affection for his retainers, his love of his inheritance, his suspicion of London’s smart set, his interest in the village and his dutiful attendance each Sunday at church all have echoes of Sir Roger and his contemporaries, Squire Weston and Squire Allworthy.
The real squirearchy, as distinct from its fictional counterpart, would not have survived without the occasional injection of urban cash. The Clives of Styche Hall in Shropshire had been established on their small estate near Market Drayton since the reign of Henry II, enjoying the sort of rustic obscurity and durability of many of their class. If it hadn’t been for Richard Clive’s wife’s wealthy Manchester connections, through which he obtained an education for his troublesome son, Robert, the boy would not have found his way into the East India Company, eventually to become the Governor of Bengal and the greatest nabob of his age. He paid for the restoration of the ruinous Styche Hall with part of his vast fortune.
Another family to benefit from the fruits of trade was the Custances of Norfolk. Squire Custance is well known to readers of Parson Woodforde’s The Diary of
a Country Parson. He and his family lived at the ‘big house’ in Woodforde’s parish of Weston Longville. The picture we get from reading the diary is of a typical 18thcentury country squire, who plays his part with such familiarity that it comes as a surprise to learn that his estate had only recently been bought by his grandfather, a Norwich merchant who had amassed a fortune from the manufacture of coarse linen.
Woodforde’s squire was the first Custance to live in the newly built family seat at Weston. However, a few generations earlier, in the 16th century, the Custances had been impoverished gentry with estates among the windswept villages of north-east Norfolk, whence they departed to Norwich to seek their fortune in trade.
The picture of a landed gentry enjoying an unbroken descent, if not from the Conquest, at least from the sale of the monastic estates at the Reformation, therefore, needs considerable qualification. Not only was new money necessary, but also, every few generations, new blood.
The 17th-century diarist John Evelyn, who succeeded his brother as squire of Wotton in Surrey, is described by Leslie Stephen in his article in the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography as ‘the typical instance of the accomplished and public-spirited country gentleman’. The truth wasn’t so simple. Evelyn’s wealth and family estate at Wotton in Surrey derived from the manufacture of gunpowder. The mills at Wotton and Abinger had been established by his grandfather, George Evelyn, under licence from Elizabeth I in 1589.
Sir Roger may have already been, in 1711, something of an old-fashioned figure. The type he represented, of resident landowner, attached to the soil and known to every farmer and labourer in the parish, was about to be joined, but not replaced, by a new breed of country gentleman typified by John Custance of Weston Longville with his wealth in textiles and Jane Austen’s Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park with his fortune in the sugar plantations of Antigua.
Even so, the country squire was nonetheless real for all that. His presence in rural England either as a representative of an ancient landed class or as a newcomer, now as likely to be a rock star as an industrialist, remains a defining influence upon country life in the 21st century.