Castle Aching

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

16 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

I'd never heard of this chap until seeing his name here, so I read-up.

 

Even when people try to write positive things about him, they really struggle, don't they?!

 

Did remind me rather of a current, well-known president of a hugely powerful country (actually, maybe two such), though. Not the puritanism, but the rock-solid belief in his own God-given right to rule, his willingness to set the members of the population that he ruled against one another in order to remain in power, contempt for democracy, and propensity to blame every challenge or difficulty on dark, external forces ("southern liberals" in his case, the geography being different). Bags of personal, one-to-one, charm/charisma, of course.

 

Probably just a another textbook despot. I've met the odd petty one in my working life; presumably n% of any population is so-disposed.

 

Old Joh was renowned for both his corrupt practices and dictatorial style. Shortly before his downfall, which came about after a revolt within the ranks of his own government when the media had forced an enquiry into the endemic corruption in the state, he appointed as Chief Commissioner of Police the Queensland Police Force's most notorious corrupt policeman. The new appointee Terry Lewis had been the main "bag man" picking up the bribes from the various illegal enterprises and distributing them to the complicit police force members. Following the appointment Joh then gave him a knighthood. Joh already had given himself one "for services to Joh Bjelke-Petersen" it is rumoured.    

 

Mind you Australia has never been short of corrupt state premiers. Even corrupter than Bjelke-Petersen was the Premier of New South Wales Sir Robert Askin to name another.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Askin 

[Edwardian]

You see, I reckon that corruption flourished in former colonies, like the US and Australia for want of an ancient hereditary aristocracy.  

 

It's about folk from socially unremarkable backgrounds gaining power and, quite naturally, wanting what that power can get them.  The Aristocracy, on the other hand, which should be understood as the Mafia with Taste, doesn't tend to taint public office in this way. 

 

This is for two reasons. First, an ancient aristocracy is a great PR effort.  It's all about creating an impression of the rightness of the social order, of natural leadership, noblesse oblige  etc, that's been around forever ("All my people, 'pon my soul it's true/Look on Noah as a parvenu") so that no one questions their right to rule the roost or remembers how they nicked their pile in the first place. 

 

Second, once they, as a class, have gained most of the landed wealth in the Kingdom, it becomes their wealth that gets them public office, which is considered appropriate, rather than the other way around, which is not.

 

This gives an aristocracy two key advantages.  First, it does not need to get caught with its hands in the cookie jar.  It owns the cookie jar.  Second, the myth of aristocracy confers an essential otherness; what ordinary folk really cannot stand is the thought of other ordinary folk cheating their way to more money than they have.  On the other hand, people are remarkably tolerant of being exploited by a higher caste.

[monkeysarefun]

Keeping your reasonable colonial corruption theory going, in  first settlement days at least it was also a case of going from someone unremarkable in England to suddenly being a big fish in a little pond out here.

 

The NSW Corps - the rum corps  of infamy -  was a case in point. It was led by a nondescript Major Grose. When the Governor was called back to England Grose found himself pretty much in charge and immediately went mental with changing everything to military  rule. The civilian court was abolished, and abandoning Governor Phillips decree of equal rations for all, he cut the convicts share but not the corps'. He also abandoned the collective farming model that was taking wing and handed out huge land grants to his officers, who also got free convict labour thrown in.

 

Grose also relaxed Philips ban on rum and imported a heap. Due to the shortage of coinage, rum became the de facto currency and  was controlled by the officers.

 

Long story short, after lots of adventures and jolly japes such as the Battle of Vinegar Hill the corruption reached a crescendo with the rum rebellion of 1806 where Governor Bligh of Bounty fame was deposed. Following this the Corps returned to England and many of the members ended up fighting in the War of 1812 which luckily   to avoid confusion happenned in 1812.

 

Major Grose got to get some stuff named after him - a valley and a vale to be precise.

Edited March 14, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[Donw]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

You see, I reckon that corruption flourished in former colonies, like the US and Australia for want of an ancient hereditary aristocracy.  

 

It's about folk from socially unremarkable backgrounds gaining power and, quite naturally, wanting what that power can get them.  The Aristocracy, on the other hand, which should be understood as the Mafia with Taste, doesn't tend to taint public office in this way. 

 

This is for two reasons. First, an ancient aristocracy is a great PR effort.  It's all about creating an impression of the rightness of the social order, of natural leadership, noblesse oblige  etc, that's been around forever ("All my people, 'pon my soul it's true/Look on Noah as a parvenu") so that no one questions their right to rule the roost or remembers how they nicked their pile in the first place. 

 

Second, once they, as a class, have gained most of the landed wealth in the Kingdom, it becomes their wealth that gets them public office, which is considered appropriate, rather than the other way around, which is not.

 

This gives an aristocracy two key advantages.  First, it does not need to get caught with its hands in the cookie jar.  It owns the cookie jar.  Second, the myth of aristocracy confers an essential otherness; what ordinary folk really cannot stand is the thought of other ordinary folk cheating their way to more money than they have.  On the other hand, people are remarkably tolerant of being exploited by a higher caste.

 

The fooundation of our Aristocracy was the Norman Invasion after winning the spoils were handed out among the the normans and there was a period of ruthless supression of any opposistion ( e.g. Harrying of the North).  The distinction between us and them rulers and the rest has been maintained by a policy of marriage within the social class. Sure the is some movement but not enough to blur the distinction.  Even today the children of a Duke or Earl will be under strong family pressure to choose partners within the same social class.

Don

[Nearholmer]

We’ve had the ‘Norman Yoke’ here before, but I am always impressed by how the vestiges of it have sustained for so incredibly long, through all sorts of turmoils.

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, Donw said:

The distinction between us and them rulers and the rest has been maintained by a policy of marriage within the social class. Sure the is some movement but not enough to blur the distinction.  Even today the children of a Duke or Earl will be under strong family pressure to choose partners within the same social class.

 

Until they get to the point where its becoming apparent that the Heir is starting to form attachments with table lamps or similar, then new blood is ruthlessly imported to rejuvenate the line...

 

 

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Until they get to the point where its becoming apparent that the Heir is starting to form attachments with table lamps or similar, then new blood is ruthlessly imported to rejuvenate the line...

 

 

 

Or even before that. Nothing like marrying an American heiress - not that I speak from personal experience!

 

Vide Trollope, The Dukes's Children. Isabel Boncassen - such a Jamesian name, too.

[runs as required]

57 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

Until they get to the point where its becoming apparent that the Heir is starting to form attachments with table lamps or similar, then new blood is ruthlessly imported to rejuvenate the line...

Are we talking of the Hapsburg Jaw, or the Wars of the Roses? All a bit introvert - a bit like an inside cylinder 4-4-0.

dh

[Edwardian]

3 hours ago, Donw said:

 

The fooundation of our Aristocracy was the Norman Invasion after winning the spoils were handed out among the the normans and there was a period of ruthless supression of any opposistion ( e.g. Harrying of the North).  The distinction between us and them rulers and the rest has been maintained by a policy of marriage within the social class. Sure the is some movement but not enough to blur the distinction.  Even today the children of a Duke or Earl will be under strong family pressure to choose partners within the same social class.

Don

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Until they get to the point where its becoming apparent that the Heir is starting to form attachments with table lamps or similar, then new blood is ruthlessly imported to rejuvenate the line...

 

 

 

The stratification is largely illusory, probably deliberately so, to preserve the myth of a distinct aristocratic caste. I think it was K B McFarlane who reckoned that in Fifteenth Century, at any one point a third of the nobility were parvenus.

[Compound2632]

I believe that the only current non-royal duke of genuinely medieval creation is the Duke of Norfolk, the dukedom having been created by Richard III in 1483. (Only just medieval!) Even there, there was an interducedom of 88 years between the execution of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke (his crime being to have as good if not better a claim to the throne as Elizabeth's) and the restoration of his great-great-grandson at Charles II's restoration. 

 

Although the current Duke of Northumberland is a Percy, his dukedom is an 18th-century creation; his ancestor adopted the Percy name on marrying the last female descendant of the medieval Percys.

[Donw]

33 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

The stratification is largely illusory, probably deliberately so, to preserve the myth of a distinct aristocratic caste. I think it was K B McFarlane who reckoned that in Fifteenth Century, at any one point a third of the nobility were parvenus.

 

Ah but the point is marrying into the aristocracy is difficult enough for us to believe in their superiority. Besides I suspect some care is taken over whom the blood is. In Pride and Prejudice Mr Darcy is much further up the scale than Elizabeth Bennet but her Father is a Gentleman  although much poorer. Much more acceptable than a man in trade or heavens forbid a labourer or servant. Of course considerable wealth goes a long way to amend for lowly beginings. 

Don 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Donw said:

 

Ah but the point is marrying into the aristocracy is difficult enough for us to believe in their superiority. Besides I suspect some care is taken over whom the blood is. In Pride and Prejudice Mr Darcy is much further up the scale than Elizabeth Bennet but her Father is a Gentleman  although much poorer. Much more acceptable than a man in trade or heavens forbid a labourer or servant. Of course considerable wealth goes a long way to amend for lowly beginings. 

Don 

 

Mr Darcy is a gentleman; Mr Bennett is a gentleman; as Elizabeth explains to Lady Catherine, in marrying Mr Darcy she would not be changing her station. Mr Darcy's father had married up: his wife, Lady Anne had been the daughter of an earl - Lady Catherine had nominally married better, catching a baronet, but even so both sisters had sunk from the aristocracy. Col. Fitzwilliam is the younger son of their brother, the current earl - he does not have the luxury of marrying out of the aristocracy. I thnk that's about as close as one gets to the aristocracy in Jane Austen, unless one counts the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple in Persuasion - but she's only the widow of an earl; who knows what her background is? (I think she's supposed to be a relative of Sir Walter Elliot, suggesting she's of the upper gentry.)

 

Mr Darcy is not so very great a snob; he hangs out with Mr Bingley whose fortune was made by his father's business; indeed one gets the impression that, ultimately, he is more comfortable in the company of businessmen such as Mr Gardiner than of his semi-aristocratic maternal relations. Indeed, I believe he (or maybe his son) was the "& Co." in the firm of Bingley, Gardiner & Co. of Kympton, Derbyshire, manufacturers of the renowned "Lambourne Tea Buscuit" marketed throughout the Empire.

[robmcg]

Interesting posts, far beyond my own knowledge, but my maternal great-grandfather was a baronet, having married someone of 'name', he being a wealthy businessman from the North Midlands  thus as I understand it his Watson name became 'Watson-Munro', but it's complex, my grandfather's birth  in 1878 resulted in the death of his mother, and his father re-married, having two subsequent daughters neither of whom married, WW1 era    ...plenty of material for a novel eh wot   ..and they lived with their father in some luxury near Guildford, the last of daughters d1970  and the settlement of the various matter of money had made lawyers some money, my mother's father having argued with his father c1921 and settled on a lump sum and he came to NZ having met my mother's mother in NZ on return from the Boer War where he was a decorated officer...   he drank rather a lot d1942

All the people in photos in that Watson-Munro family appeared not to work in any conventional sense, but dressed well, played such as tennis,  and I want to know, where is my money?

Jardice vs Jardice comes to mind. 

 

edit; p.s. my great aunts were considered quite 'fast', they drove cars, and never lacked style, but they had to reduce their staff a little during the early 1930s.

 

Just so you know.  <g>

Edited March 14, 2020 by robmcg
corrections

[Clearwater]

Isn’t Mr Darcy described as having an income of £10,000 a year?  An incredible sum in Austen’s day which somewhat implies he is slightly new money as he isn’t titled.  I’m assuming that in Austen’s time, as now, those who’ve brought their own furniture (an Alan Clark quote on Heseltine I think) are looked down on by those who’ve inherited? Ah the English class system....

[robmcg]

23 minutes ago, Clearwater said:

Isn’t Mr Darcy described as having an income of £10,000 a year?  An incredible sum in Austen’s day which somewhat implies he is slightly new money as he isn’t titled.  I’m assuming that in Austen’s time, as now, those who’ve brought their own furniture (an Alan Clark quote on Heseltine I think) are looked down on by those who’ve inherited? Ah the English class system....

 

Business marrying 'name' appears to be the way of 'baronetcy' at least?

 

My great grandfather was a big investor and traces his line from the Machells of Westmoreland.

 

I have a feeling that baronets were somewhat tainted by business wealth... but were useful.

 

That feeling is entirely without knowledge of these things, my oldest aunt, elder sister of my mother, did have a plum in her voice, and I think spent some of her childhood in the wealthy surrounds alluded to earlier.

 

I do rather like the spinster great-aunts, my oldest brother a little older than me visited the last remaining one just before she died.

 

Mr Darcy probably didn't have to worry too much,  but the I've read much more Dickens Hardy and Somerset Maugam than these Austen things..  

Edited March 14, 2020 by robmcg

[Compound2632]

17 minutes ago, Clearwater said:

Isn’t Mr Darcy described as having an income of £10,000 a year?  An incredible sum in Austen’s day which somewhat implies he is slightly new money as he isn’t titled.  

 

Around £800,000 according to the Bank of England inflation calculator. Mr Darcy's wealth, and his father's, is in land.

 

The principal routes to new money if one was a rising gentleman in the 18th century were war (especially the Navy), India, or the West Indies - with all that the latter implies. If one was not a gentleman, and especially if one was a nonconformist in religion, there was industry...

Edited March 14, 2020 by Compound2632

[Clearwater]

10 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Around £800,000 according to the Bank of England inflation calculator. Mr Darcy's wealth, and his father's, is in land.

 

The principal routes to new money if one was a rising gentleman in the 18th century were war (especially the Navy), India, or the West Indies - with all that the latter implies. If one was not a gentleman, and especially if one was a nonconformist in religion, there was industry...

Yes,  I was thinking that and also coal based on Gentleman Jack which is same sort of time period. 
 

Reckon I could rub by on £800k a year.  

[Compound2632]

3 minutes ago, Clearwater said:

Yes,  I was thinking that and also coal based on Gentleman Jack which is same sort of time period. 
 

 

The landed classes did well out of coal, seeing as how it was their land it was under - vide the Duke of Bridgewater and the Marquess of Londonderry.

[Regularity]

9 hours ago, Donw said:

The fooundation of our Aristocracy was the Norman Invasion after winning the spoils were handed out among the the normans and there was a period of ruthless supression of any opposistion ( e.g. Harrying of the North). 

Not really.

The English had already established a class system, from King down to slaves.

What the Normans did was to exploit it with ruthless efficiency - William was exceptionally good at that.

[Nearholmer]

Surely both contentions are correct, in that the Saxons already had a system in place, but what we see vestiges of now was founded by the Normans, unless the key Norman 'handouts' were direct, or near direct, transfers/usurpations of earlier holdings. Were they?

 

 

[Compound2632]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Surely both contentions are correct, in that the Saxons already had a system in place, but what we see vestiges of now was founded by the Normans, unless the key Norman 'handouts' were direct, or near direct, transfers/usurpations of earlier holdings. Were they?

 

 

 

A typical Doomsday Book entry says something along the lines of "Rudolf holds Hampton; Edwin held it in King Edward's time."

Edited March 14, 2020 by Compound2632

[webbcompound]

i have always been intrigued by the idea of lines "dying out" (as was referred to earlier in regard to the Percy family. this usually means no male heir. The idea that descent is through the male line is of course completely risible as the only surefire descent is through the female line. The question of Victoria's paternity is an example of this problem.

Edited March 14, 2020 by webbcompound

[Compound2632]

19 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

The question of Victoria's paternity is an example of this problem.

 

A.N. Wilson discusses this, and also Albert's rumoured illegitimacy. While he appears to accept that Victoria was not the daughter of the Duke of Kent, he is sceptical that Sir John Conroy, her mother's secretary, was her father, just as he doubts that Albert's father was the Jewish Baron von Mayern, since so few of Victoria and Albert's descendants have exhibited the wit, talent, or good looks associated with either the Irish or the Jews [A.N. Wilson, The Victorians (Hutchinson, 2002)].

 

All of which strengthens the Duke of Norfolk's title to the throne of England (but not Scotland).

Edited March 14, 2020 by Compound2632

[brianusa]

1 hour ago, robmcg said:

 

Business marrying 'name' appears to be the way of 'baronetcy' at least?

 

My great grandfather was a big investor and traces his line from the Machells of Westmoreland.

 

I have a feeling that baronets were somewhat tainted by business wealth... but were useful.

 

That feeling is entirely without knowledge of these things, my oldest aunt, elder sister of my mother, did have a plum in her voice, and I think spent some of her childhood in the wealthy surrounds alluded to earlier.

 

I do rather like the spinster great-aunts, my oldest brother a little older than me visited the last remaining one just before she died.

 

Mr Darcy probably didn't have to worry too much,  but the I've read much more Dickens Hardy and Somerset Maugam than these Austen things..  

 

Things? Things??  Jane Austen wrote novels!  Very popular novels too, just check with the BBC and all the movies made over the years!

     Brian.

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, brianusa said:

Very popular novels too, just check with the BBC and all the movies made over the years!

 

They are also, still, quite widely read.