ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to discuss the most important aspects of wealth-holding and the wealthy in modern Britain under three general headings: sources of information for the historian working in this field, and previous research; main characteristics of the wealthy class since the early nineteenth century, including such dimensions as range of wealth, occupation, social mobility, religious affiliation and landowning among the very wealthy, together with some general observations on the distribution of wealth and income among the entire population and its change over time; and the areas in which research might most usefully be carried on. Unquestionably the most important series of records for the researcher concerned with the wealthy as a social group, or with individual wealth-holders of the past, are the probate records which since 9 January 1858 have covered the estates of every person leaving property in England and Wales in one national repository, since 1874 at the Principal Probate Registry at Somerset House in London.
