ABSTRACT
The superior classes of the countryside – the owners of landed property – enjoyed incomes and lifestyles which were light-years away from those of the cottagers. A male day labourer of the eighteenth century might not receive in cash and kind more than the equivalent of some £10–20 a year; the wealthiest of the landed aristocracy had revenues totalling in some cases £30,000 or £40,000, two thousand times as much. Only a few landowners, it is true, enjoyed incomes of this size. However, the role of great landowner, which involved running a large country mansion and making a prolonged stay in London every winter, could be maintained on some £10,000 a year, and there were some hundreds of families who could claim this status. Below this level, among the poorer aristocracy and the ranks of the gentry, incomes ran down from several thousand to only a few hundred pounds a year, but even modest country gentlemen could keep comfortable homes, ride in their own carriages, and employ several servants on only £300 or £400. In west Wales and other remote parts of the country many managed on less, and certainly there were large numbers of professional men, clergy, lawyers and surgeons, as well as retired merchants, industrialists and financiers and their widows who lived in genteel fashion on incomes of well under £500.
