ABSTRACT
Cayley in aeronautics, the Earl of Burlington and Cork in architecture, the third Earl of Shaftesbury in philosophy, Lord Dartmouth and Lady Huntingdon in religious enthusiasm, Robert Boyle, Sir Joseph Banks or Henry Cavendish in science, Edward Gibbon in history, Sir John Hawkins in musicology, Byron, Shelley, and Beckford in literature, and so on. But the one overriding pursuit of landed gentlemen was government. From the squire who was the unofficial arbiter of village affairs through the J.P. at Quarter Sessions and the M.P. in the Commons to the House of Lords and the Cabinet, government was the right, privilege and responsibility of the landed gentlemen who, besides being the only nation-wide class in that otherwise classless society, were in the most literal sense the ruling class.
