ABSTRACT
For eight hundred years after the Norman Conquest the aristocracy – peers and landed gentlemen – held political, economic and social sway in England. To prepare himself for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Benjamin Disraeli (b.1804) thought it appropriate to acquire a country estate even though he had to borrow a fortune to do so. Landowners exercised extensive patronage in Church and State: the right to appoint the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, was vested in the owner of Audley End in Essex. The catalogues of offices held and ceremonial duties performed by, for example, the current Duke of Westminster in the Grosvenor country in Cheshire or the current Earl of Derby in the Stanley ‘kingdom’ in Lancashire suggest the landowners’ place in local affairs.
