ABSTRACT
By the end of the nineteenth century, the gentry's hegemonic power began to decline but, they started to ground their historical capital in different ways through becoming the intelligentsia, manorial architecture, genealogies and coats of arms, and finally, asserting social distinction with the help of pseudo-scientific intelligence tests and ratings that ensured difference. In its earliest times, a manor was largely an autarchic institution. Although its autonomy became progressively circumscribed and no estate was self-sufficient, the gentry believed in it until the very end of the manor's existence. However, the gentry's isolation from other social groups, combined with their sense of entitlement, fostered prejudice in their worldview which in turn encouraged their isolation. In reality, the noble estate was by and large a semi feudal structure governed as much by mutual dependence as by fear. Between these two extremes were peasants of various degrees of affluence or, considering the small size of their landholdings, of poverty.
