The World of the Country House in Seventeenth-Century England [Hardcover]

Dr. J. T. Cliffe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 11, 1999

This engaging and beautifully illustrated book take us back to the domestic world of the landed gentry in seventeenth-century England. Relating countless stories and case histories drawn from a wide range of primary sources, the book describes the physical environment, staffing, and functioning of gentry households, the inhabitants and their activities, and the role of these houses in the social economic life of their localities.

J. T. Cliffe begins exploring the exterior and interior of houses and the outbuildings, parks, and gardens that sorrounded them. He then investigates the people who lived in the country houses and the relationships between them. He provides colorful details about the responsibilities of the squire and his wife; the duties, remuneration, food, clothing, accommodation, and treatment of servants; and the special duties of estate stewards, coachmen, chaplains, and tutors. Cliffe explains various aspects of housekeeping, such as the tradition of hospitality and the factors militating against it. He also discusses other kinds of activity: religious practices; outdoor sports and indoor pastimes, including music and billiards; and such intellectual pursuits as antiquarian research, poetry, and scientific experiments. He concludes with a fascinating survey of scandal in the world of the gentry, telling of domestic strife, financial disaster, lunacy, and other disasters that marred this idyllic existence.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; Text is Free of Markings edition (July 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300076436
• ISBN-13: 978-0300076431
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,973,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A flawed but essential survey, October 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The World of the Country House in Seventeenth-Century England (Hardcover)

Cliffe presents an extensive survey of family and public records from a number of sources. The Public Record office is the source of many of the more interesting tidbits, but no less significant are the private records of descendants of his subjects, for example, the Earl of Verulam, Lord Cobbold, Lord Daventry and a Major J. R. More-Molyneux. He shows very little inclination to editorialise, preferring to let the sources speak for themselves. Where he dare to conject, the impression is that it is on the basis of the wealth of detail that he has not managed to fit in rather than imagination. This is all very well and properly academic, but it does mean that there are many gaps and unanswered, or poorly answered questions that arise.

He deals with the first such in his introduction. Here he explains his aim, "a study of the country houses of the gentry, their inhabitants, including servants and other employees, and the activities which went on around such houses" (vii). This is a laudable endeavour, after all, as he points out, the nobility have had their fair share of historical attention already. The question is, who are the gentry? We all know who and what the nobility are and there is a legal status conferred upon the nobility (such that the duelist Lord Mohan could expect to be judged by his peers rather than a court of law). There is no similar legal definition for the gentry, as one contemporary lawyer, John Seldon once observed, "What a gentleman is, `tis hard with us to define" (vii).

Cliffe's definition is "families owning landed property which were headed by baronets or knights or men described as `esquire' or `gentleman' in such official documents as heraldic visitation records, subsidy rolls and hearth tax returns." (vii) This is a workable, if broad definition but it is a conclusion that Cliffe reaches after only one paragraph. In later chapters he hints at arguments and court cases concerning the definition of gentlemen and it seems to me there might have been material enough for a whole chapter on the subject.

This task is not made any easier by Cliffe's decision to "limit" his study to the seventeenth century. Historians always wrestle with ways of defining period of time and this book highlights the problems that often lead them to focus on the reign of one monarch. Even if a King or Queen rules over a period of incredible social change (like good king Harry) one can rest assured that life at the end of their reign is going to bare a least some resemblances to life when they came to the throne. Perhaps some centuries are similarly blessed with social stability, but surely the least stable must have been the seventeenth? In my uneducated (but intuitive) opinion I'm willing to bet that there was less social change between William III's reign and George IV's than the huge upheaval between James I's and William's. A book that makes a narrative of the upheaval, telling the story of how the world of the country house changed over this period would be an interesting read in it's own right, but Cliffe's book is not it. In fact I'm surprised that Cliffe has not dedicated a chapter to it at least. What we have instead is a book that does not even drawn from its sources in chronological order. The scholar must work through every chapter sifting out the items relevant to their period and being careful not to to use sources from twenty or eighty years before their period to make inaccurate generalisations. That said there are plenty of nuggets of considerable interest.