English Landed Society in the Great War: Defending the Realm 9781472592163, 9781474204224, 9781472592187

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Landownership and the Territorials
2. Mobilizing the Estate Worker
3. Mobilizing the Farmworker
4. Landlords and Food Security
5. Game Preservation and the War
6. Fox Hunting and the War
7. Landowners and the War
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

English Landed Society in the Great War

Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Series Editor: Jeremy Black Bloomsbury Studies in Military History offers up-to-date, scholarly accounts of war and military history. Unrestricted by period or geography, the series aims to provide free-standing works that are attuned to conceptual and historiographical developments in the field while being based on original scholarship. Published: The 56th Infantry Brigade and D-Day, Andrew Holborn The RAF’s French Foreign Legion, G.H. Bennett Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe, Brian Davies Reinventing Warfare 1914–1918, Anthony Saunders Fratricide in Battle, Charles Kirke The Army in British India, Kaushik Roy The 1711 Expedition to Quebec, Adam Lyons Britain, Germany and the Battle of the Atlantic, Dennis Haslop Military Transition in Early Modern Asia, 1400–1750, Kaushik Roy The Role of the Royal Navy in South America, Jon Wise Scotland and the British Army 1700–1750, Victoria Henshaw War and State-Building in Modern Afghanistan, edited by Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy Conflict and Soldiers’ Literature in Early Modern Europe, Paul Scannell Youth, Heroism and Naval Propaganda, Douglas Ronald William Howe and the American War of Independence, David Smith Postwar Japan as a Sea Power, Alessio Patalano The D-Day Landing on Gold Beach, Andrew Holborn Australian Soldiers in the Boer and Vietnam Wars, Effie Karageorgos The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919–22, G. H. Bennett General Lord Rawlinson, Rodney Atwood Forthcoming: Australasian Propaganda and the Vietnam War, Caroline Page Reassessing the British Way in Warfare, K. A. J McLay

English Landed Society in the Great War Defending the Realm Edward Bujak

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Paperback edition published 2020 Copyright © Edward Bujak, 2019 Edward Bujak has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image © Country Life Picture Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bujak, Edward, author. Title: English landed society in the Great War: defending the realm / Edward Bujak. Description: London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. | Series: Bloomsbury studies in military history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018014159 (print) | LCCN 2018039661 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472592187 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472592170 (ePUB) | ISBN 9781472592163 (hc) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1914-1918—Great Britain. | Aristocracy (Social class)— Great Britain—History—20th century. | Gentry—Great Britain—History—20th century. Classification: LCC DA577 (ebook) | LCC DA577 .B85 2019 (print) | DDC 940.3/41—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018014159 ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-9216-3 PB: 978-1-3501-7473-3 ePDF: 978-1-4725-9218-7 eBook: 978-1-4725-9217-0 Series: Bloomsbury Studies in Military History Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Dedicated to the Memory of: Philip James Forster, Private (6901) Died of wounds received serving with the 1st Battalion, Norfolk Regiment 24 September 1914 Buried: Brighton City (Bear Road) Cemetery Sidney Percy Forster, Private (40253) Killed in action serving with the 8th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment 20 November 1917 Buried: Ribecourt British Cemetery, France Charles Robert Moy, Private (23185) Killed in action serving with the 6th Battalion, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry 7 September 1915 Buried: Ypres Reservoir Cemetery, Belgium ‘Peace After Strife’

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Landownership and the Territorials 2 Mobilizing the Estate Worker 3 Mobilizing the Farmworker 4 Landlords and Food Security 5 Game Preservation and the War 6 Fox Hunting and the War 7 Landowners and the War Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

viii ix 1 13 27 41 55 67 81 95 111 123 165 183

Figures 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

J. H. V., ‘For England, Home and Beauty’ © Private Collection Denton Manor, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum Belvoir Hunt, hounds © RAF Museum Belton Park camp, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum Harlaxton Park, trench school, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum Harlaxton Manor and aerodrome, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum Hangers, Harlaxton aerodrome, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum

7 21 92 105 107 107 108

Acknowledgements With grateful thanks to Dr.  Nicola Boyle, Joanne Bujak, Phyllis E.  Bujak, Professor Jeremy Black, Justin Hobson, Dr. Caroline Magennis, Professor John Martin, and Dr. Helen Snow for all their help and support in getting the job done.

Introduction

The landed aristocracy and gentry sold land in unprecedented quantities both before and after the Great War. This book explores the period in-between, and the tragic irony of landowners committing themselves to a war that consumed the very thing they were fighting to defend. In 1914, the aristocracy went to war as a landowning aristocracy. Young aristocrats were now to become the ultimate embodiment of an aristocratic tradition of martial masculinity, honed by chasing foxes over their ancestral acres. If the war ended quickly, their heroism, patriotism and self-sacrifi ce (discussed in Chapter 2) could have blunted any renewal, post-war, of the Liberal Party’s pre-war attack on hereditary landownership. In a long war, would their sacrifice preclude the state from intruding upon the countryside? Would landowners have to cede their local authority over the recruitment of their estate and farmworkers (discussed in Chapters 1, 2 and 3) into the Territorials and the New Armies? If so, discussions regarding the appropriate level of recruitment would be held in London (see Chapter 4), between a War Office desperate for more men and a Board of Agriculture desperate to increase the harvest. Were landlords effectively sidelined from decisions affecting their villages and the management of their own farms and fields? Moreover, would the aristocracy want to, or would they even be allowed to, continue to enjoy the lifestyle associated with being a landowner? Was going shooting (see Chapter 5) or hunting (see Chapter 6) considered appropriate behaviour when country houses were becoming hospitals for wounded soldiers (see Chapter 7)? In these circumstances, did the actions of young aristocrats at the Front, fighting for England and the autonomy of the landowner, become subordinated, at home, to the needs of a state confronted by the German U-Boat? Th is shift in emphasis, in what was expected of English landed society during the Great War, is visible in Country Life , as the magazine moved away from being a journal of country gentlemen at war to a countryside at war. Th is earlier emphasis on the

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aristocracy at war was captured in a series of articles on each county, in which, as M. J. explained: It has been our object to describe as far as may be the loyal services rendered by the English gentleman, county by county, gifts that are but momentarily realised. They are diverse in character, and till the war is over it will not be possible to make any complete enumeration. The imagination of the public is stirred by the picture of great houses converted into hospitals and convalescent homes. But the sum and volume of the services of the country gentleman is unrecorded, or tucked away among the very miscellaneous faits divers of provincial newspapers . . . Those who had the most to lose have been most ready and willing to go and take their lives in their hands. It has not been claimed in these articles that this class is the sole repository and reservoir of the military virtues, but if a distinction may be made between it and other classes, it showed fuller knowledge, even in the first weeks of the war, of the future scale of this unprecedented conflict, and a corresponding spirit of self-sacrificing duty.1

Through these articles Country Life amplified the sacrifice of families such as the Grenfell’s that might otherwise have remained tucked away in the Bucks Herald: Some of the leading families in South Bucks, the Grenfell’s especially, have suffered very severe losses during the war. [In 1915] . . . Captain Riversdale Grenfell was killed in action, and . . . his twin brother, Captain Francis Grenfell, V.C., fell in battle after having been twice invalided home to England wounded . . . On May 28 was announced the death from wounds received in battle of Captain Julian Grenfell, D. S. O., the elder son of Lord and Lady Desborough, of Taplow Court, and cousin of the twin brothers. Lord Desborough’s younger son is also at the front, serving in the Rifle Brigade, and his daughter, the Hon. Monica Grenfell is acting as a Red Cross nurse.2

The Edwardian officer corps was ‘drawn largely from traditional elites, and rank reflected a close correlation with the land’3 and a ‘commitment to country pursuits’4 that honed the self-confidence and physical courage expected of the Edwardian officer and gentleman. Thereafter, according to Christine Berberich: ‘History holds that the trenches saw, quite literally, the death of the English gentlemen and the end of an era . . . [but] it can be argued that gentlemanly values were . . . vital for survival in the trenches.’5 As C.F.G. Masterman wrote, in 1922, of the young aristocratic officers who had ‘led their followers gallantly to certain death in deeds, all of which would have deserved the Victoria Cross, if only the doers had survived . . . [the] survivors of the aristocratic tradition could [expect to] receive a just acclaim’6 on returning home, but had their home

Introduction

3

been changed irrevocably by the war? The Great War was, as John Keegan has indicated, a rural conflict,7 yet it was at once a war fought in England as well as the fields of Flanders and Picardy. England’s reliance on imported wheat was its Achilles heel in wartime. In 1917, H.  Rider Haggard reiterated his comments made in 1901:  ‘to me the continued decrease in our agricultural output was “simply terrifying, since . . . I am convinced that the risk of the starvation which might strike our country in the event of a European war is no mere spectre of the alarmist” ’.8 He doubted ‘whether our battleships “could keep the great seas open as is cheerfully supposed” ’ which would only serve to accentuate the ‘evils of the “lessening of a home-grown food supply which might be vital in the case of a European struggle” ’.9 The centrality of agriculture to Britain’s victory (see Chapter  4) was highlighted by David Lloyd George in 1918: ‘Take food . . . [in] the last two years . . . [we] made up our minds . . . the submarines were not going to starve us. So, we undertook a great agricultural policy . . . Scores of thousands of our best agricultural labourers had gone to the front. Many of the farmers’ sons, and the farmers themselves, had gone . . . [still] we increased the area of cultivation in Great Britain and Ireland.’10 Having revived agriculture, why not a countryside that had appeared to be in irrevocable decline before the war?11 In 1918, Lloyd George proposed bringing: people back to the land . . . [if you bring] as many as you can, to the cultivation of the soil . . . you will have a fine, healthy, happy population living on the land . . . There must be a scheme for settling our gallant soldiers and sailors on the land . . . I am told that a good many of them who have been living an openair life do not want to return to the close atmosphere of the workshop and the factory . . . There are those who prefer little allotments, and others who prefer a house and garden . . . [They] must have a grant for the purchase of the necessary land and . . . equipment . . . whatever the grant, it will be small compared with the cost of the war. Two days of that war . . . will provide you with a vast number of allotments and small holdings and equip them . . . for these heroic men . . . That is the least we can do.12

By giving former ‘fighting men’ a home on the land, England would become ‘a fit country for heroes to live in’ or as the popular slogan had it, ‘a land fit for heroes’.13 In 1902, Rider Haggard had called for an end to ‘our national neglect to maintain the population on the land . . . [England’s] greatest safeguard lies in [a population] . . . rooted in the soil and supported by the soil’.14 To the Edwardians,

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rural England was the repository of the nation’s strength and ‘spoke to patriotic issues and visions closely connected to English national identity’.15 The 1907 and 1908 Smallholdings and Allotments Acts, for example, were designed to help keep people on the land by giving labourers the opportunity to hire a smallholding or an allotment from the state, rather than a local landowner. The compulsory aspects of these Acts, which ‘appeared to presage land nationalisation’,16 did not, however, bring about the Liberal Lord Carrington’s hoped for peaceful rural revolution;17 despite the apparent break-up of the great estates prompted, in part, by the actions of David Lloyd George. In 1909, Lloyd George in his ‘People’s Budget’, proposed a series of new taxes on land values and the valuation of all land by the state. Under the subsequent Finance Act of 1910, the Commissioners of the Inland Revenue were empowered to undertake the valuation of all the land in the United Kingdom. The valuation was due to be completed in 1915. In 1911, the Parliament Act symbolized the constitutional redundancy of a hereditary peerage owning ancestral acreages. In 1912, Lloyd George set up the Land Enquiry Committee to investigate the state of the countryside under the tutelage of these hereditary landowners. Unsurprisingly, the Committee’s findings, published in 1913, confirmed their deleterious stewardship and justified Lloyd George’s new Land Campaign which proposed to displace the landlord with a new Ministry of Land. Through this Ministry the state would introduce a new minimum wage for farmworkers, with the cost to the farmer being offset by pro rata rent remissions imposed on landlords who would pick up the bill,18 as Lloyd George had made clear, speaking in Limehouse, in 1909: The ownership of land is not merely an enjoyment, it is a stewardship . . . and if the owners cease to discharge their functions in seeing to the security and defence of the country, in looking after the broken in their villages and their neighbourhoods, the time will come to reconsider the conditions under which land is held in this country. No country . . . can permanently afford to have quartered upon its revenue a class which declines to do the duty which it was called upon to perform.19

A landowning aristocracy, confronted by new taxes on land values, higher death duties and the possibility of land nationalization, took advantage of the recovery in Edwardian agriculture to reduce their holdings. So much so that, in 1910, the Estates Gazette predicted ‘we shall [soon] find ourselves with a comparatively landless aristocracy’.20 Ultimately, as J.V. Beckett states, ‘the estate system as it existed prior to 1914 did not survive the First World War’ indeed: ‘If

Introduction

5

what was already a fast-flowing river by the time war broke out slowed to a trickle during the course of the conflict, it became a raging torrent for a few years after the conclusion of the peace.’21 Any contiguity between the disposal of hereditary acres immediately before and after the war, however, rests on an irreversible loss of confidence among landowners before the war, but was this necessarily the case? Whether or not, as Peter Mandler suggests, ‘the flood of land sales immediately before the war can be taken as evidence of an irreversible loss of confidence, the effect of war and its aftermath was to set the current flowing firmly in that direction’.22 The war was the tipping point because, the Edwardian aristocracy remained ‘fundamentally landed in ethos and mentality’23 and, more importantly, sufficiently landed to justify Lloyd George’s Land Campaign of 1912–1914. Moreover, it can be postulated that the war offered landowners an opportunity to justify their continued ownership of the core of their hereditary acres, picking up the gauntlet thrown down by Lloyd George in Limehouse, by fulfilling the functions of a landowning aristocracy in seeing to the security and defence of the country. In the opinion of Hugh Cecil: ‘When Armageddon came in 1914 . . . the gentry and aristocracy took a lead in joining up to serve their country. Challenged already by the emerging democracy, they felt the obligation to prove themselves in their historic role as warriors.’24 They were attempting to prove they were not ‘the redundant reactionaries of radical propaganda but a patriotic class of knightly crusaders and chivalric heroes’.25 These ‘golden lads’, to Reginald Pound, represented the old chivalry of England in more than the heraldic sense. Moulded in the gentleman image . . . subservient to . . . good form . . . they were confident in their role of standard-bearers of a code entitling them to be called, in Mark Antony’s words, ‘all honourable men’. Proud lipped, elegantly mannered, incomparably brave, they provided leadership of the tenaciously self-sacrificing kind that was the highest virtue in war. It succeeded on the foundations of a close and considerate relationship with those whom they led; and never was it more valiantly displayed than in the fateful last four months of 1914.26

These were young officers who, according to Jeanne Mackenzie, were motivated by honour, duty, loyalty and an altruistic patriotism. For young men inspired by Medieval chivalry, ‘reinforced by the heroics of Greek mythology there could be no holding back . . . They had grown up in a society which was half in love with death and for all their promise they were afflicted with the Romantic fatalism that characterised their apocalyptic age’.27 It is this apparent fatalism

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that, in David Edgerton’s opinion, invites us ‘to dwell on country houses . . . and the countryside. This Edwardian England is pleasurable, effete and declining . . . the subject of nostalgic reflections [regarding] . . . the young English aesthete [who] would end up dismembered on the barbed wire of Flanders . . . doomed by modernity’.28 Ironically, this was the same modernity which had seen stately homes deliberately repositioned as the centre of modern country life . . . [where] country sports . . . proved an enjoyable alternative to hard work . . . in tune rather than in conflict with modernity . . . the motor car, made it possible to . . . enjoy a ‘traditional’ country life without its responsibilities [for which they were attacked by Lloyd George]. A frivolous but also glamourous . . . image was being cultivated for the aristocracy. Young Lord Rocksavage, one of the wealthiest and also ‘the most beautiful of all the young men of his day’, set the tone by ‘driving a red Mercedes around the country houses of England’ . . . country houses were prized not for their . . . aesthetic or historic value, but for their luxuriousness as homes, their convenience for hospitality, their usefulness for country sports29

‘Never before’, wrote Caroline Playne, in 1928 ‘had the privileged been able to [live] . . . in quite so exquisite a way, as the people who . . . stayed at one another’s enchanting country houses . . . a symposium of delight . . . was provided at the great country houses for the selected guests who came on short visits . . . before the war’.30 Had this exquisite lifestyle encouraged ‘a brooding sense of insufficiency in lives that outwardly appear to be adorned in purple . . . and laden – indeed overladen – with pleasurable events’?31 Did this encourage a need for ever more violent stimuli or an overwhelming sense of fatalism or ennui while watching ‘a thunderstorm approach . . . in the hot dog-days of 1914’?32 Did this allow the ‘British Junkers longing for war’ to establish ‘a kind of ascendency at decisive moments because they, and they alone, were perfectly clear as to what they wanted’?33 In Mary Hamilton’s 1916 novel, Dead Yesterday, a ‘young man who represents the British Junker type calls out to his father: “I hope we’ll do go in. It’ll be jolly unsporting if we don’t.” ’34 Did the ‘British Junker type’ establish an ascendency over the ‘English aesthete’? Or, is the reality somewhere between these two extremes? In common with writers like G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, H. W. Nevinson and William Watson, the patriotism of the young aristocratic warrior-aesthete was infused by a love for the ‘fields and flowers, and the breath of the particular soil’35 of England. This was the patriotism espoused by Julian Grenfell and the soldier poets Siegfried Sassoon, Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke, who wrote

Introduction

7

of a soldier’s love of England’s flowers and her ways to roam.36 Together, they ‘exemplify the patriotic feelings about the English countryside which surfaced with the declaration of war’.37 Their ‘sense impressions of home’ aligned with those for whom ‘a country worth fighting for’ was one in which ‘landscapes in their local setting . . . provided antidotes to scarred landscapes . . . [of] shattered trees, trenches and barbed-wire entanglements’.38 As Alun Howkins argues, ‘the horror and waste of the Flanders landscape’ could be ‘set against a soothing restoring land of England’.39 Similarly, Lord Farrer’s constancy in trying to protect ‘beauty spots’ reflected ‘an abiding sense that the Defence of the Realm should be responsive to local opinion within the aesthetic frame of a “country worth fighting for” ’.40 This aesthetic frame included the stately home, as illustrated by the artist J. H. V. (see Figure 1), as a heightened sense of place tilted the cultural balance away from valuing houses for their luxury towards that of ‘The Souls’, who had loved their homes for their historic and aesthetic value: Tragically, the death of so many of their children makes all the connections drawn by Edgerton. Julian Grenfell, for example, was the son of Lord and Lady Desborough of Taplow Court in Buckinghamshire. He belonged to a group of aristocratic soldier poets that included the Hon. Colwyn Philipps, the Hon. Robert Palmer, the Hon. Edward Wyndham Tennant and the Hon. Gerald (‘Billy’) Grenfell.

Figure 1 J. H. V., ‘For England, Home and Beauty’ © Private Collection.

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They were, to quote A  St. J.  Adcock, ‘fearless and perfect gentle knights’.41 Julian Grenfell was the epitome of the aristocratic warrior-aesthete who loved fighting:  ‘I adore war . . . I’ve never been so well or so happy . . . the fighting excitement revitalizes everything  – every sight, and word and action’.42 His poem Into Battle published posthumously in The Times in May 1915 combines his ‘love of nature and his soldierly impulses’.43 The poem describes the natural milieu of the fighting man who, if he dies fighting, finds ‘increase’. In analysing the poem, John Stallworthy considered the nature of the increase referred to by Grenfell. The stars that guides the fighting man on patrol ‘share his predatory inclinations . . . Orion, the huntsman. His friends are other predators, Kestral and Owl’ and the nature of the increase he gains if he dies fighting ‘is surely glory; Grenfell’s ambition being essentially the same as the ambitions of Hector or Beowulf ’.44 Both Julian and Billy Grenfell, in addition to being as ‘handsome as Greek gods and blessed with splendid physiques’ both ‘rode to hounds and were crack shots’.45 Young aristocratic officers in general would have grown up around blood sports, specifically shooting (see Chapter 5) and particularly hunting (see Chapter 6). The latter, even more than the former, was the sport that encouraged the ‘outdoor sporting courage’46 that was the basis of the Edwardian ‘aristocratic, martial spirit’.47 English landed society considered the countryside to be an ideal training ground that had prepared the younger members of the landed aristocracy and gentry to embrace ‘the supreme opportunity to prove themselves and to justify their existence. By tradition, by training, and by temperament, the aristocracy was the warrior class. They rode horses, hunted foxes, fired shot-guns’.48 Contrary to young aristocrats consumed by ennui or fatalism, the merging of the warrior and the aesthete produces an individual who was clear about what he was fighting for and to die for. By defending England, home and beauty from the intrusion of an interventionist state, these were young aristocratic officers who, as A. J. Mayer states, embodied ‘the decline and fall of the old order fighting to prolong its life’.49 In the event, English landed society was woefully unprepared for the scale of the war. In 1916, Frederick Gregg writing in Vanity Fair observed:  ‘It was natural that the first brunt of the fighting should fall on the aristocracy. It and its sons and heirs held commissions in the crack regiments, which were the first to be sent to the Continent as part of the Expeditionary Force. In its original shape this soon entirely disappeared.’50 Masterman, who before the war had been a supporter of Lloyd George, Land Reform and the Parliament Act, was ‘so impressed, so saddened, by the supreme sacrifices made by the titled and

Introduction

9

territorial classes’51 that in England After the War, published in 1922, he penned their elegy. The purpose of ‘our’ aristocracy was to fight wars, and by their actions in the Great War they had ‘justified’ their existence. In 1914, in the retreat from Mons and in the first battle of Ypres, the ‘flower’ of the British aristocracy had ‘perished without a cry’; and in the ‘useless slaughter’ of the Guards on the Somme in 1916 or the Rifle Brigade in Hooge Wood. Heirs to half the great families of England had ‘died without complaint’ as junior infantry officers through the ‘bungling’ of the Generals; a depiction that has become one of the most affecting tropes of the Great War. The caveat is in his description of these young aristocratic officers as ‘natural lovers of battle’ with an ‘ardour’ for combat, honed by a country life, who by their conduct during these actions had displayed all the qualities for which [the aristocracy] … had been maintained, and showed them in shining splendour – courage, devotion, care for the men under its charge … [and had thereby] justified its existence in the ultimate hour … in times of peace … it had to ‘keep fit’. It had to find occupation for its idleness … [to] justify a life in a time of tranquility, which could only be justified as a waiting for a time of upheaval. Thus, it was entrusted with the overlordship of most of the land of England … on condition that it would protect that nation and lead its levies when war came. Its youth … passed through … the more celebrated regiments of the British Army … occupying itself [in] … fox-hunting, [and] shooting … [while their seniors] kept alive the Territorial Army … [but] the art of war had passed beyond them, and the practice, without the art, meant inevitable destruction … they at least realised that all their life had been moulded for this hour … They fought; if they were wounded, they returned as speedily as possible to the front … Some knew with certainty that they would be killed, but cared nothing so long as they were facing the enemy … ‘playing the game’ to the last … [and] in a foreign land … perished, as they perished in the Wars of the Roses, or …[the] Civil War … in courage, and high effort, and an epic of heroic sacrifice, which will be remembered as long as England endures.52

In 1916, Lord Murray of Elibank predicted by their actions ‘the position of the Lords … will be much stronger … on account of the gallantry and losses on the battlefield of the peerage families’. 53 Greg, by contrast, remained pessimistic about the future, fearful that that the ‘good conduct’ of the aristocracy would be insufficient to save an institution like the House of Lords which had ‘outlasted its usefulness’. The ‘democratizing’ of the army, he argued, meant an ‘heir to a dukedom’ doing his duty ‘to the best of ability’ in the Guards in France ‘cuts a very small figure’ when compared to the heroism of a private soldier ‘wearing a Victoria Cross’. Or, compared to the courage of soldiers from the Empire who were ‘not aristocrats’. The young aristocratic officers upholding the aristocracy’s martial traditions, after 1916,

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English Landed Society in the Great War

did not lead the nations’ mass levies to victory, being outnumbered by the temporary officers and gentlemen of the Territorial and Service Battalions. The former were becoming anonymous, and if they were remembered, their memory was overshadowed by the actions of the original Edwardian officer corps who exchanged the beauty of their country homes and estates to fight and die on the battlefields of France and Flanders up to 1916. Theirs was the sacrifice that sought to justify the aristocracy’s existence to the nation, but how many aristocratic officers would eventually come home and who would be left at home if they did not? In the first sixteen months of the war, losses among the nobility had, in Gregg’s opinion, exceeded those experienced in the Civil War, with around eight hundred ‘men of title’ killed in action, or dying of their wounds, and if the ‘proportionate losses’ continued, he concluded a whole generation of the nobility will have been wiped out by the time peace is declared. The Upper House of the Parliament will consist of men who were too old to go to the front … and boys too young to take their seats. So, the defence of hereditary privilege will fall into weak hands, and it should be easy enough for those who are determined to mend – or end – the Lords to bring about the changes which had to be postponed on account of the struggle with Germany … With the House of Lords reformed into a representative Senate … when the boy dukes and earls grow up they will find that their formerly important rank will be generally regarded as a quaint and curious survival of an ancient but outworn custom. 54

Defending the House of Lords may have been a hereditary privilege worth fighting for politically, to the last ditch, in 1912, it was not something to fight and die for in a trench in 1914. The privilege that was worth defending was the ownership of hereditary acreages against any renewal of a land campaign temporarily postponed by the war. There can be no question that the losses experienced by the territorial and titled classes ‘irrevocably weakened’55 English landed society. In proportional terms, as F.  M. L.  Thompson states, landed families ‘with their long military traditions’56 suffered a greater loss than any other class. One out of every five British and Irish peers and their sons who went to war was killed, a loss vividly reflected in post-war literature.57 Conversely, four out of every five returned,58 but what had become of the land they came home to? A  victory achieved through the sacrifices made by English landed society on the battlefield would have to come quickly; if not, it would be won by the state mobilizing the nation. Victory would then become truly pyrrhic because, if the opening phases of the

Introduction

11

war were an opportunity for the aristocracy to demonstrate their patriotism and place in modern Britain, in a long war the state would demand far more of their patriotism. In a lengthening war the state would require landowners to accept the very revolution they had feared and had hoped to defer or avert, namely the de facto nationalization of land. In 1909, Lloyd George had attacked English landed society for indulging in the perquisites of landownership with little or no regard to the communities neighbouring their stately homes. This was an exaggeration. Agricultural landlords, in particular, recognized the need to reposition themselves and their houses ‘as the focus of a serious agricultural community’.59 Between 1914 and 1918, landowners provided for the labourers’ wives, widows, and children living in these communities, while fulfilling their military functions in Picardy and Flanders. Having retreated into their rural heartlands before the war, the patriotism and sacrifice of English landed society would, it was hoped, blunt the further dismantling of the ‘aristocratic state’.60 In 1918, Lloyd George, like Masterman, recognized their sacrifice by praising the ‘readiness with which thousands of young men, tens of thousands of young men, left comfortable and luxurious homes to face privation, torture, and death, and the stateliest houses of England to-day are often the most desolate at this hour’.61 Yet, on becoming prime minister, in 1916, Lloyd George determined that the British government would mobilize agriculture. In 1915, the Board of Agriculture had asked rural County Councils to set up County Agricultural Committees. In 1917, the Board set up smaller County Agricultural Executive Committees (see Chapter  4). These Executive Committees became the agents of a new executive body within the Board of Agriculture called the Food Production Department,62 thereby circumventing any residual influence that the aristocracy may have been able to exercise over the larger committees via the County Council. The Executive Committees could invoke the powers taken by the Board under Regulation 2M of the Defence of the Realm Act and could issue a Notice ‘that should you negligently or willfully fail to cultivate, manure, and manage the lands herein referred to in accordance with the requirements of this Notice . . . you become guilty of a summary offence under the Defence of the Realm Act’.63 In this new era of governmental control Country Life observed, wryly, that ‘at last some use was found . . . for the land valuation started by Mr. Lloyd George when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer . . . These proved very valuable to men not altogether familiar with the fields they had to appraise’.64 In parallel with this legislation, the 1916 Defence of the Realm (Acquisition of Land) Act made the compulsory transfer of land from the landowner to the state a practical

12

English Landed Society in the Great War

reality as land could be requisitioned by the War Office for military purposes,65 most visibly, for new Royal Flying Corps training aerodromes. The loss of an heir was thus compounded by the ‘far crueller irony’ that ‘these supreme sacrifices [made] selflessly, stoically, and uncompromisingly . . . had been made in the defence of a country that was . . . irrevocably ceasing to be theirs’.66 In a long, attritional, war that ‘mobilised the resources in the countryside and damaged sylvan sanctuaries’67 the landed aristocracy’s commitment to victory required them to entail away more and more of their England, of home and beauty, to the defence of the realm. This irretrievably damaged the aristocracy’s faith in the ‘invulnerability’ of their estates, which could no longer be considered ‘a little self-contained kingdom, . . . immune from unheralded invasion from outside’.68 As the war lengthened, landownership, agriculture, shooting and hunting all became subject to the state, with the countryside becoming the domain of the War Office, the Air Ministry, the Board of Agriculture, the Food Production Department and the Ministry of Food Control. In 1917, the question was asked in the House of Commons: ‘Who is to decide what are the interests of food production  – the War Office, the Board of Agriculture, or the Food Controller?’69 The views of the owner of the ancestral acres on which this food was to be grown were now largely irrelevant because there had been a revolution in the countryside that made English landed society ‘accountable in its methods of estate management to the government’.70 Lloyd George had, in effect, ‘carried through in wartime much of the radical land campaign he had been developing in the years immediately before: the landowners were marginalised as the leaders of the agricultural interest . . . and state control had been much increased’.71 In 1917, the Country Gentleman’s Association concurred, but even if it was ‘impossible that we can ever get back to the exact state in which we were before the war’72 had the landed aristocracy performed its duty and fulfilled its function and purpose?

1

Landownership and the Territorials

In 1909, in his ‘People’s Budget’, the Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George targeted what contemporaries labelled the land ‘monopoly’ of an ‘idle’ aristocracy by proposing to assess and tax a series of new land values. In the view of John Beckett and Michael Turner, these new taxes ‘coming as they did on top of the years of agricultural difficulty and the growing impact of death duties . . . helped to provoke the constitutional crisis of 1909–1911’.1 In 1909, a Tory majority House of Lords rejected the Budget worried that the state valuation of land required to assess the tax payable under the new land values was a precursor to nationalization; based on a detailed survey of every acre they owned. Their worries had not been allayed by Lloyd George asking why should ‘500 ordinary men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed . . . have the land of Britain as a perquisite? Who made ten thousand people owners of the soil, and the rest of us trespassers in the land of our birth?’2 The peer’s decision to reject the ‘People’s Budget’ was labelled as the ‘peers versus the people’ when put to the country in 1910, and resulted in the peers reluctantly accepting the new taxes on land values, although more militant landowners remained in ‘combative mood’3 over the question of land valuation. As one Conservative peer commented, ‘it is not the [new] Licence Duties, or the Super Tax, or the death duties that we mind so much, though they are bad enough, what we can’t and won’t stand for is the general valuation of land’.4 Reviewing Lloyd George’s proposal to assess the taxable value of between nine-and-a-half and ten-and-a-half million hereditaments, Avner Offer concluded that the valuation of land ‘must be judged an abortive and expensive raid on the landed interest’s pocket’ but it was only ‘one prong of a concerted attack’.5 Another prong of the attack was the Liberal land campaign of 1912– 1914 that was still ongoing at the outbreak of the Great War. The centrepiece of the campaign was a living wage for agricultural labourers (see Chapter  3), ending their dependency on the farmer for a cottage tied to the farm on which

14

English Landed Society in the Great War

they worked. Farmers would get pro rata remissions of rent from the landowner to cover a higher wage bill. These proposals were to be implemented by a new Ministry of Land. In conception, the plan ‘bore the marks of Liberal animus to landowners: improved wages were to come out of rent, not farmers’ profit’.6 In the opinion of Lord Malmesbury, ‘there is not the slightest doubt that Mr Lloyd George intends making another violent, uncalled-for and unjust attack upon Land’.7 Malmesbury’s alarm is indicative of the campaign’s potential to ‘Limehouse’ landlords and the Tory Party in rural constituencies in what would have been the General Election of 1915.8 The Liberal land campaign was particularly worrisome from the standpoint of a landowning aristocracy who already considered themselves to be besieged. In 1910, they began receiving the notorious Form 4 asking them for details of the extent, income, use and tenure of their family estates.9 In 1911, the Liberal Party ended the constitutional crisis provoked by the House of Lords in 1909. Under the Parliament Act the Upper House lost its authority to reject money Bills  – irrevocably weakening the constitutional position of the aristocracy. Opposition to the Bill was overwhelmed by self-interest. The Liberal Party proposed to swamp the Tory majority in the House of Lords with hundreds of new Liberal peers. This prompted the rural Tory Party to split into two: ‘One half was the Ditchers, who . . . believe[d] that Asquith was bluffing and would never dare to advise the King to make a mass-manufacture of Peers. The other half was the Hedgers, who suspected that it might be true, after all, and counselled strategic retreat.’10 The hopes of the ‘Ditchers’ (or ‘Diehards’) rested on the sudden appearance of peers whom Lloyd George referred to as the ‘backwoodsmen’ or peers from the Shires who rarely, if ever, attended the House of Lords. In the end, a determination to avert the dilution of the nobility prevailed, ensuring a comfortable majority for the ‘Hedgers’ who feared ‘a flood of new peers more than the immediate end to the prerogatives of their House’.11 Lord Selborne saw the Parliament Act as a watershed moment where the peers ‘lost all faith in themselves as a power of useful service to the nation’.12 The ‘will to power’, Andrew Adonis suggests, ‘was evaporating as disintegration advanced’.13 But with Lloyd George now shifting his focus onto the land owned by the Lords, did they intend to remain a landed aristocracy? Clive Aslet argues that the constitutional crisis of 1909–1911, ‘as it affected the country house was a loss of confidence in land’.14 According to Offer, ‘for two or three years’ landowners reacted ‘to an atmosphere of apprehension and insecurity at home [and to increased investment opportunities abroad] by selling off estates in whole or part at an increasing pace’.15 The Duke of Bedford regarded

Landownership and the Territorials

15

it ‘as modern and up-to-date to sell off landed property and buy stocks and shares because the return was greater’ and justified the sensational sale of the Thorney estate in 1909 as being ‘in deference to the social and legislative tendencies of the day’.16 The Finance Act of 1910, in effect, ‘reinforced the feelings of the landed interest as a class under threat and gave a great stimulus to the sale of land’.17 In 1911, the Board of Agriculture reported ‘an abnormal number of estates were being broken up and sold’ due to the ‘apprehension among owners as to the probable course of legislation and taxation in regard to land’.18 In 1912–1913, a government committee noted how ‘owners were selling their land without much reference to the wishes of their tenants, simply citing the burdens of ownership and the complications of death duties’.19 In 1912, nineteen peers were believed to have property for sale, and in 1913 members of the nobility selling land were said to be ‘more numerous than ever’.20 Overall, between 1909 and 1914, approximately 800,000 acres had changed hands for ‘about’ £20 million.21 A crisis of confidence, between 1909 and 1914, had prompted a course of action ‘which had long seemed wise’, namely, ‘the realization of some [but not all] of their landed assets so soon as a favourable market should appear’.22 Then came the war. After the war, many families ‘simply picked up in 1918 where they had left off in 1914’23 if one accepts the model put forward by Thompson in 1963. Under this model, ‘Edwardian society had in fact resolved upon a social revolution, the liquidation of the landed interest, whose full accomplishment was but deferred by the First World War.’24 Lord Redesdale’s behaviour was ‘perhaps characteristic of landowners anxious to sell but prudently biding their time’,25 the war serving merely to interrupt, defer or postpone the disposal of ancestral acres, suggesting a contiguity between the sale of hundreds of thousands of acres before 1914 and the sale of millions of acres after 1918. But was such a contiguity universal? Within Edwardian landed society a gulf had developed between those landowners who could divest themselves of unnecessary acres and reinvest the proceeds in stocks and shares, and those who remained tied to their agricultural rents. As Thompson states: It is quite likely that a good number of the ‘backwoods’ peers who came to town in 1910 to fight a last-ditch battle against the Parliament Bill were returning with the frustrated bitterness of long exile imposed by agricultural depression. Their relative impoverishment lay behind the façade of the gay and lavish life of Edwardian society, last flowering of an aristocratic world now supported by a shrunken band of more fortunate landowners and a constantly growing contingent of the nouveaux riches.26

16

English Landed Society in the Great War

Moreover, contemporary opinion held that ‘the effect of the agricultural depression on ownership was felt most strongly just prior to the First World War’.27 Ironically, this was because confidence was returning to Edwardian agriculture,28 especially the mixed arable and livestock sector which had been so badly hit in the 1890s. Agricultural landlords were keen to encourage this recovery and were reluctant to raise rents. This is why they were still feeling the pinch of the depression, prompting them to sell some of their land as agriculture and the land market began to recover. As A. D. Hall states, land was ‘mostly let at rents below its competitive value, hence the recent upsurge in land sales’.29 Landlords were now far more conscious of the importance of income and the low yield on land. This killed land as an investment for any surplus cash; it undermined any notion of land’s capital value being good security and contributed to a ‘weakening of the confidence of landowners in the estates system’30 at the same time as they were ‘experiencing a frontal attack’.31 Conversely, no one in Edwardian England could be entirely sure of the extent to which landlords ‘were going under, or simply complaining’32 about their tax bills, which were not ‘in fact particularly onerous before the First World War’.33 As E. J. T. Collins suggests, ‘depression was an attitude of mind, shaped by a tendency to exaggerate’; indeed, in 1903, the Quarterly Review charged English landowners with ‘professional pessimism’ and misinterpreting their financial position.34 More tellingly, while hundreds of thousands of acres were sold in most cases ‘the heartland was retained’35 by families who, presumably, were successfully rebalancing their portfolio of holdings. In these circumstances, historians must tread warily ‘to pick our way between landlord-inspired propaganda’,36 which was an understandable response when, as Rider Haggard noted in 1901, ‘it is the fashion now-a-days to gird at landlords, who are often supposed to be mere idlers and know-nothings, living in opulence’.37 Certainly, with ‘agriculture depressed’ or, to be more precise, with farm rents stubbornly staying low, ‘the life of the [Edwardian country] house had to be financed by investments elsewhere’.38 Or, as Haggard highlighted in the examples of Sir Charles Knightley in Northamptonshire and Edmund Turnor in Lincolnshire, by ‘a return to closer agricultural management’.39 Haggard was, however, equally keen to comment on Mr. Turnor’s home at Stoke Rochford Hall and its setting which was ‘undulating and well wooded, and . . . although the present house lacks the charm which age alone can give, [it] is one of the most stately and beautiful English homes that I have seen’.40 Speaking of Lincolnshire more generally in 1901, County Life observed that, ‘In the search for beautiful houses – the homes

Landownership and the Territorials

17

of long-lineaged gentleman . . . and of stately, radiant, and sweet-scented gardens . . . the county of Lincoln is richer than some might suppose.’41 Country Life first appeared in 1897. Today, it offers the modern reader ‘haunting images of a lost world, the golden dream of Edwardian England’42 and to its Edwardian readers the magazine provided a ‘powerfully enticing illustration of national identity [composed of] . . . ancient houses and gardens . . . [and] the rural aristocratic lifestyle . . . the new rich from the commercial and professional classes aspired to experience’.43 Buying a country house provided a less expensive ‘and perhaps also a more prestigious – alternative to building from new’.44 In Sussex, Claude Lowther, MP, acquired Herstmonceux Castle and 183 acres from the Earl of Chichester in 1911, the Earl following the current trend of selling property ‘to improve the security of his remaining assets’.45 His acquisition of one of England’s most picturesque homes was an example of a trend towards ‘pseudo-ruralism’ or ‘the form rather than the reality of landownership’.46 This trend was visible too among the new Edwardian country houses that were being built in considerable numbers and whose appearance was ‘heavily conditioned by what was now admired in old ones’.47 These new country houses were often built on grounds rarely exceeding 150 acres, sliced off of ‘outlying portions of ancestral and extensive domains’.48 This produced properties which were ‘often large and imposing enough to suggest that they belonged to members of a ruling class . . . [and] implied the back-up of an agricultural estate’ rather than the reality of an investment ‘in the doubtful security of land’.49 The ‘illusion’50 that new houses functioned as the centre of an agricultural estate was dispensed with entirely by the plutocracy. This was because, as Thompson notes, while the plutocracy was closely linked to landed society, its status was not linked to landownership and so their mansions ‘no longer had [any] functions in the life of an estate’.51 In the opinion of Mark Girouard, the owners of these new houses were ‘unwilling to lumber themselves with too much land and normally only bought enough to provide adequate shooting and fishing, and a home farm . . . [with] no tenants to entertain’.52 This assessment was echoed by Aslett; new country houses were designed for a semblance of landed life . . . estates were rarely much more than a thousand acres, and even then they were bought for sport rather than farming. Virtually none was big enough or profitable enough to justify the size of the house it was apparently designed to support. In many cases, it was the form rather than the reality of land ownership that appealed to the generally selfmade men who built new country houses; and the myth was not cheap to keep going.53

18

English Landed Society in the Great War

These houses were not, however, ‘entirely divorced from their agricultural origins’54 as cultivation still had to be carried on as ‘a means of indulging a taste for sport’.55 As a result, this ‘new generation of landed estate owners’ were ‘living according to a new shared collective cultural ideal . . . [of] the English country squire, whose pursuit of leisure’ was set ‘within the framework provided by the country house and garden’.56 Among them were uncomplicated social climbers intent on passing off themselves or their descendants as real aristocrats. Others simply ‘liked to have country houses and estates for pleasure, hunting and shooting, and playing at being landlords’.57 Or, like John Buchan’s Richard Hannay, the South African engineer ‘who dreamt all through the 1914–1918 war of putting down roots in the English countryside’ they were ‘in love with the idea of the country house – because it represented . . . peace, tradition, beauty and dignity . . . they were in love with the idea of being country gentlemen, strolling with gun under arm round their own acres’58 and were ‘committed to a particular way of life’.59 This was a rural aristocratic lifestyle that sought to ‘emulate the [landed] aristocracy rather than challenge their status’.60 This was an aristocracy indulgently developing their estates for sport rather than investing in agricultural improvement and which ‘kept the country house firmly in the private sphere’ to support the ‘hospitality and recreational pursuits provided by the best hosts’.61 Owners did not consider their family homes as ‘national property’, ignoring the possibility of ‘cultural leadership as an obvious solution to their growing political and economic problems’.62 Instead, like E. H. Shepard’s illustration of Toad Hall, in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows (1908), similarly ‘handsome, dignified old house[s] of mellowed red brick, with well-kept lawns reaching down to the water’s edge’63 remained ‘Private’. Such houses were, nonetheless, now ‘moving into the rather more relaxed atmosphere of the twentieth century when, in spite of slowly decreasing wealth and quickly decreasing political power, country houses retained enough money, enough prestige and enough finesse in the art of living to enjoy an exceedingly agreeable Indian summer’.64 Cultural leadership came with the lifestyle of the country house, as its focus on hunting, shooting and fishing put the aristocracy ‘in tune rather than in conflict with modernity’ as these were the ‘leisure pursuits popular with the professional and commercial middle classes as much as with the landed gentry’.65 As Arthur Ponsonby recognized in 1912, ‘apart from their actual political power, which after all is a mere ghost of what they formerly enjoyed, in the social world they reign supreme, and their supremacy would be maintained here even if they were divorced absolutely from all political power’.66 This was achieved by the ‘Hedgers’

Landownership and the Territorials

19

conceding ground in the House of Lords in favour of enjoying, or more closely managing, their remaining ancestral acres.67 As Masterman explains, they may have been angry over the limitation of the House of Lords veto, and some said that their star had then set. But those who knew the condition of England better, realised that this was a liberation rather than a fettering of their powers, and that by not itching to ‘interfere with matters which they do not understand’, they [the Hedger’s] had drawn the teeth of any enemy attack on them. In South England, at least, they commanded the votes of their tenants . . . And they were continually recruited from wealthy brewers, financiers, successful commercial men, newspaper proprietors and others, who settled down and bought country estates, and brought up their children to the same pleasant routine of sport, physical fitness, playing the game, and preparing for the practice (if not for the evil) of war.68

More significantly, as John Harris states, if the ‘People’s Budget’ of 1909 and the Parliament Act of 1911  ‘predicted the end of the country house as a fulcrum of power and society before 1914, few realized it during that last hot glorious Indian summer’ of 1914, or could have known that ‘all those heirs who sipped their gin and lime on lawns bathed in sunshine were to be mown down like blades of grass on the fields of Picardy or the beaches of Gallipoli’.69 In 1909, the coming of age celebrations for Lord Worsley, the son and heir of the Earl of Yarborough, saw him ‘duly feted on the [Brocklesby] estate and presented with many gifts . . . including ones from the tenants from the Brocklesby and Manby Estates’;70 a garden party was held in the park which was followed by a fireworks display; and a dance was organized for the servants and estate workers who would, one day, work for the future Earl. In 1911, the Earl of Ancaster and his wife, the American heiress, Eloise Breese, began extensive works at Grimsthorpe Castle restoring, modernizing and decorating the house to meet the lavish demands of Edwardian hospitality. The fashionable architects Detmar Blow and Fernand Billerey were hired to carry out the work, which saw bathrooms, electricity and central heating all installed.71 More conclusive evidence of the commitment of Edwardian landowners to preserving their country house lifestyle comes from Denton Manor in Lincolnshire, the ‘beautiful home of Sir Charles G. E. Welby Bart., . . . one of the finest examples of modern building in the Tudor style’.72 The Grantham Journal gives a gripping account of the fire which: spread on the dry woodwork with fearful rapidity . . . with a full complement of firemen . . . on its way to the conflagration . . . [estate workers and villagers

20

English Landed Society in the Great War continued] battling the flames with all their might. Sir Charles and Lady Welby [returned] from morning prayers [to find] . . . the beautiful mansion was ablaze . . . at the request of Sir Charles [the villagers began] removing the valuable furniture, pictures, books and bric-a-brac, from the lower portions of the Manor . . . [and the lawns were soon] piled with the contents of the Hall . . . And every minute the fire was spreading! Great tongues of flames could be seen thrusting their irresistible way through the roofing . . . Many hundreds of people were [now] in the Manor grounds watching . . . [as] roof timbers were burnt away . . . [and] showers of red hot tiles and flaming woodwork fell to the ground with terrifying effect . . . Tall ladders were reared to the roof, and several firemen got to work with their axes removing the tiles, and cutting through the timbers . . . to direct several powerful jets of water . . . [extinguishing] the rapidly approaching flames . . . Fortunately for the Manor the floors were constructed of fire proof concrete . . . [confining] the flames to the upper floors.73

The damage was estimated at between £20,000 and £30,000. If the sale of land is emblematic of an aristocracy that had decided upon its liquidation before the Great War then surely this event was symbolic of its self-immolation? Sir Charles was visited by his neighbours, the Marquess of Granby who lived at Belvoir Castle and Thomas Pearson-Gregory whose family seat was at Harlaxton Manor. Sir Charles and Lady Welby became guests of the latter while the younger members of his family, ‘by special request of the Duke [of Rutland] proceeded to Belvoir Castle’.74 Meanwhile, as Messrs Rudd and Son constructed a temporary roof, Sir Charles announced his intention that: ‘The Manor is to be restored in exact accordance with the original plans.’75 The Manor was restored to its former glory as can be seen in an aerial photograph taken in 1918 (see Figure 2) by one of the reconnaissance planes based at the nearby RFC training aerodrome overlooking Harlaxton Manor. Sir Charles’ decision to rebuild is evidence of an ongoing commitment to the lifestyle of the Edwardian country gentlemen and across the countryside, there was still to be found:  ‘On green lawns or under spreading cedar trees countless tea tables . . . spread with white table cloths, and hostesses pouring out tea from silver tea pots.’76 In looking to defend these rural realms against the Liberal state, the Edwardian aristocracy picked up the gauntlet thrown down by Lloyd George at Limehouse in 1909. This fell to the younger members of the aristocracy given that ‘a commission into a regiment in the Guards, the Cavalry, or the Rifle Brigade was the lot of many sons of landowners’.77 Prior to the war they occasionally brought home their platoons for training in the countryside. In 1911, Lieutenant Philip Pearson-Gregory of Harlaxton Manor brought a

Landownership and the Territorials

21

Figure 2 Denton Manor, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum.

detachment of the 2nd Battalion, Coldstream Guards, to Harlaxton for ‘a week’s training in scouting in the district . . . on Thursday being entertained by T. S. Pearson-Gregory Esq . . . On Saturday, a football match arranged between the Grenadiers and the village team ended in a win for the latter by three goals to one’.78 With the younger members of the aristocracy performing their military functions as junior officers in socially exclusive regiments, their seniors, after 1909, focused increasingly on the new Territorial Force. Rather than the peers being in opposition to the people they would seek to fulfil the duty or function of a landowning aristocracy and offer useful service to the nation in seeing to its security and defence. The Territorial Force was inaugurated in 1908 by R. B. Haldane, the Liberal Secretary of State for War. Haldane hoped to create a people’s or citizen’s army, a ‘Hegelian army’, remodelling Britain’s reserve forces along the lines of the Continental concept of a nation-in-arms but with a ‘peculiarly British twist’.79 The twist was to rely on the local enthusiasm of part-time, citizen-soldiers and local leadership and encouragement rather than official compulsion. The latter meant winning over the ‘natural leaders’ among the ‘traditional county military elites’80 in the hope that their support and participation would in time

22

English Landed Society in the Great War

bring in wider support at the local level. His comments in 1907, regarding their involvement, presaged Lloyd George’s comments at Limehouse in 1909: The Lords Lieutenants have been in a somewhat decadent position. They are not so important as they were, nor are they fulfilling their old [military] functions, and we feel that this is a good deal due to the fact that they have passed away from the proper and legitimate functions of representing the Crown in local military matters.81

Being accused by a Liberal politician of being decadent, declining and not fulfilling their proper and legitimate military functions was hardly an inducement to support the scheme. Unsurprisingly, when Haldane invited the Lords Lieutenants to become Presidents of the new Associations in 1907 he received a somewhat cool response. Haldane’s proposals had reduced ‘the importance of local Militias . . . and the aristocracy’s role in another area of country life once seen as its preserve’82 but in so doing they also ‘bolstered’83 the position of the aristocracy because, as The Times recognized: The new Territorial Army, in effect, takes the place of the old Militia . . . It is therefore right and fitting that the Lieutenants . . . should cease to be the mere figure-heads that they have become by force of apathy and neglect, and that they should play that leading part in the future development of the county forces to which . . . tradition . . . call them . . . In such work, the aristocracy of this country . . . must lead.84

More importantly, Haldane accepted this point. The question was how to  overcome their initial reluctance? Haldane turned to Edward VII. In 1907, the Lords Lieutenants were summoned to Buckingham Palace by the King who impressed upon them that the success of the whole scheme and by extension the defence of the realm rested on their response to Haldane’s appeal: I have summoned you . . . to acquit you with the new duties and responsibilities which will now devolve upon you. I  gave my consent by a Statute on the 2nd August for the formation of a new Territorial Army, and the success which will, I  trust, result will depend mainly on your efforts. Henceforth my Yeomanry and my Volunteers are to form that Territorial Army over the destinies of which you and your County Associations are to watch. To you are now delegated the duties of raising, equipping [and clothing but not arming], and maintaining [not training] . . . this force  – the Imperial Army of the second line . . . You will [be] required to hand over these forces to the military

Landownership and the Territorials

23

authorities in a fit condition to take the field, whether for training or for war. It will also rest with you to provide and maintain rifle ranges, drill halls, and such accommodation as is necessary for the safe custody of arms and equipment . . . the important duties and responsibilities which were formerly yours are being restored to you . . . I look to you to foster and to direct, by your precept and example, the spirit of patriotic and voluntary effort . . . I hope that you will call to your aid all men who have heart the interest of their country, and that a generous emulation will stimulate the efforts which you will make in your several counties.85

Speaking on behalf of the assembled Lords Lieutenants, the Duke of Norfolk promised the King that ‘they would do their utmost to carry out the scheme’.86 In so doing, Haldane secured his objective. As Richard Holmes observed: One of Haldane’s stokes of genius was to entrust the TF’s administration to County Associations chaired [by aristocrats and presided over] by Lord Lieutenants. The force’s 1909  yearbook lists country chairmen like a digest of Debrett’s: Chester: The Duke of Westminster; Derby: The Duke of Devonshire; Essex:  The Earl of Warwick; Hampshire:  the Marquess of Winchester; Middlesex: The Duke of Bedford; Oxford: The Earl of Jersey; and Warwick: the Marquess of Hertford. There were 115 peers in the association by November 1909.87

The King’s appeal impelled the social elite of the counties to throw their weight behind it.88 The intervention of the King also helped to depoliticize Haldane’s scheme in the eyes of many landowners. In Yorkshire, Lord Harewood, supported by Lord Scarbrough, declared that the Territorial Force ‘had no political significance, but was a purely military organization . . . [and everyone must] do their utmost to make the scheme a success’.89 In Wiltshire, the Earl of Pembroke commended the ‘great virtue [of a scheme] . . . agreed upon by both Houses of Parliament’ and urged landlords ‘to do all they could to try to carry the scheme through’.90 Lord Harewood was being somewhat disingenuous. The success of the scheme was now in the hands of a landowning aristocracy keen to show that they were still relevant and capable of performing a national service by exercising their social influence at the local level. In 1908, Lord Heneage, of Hainton Hall in Lincolnshire, the Chairman of the County Territorial Force Association, issued an appeal ‘to all landowners . . . to encourage all those over whom they may have influence to join the ranks of the Territorial Force’.91 He was succeeded as Chairman by Lord Kesteven, the Commanding Officer of the Lincolnshire Imperial Yeomanry, possessed of ‘strong soldierly instincts . . . and,

24

English Landed Society in the Great War

best of all . . . he was well-bred and a thundering good sportsman’.92 His ambition was that ‘all the units shall be up to strength before I go out of office as Chairman of the Association’.93 The County Associations were responsible for their local Yeomanry regiments and what would become the 4th and possibly 5th Territorial Battalions of their local infantry regiments; the 1st and 2nd Battalions being the ‘Regulars’ while the 3rd Battalion, formerly the Militia, became the ‘Special Reserve’.94 In the Territorial Battalions and the Yeomanry regiments ‘richly decorated with peers’95 agreeing to service overseas (the Imperial Service obligation) remained a choice. This concession potentially undermined Haldane’s whole concept of a Territorial Force capable of supporting an overseas Expeditionary Force, simply because there was ‘no significant [need] . . . to prepare an army to fight a major engagement on English soil’.96 In August 1914, Lord Kitchener, as Secretary of State for War, called on Territorials to volunteer for overseas service. Battalions where 80 per cent (quickly reduced to 60 per cent) of the men volunteered were kept intact and served together; with those Territorials opting for home service forming the nucleus of a Second (or Third) Line battalion to train and supply drafts to the First Line, although this option was abolished in March 1915. Subsequently, the 1916 Military Services Act obviated the choices of those who had already opted for home service.97 Prior to this Act, however, recruitment remained in the hands of the County Associations. In 1914, in Sussex, the Duke of Norfolk, as Lord Lieutenant and President of the Sussex Territorial Forces Association, was the de facto principal recruiting officer in Sussex and expected to play a timehonoured dominant role in the process of supplementing the regular army . . . and ensured that the work of ‘influential gentlemen’ was focused on the task of securing manpower for the territorial units . . . This amateur military administration envisaged little disturbance in the paramountcy of the militarylanded infrastructure or the consistent application of national policy through the Country Associations.98

This military-landed infrastructure had been nurtured by landowners opening their parks and grounds to ‘their’ local Territorial Battalion or Yeomanry Regiment for training prior to the war, when recruits had joined their local Battalion ‘partly out of patriotism, and partly to enjoy the summer camps’.99 In Nottinghamshire, troops of Yeomanry could be heard ‘clattering, or rather thudding on the drives that run through the great domains of Thoresby, Clumber and Welbeck’.100 Meanwhile, in Lincolnshire in August 1913, the 4th

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25

(Territorial) Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment pitched its tents on the edge of Harlaxton Park, on a gentle slope, with a free sweep of country on either side, and a good mile of cultured land . . . in front, the camp was delightfully airy, and was fully appreciated in the weltering days of the first week. The manoeuvring area was chiefly in Harlaxton Park, which, with a few fields kindly lent by the farmers, made an admirable ground for varied training both for companies and the Battalion.101

The 5th Battalion pitched its camp in the grounds of Denton Manor, the seat of Sir Charles and Lady Maria Welby, ‘whose hospitality and kindness during Camp was much appreciated’.102 Sir Charles later found three privates on his tennis lawn, who being ‘very tired . . . sat down, and prepared to spend the night there. Sir Charles hearing their evening hymn, went out and remonstrated with them:  “You can’t stay here; you must get back to camp. These grounds are private.” “All right”, was the reply, “We are privates too!” ’103 The principal field exercise of the summer camp was a mock battle between the two Battalions: The 5th had to attack the 4th, who were entrenched near Harlaxton village . . . Directly we started operations the rain poured down . . . [after] several miles march and an attack over several fields . . . we charged merrily on against the 4th trenches, and are sure we turned them out, and they are quite satisfied we could never have got within 500 yards of them, but as we were both equally wet, we left it at that, and got home.”104

The 5th Battalion was then inspected by Sir Charles and the camp was struck ‘with many regrets at having to leave such a beautiful place . . . there can be few camps which so nearly approach the ideal as Denton Park’.105 Similarly, the 4th Battalion notes acknowledged the unfailing courtesy and assistance given to us by Mr. S. Pearson Gregory of Harlaxton Manor. Mr. Gregory is well known as a sportsman in Leicestershire circles . . . but has . . . relinquished the willow for the brassy. On Sunday he entertained the officers, ‘as strong as possible’, to tea, and complimented us all on the excellence of our appetites. Not content with that he invited a similar strength to dinner, but modesty compelled us to only send nine! A very pleasant hour was spent examining some of his very rare bric-a-brac and tapestries, and loitering in the beautiful gardens. The N.C.O.’s were also invited to go through the grounds on the Saturday afternoon before leaving camp.106

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The Territorial Forces in their summer camps were gaining privileged access to the homes and grounds of the landed aristocracy, given Mandler’s point regarding the closure of Edwardian country houses to the public. The 4th Battalions’ summer camp, for example, concluded with an invitation from the Duke of Rutland, the President of the Leicestershire Association and the Honorary Colonel of the Battalion to visit Belvoir Castle, by whose ‘kindness . . . the grounds were also thrown open . . . [where] the view from the castle windows on that sunny afternoon will long be associated with Harlaxton Camp, in the minds of those who were privileged to be present’.107 In 1914, the 4th Battalion was embodied (mobilized) as part of the Territorial Army’s North Midland Division and was reviewed by George V and the Duke of Rutland in the grounds of Luton Hoo. According to a report in the Leicester Chronicle, from our own correspondent in the camp . . . we were astir at 5.00 a.m., and all accoutrements were polished up and peaks re-adjusted . . . the 4th Leicester’s going by the King first. We went by quite close to His Majesty, so we all had a good view of our Sovereign . . . As he left the ground he was given a hearty cheer by the estate employees who had gathered at the gate. The troops marched past the mansion and out . . . by the Park-road Lodge.108

In 1915, the Division assaulted the Hohenzollern Redoubt where, as the Duke described it:  ‘The 4th and 5th Leicesters . . . had a bad knocking  – very heavy casualty lists’ requiring officers and men to go from ‘the 3/4th Leicesters to the 4th Battalion from Belton at once’.109 In 1914, Earl Brownlow had placed Belton Park at the disposal of the War Office as a training ground for new troops (see Chapter  2), as Country Life reported in 1915:  ‘Here two divisions of the New Army have been quartered in succession, and it is now occupied by the third line of the North Midland Territorial Division.’110 Kitchener’s decision to raise the New Armies, however, posed a direct challenge to the ‘paternalistic volunteerism . . . the County Associations’.111 In these circumstances, were landowners able to continue to fulfil their military functions under the auspices of an interventionist state?

2

Mobilizing the Estate Worker

The weight of the war fell disproportionately on English landed society and upon what, in the opening phase of the war, contemporaries described as the flower of the aristocracy. The sense of whole-hearted involvement in the war ‘was nowhere stronger than among the landed classes themselves’ given their traditional links with the local yeomanry regiments (see Chapter  6), and because the officers of the regular army were ‘normally recruited from among their ranks’.1 By 1912, within the regular army, the aristocracy and landed gentry were in fact concentrated in the more socially exclusive cavalry regiments, the elite cavalry regiments and regiments of Foot Guards of the Household Division and the Rifle Brigade. Overall, the aristocracy and landed gentry comprised only 41 per cent of the entire officer corps, yet there is little doubt the officer corps ‘was still influenced very much by the values of the gentry and officers were expected to behave within the largely unwritten code of gentlemanly behaviour [and] . . . on active service . . . [to] retain as much gentlemanly demeanour as possible’.2 This meant leading from the front, resulting in disproportionately high casualties, and amidst the ‘close knit exclusivity of the army of 1914’ this meant that few landed  families were unaffected ‘by the casualty lists that took up so many column inches of the daily press’.3 By the end of 1914, six peers, sixteen baronets, the sons of ninety-five peers and the sons of eighty-two baronets had been killed.4 The suddenness with which death consumed the aristocratic warrior-aesthetes profoundly affected the aristocracy. The death of Julian Grenfell ‘shocked members of the elite social circle in which he and his family moved’.5 In the space of twelve months Lady Desborough had moved from the normal round of country house visits to mourning the death of two of her sons, who, in the opinion of Margot Asquith, ‘combined all that life can give of courage, brains and good feeling . . . I could hardly think of them without tears’.6 The Hon. Lionel Tennyson who served with Billy Grenfell in the Rifle Brigade described him as

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being ‘distinguished by a combination of talents that were Elizabethan in their variety’.7 Julian and Billy Grenfell were the leading lights of a gilded group of young people, who ‘visited each other’s homes during set times of “the Season” . . . [and who] died together in the trenches’.8 Julian Grenfell was hit in the head by a shell splinter and died of his wounds in hospital in May 1915. Billy was killed in July, leading his platoon. Like his brother, Billy was both soldier and poet having penned an elegy to his friend To John (The Hon. John Manners); the son of Lord Manners, John had been killed in 1914. This sudden ‘extinction of joy, glamour, and hope’,9 coming so hard upon the heels of a round of country house visits in the warm, sunny days of summer 1914, understandably made the aristocracy look back upon this as their ‘Indian summer’. The unpreparedness of the elite for what was to come is perhaps captured in a scene, described by Lady Diana Manners, of her brother and ‘our adored Ego [Hugo] Charteris’ lying on their stomachs playing ‘the war game, then very much in fashion . . . involving hundreds of tin soldiers . . . [where] they quarrelled . . . hotly over the campaigns and planning of battles’.10 Ego Charteris (Lord Elcho, suc: 1914) was the son of the Earl and Countess of Wemyss, the latter was Mary Wyndham, one of the Wyndham sisters immortalized in the iconic painting of the same name by John Singer Sargent. But, as with the Desboroughs, glamour quickly turned to grief. Yvo Charteris, Ego’s younger brother, was killed in 1915. Ego, serving with the Gloucestershire Yeomanry, was killed in 1916, having written to his mother to tell ‘Papa he must write his sons off, and concentrate on his grandsons who, thank God, exist.’11 Yvo, serving with the Grenadier Guards, had been leading a party of bombers ‘in a gallant and futile attempt to take a German trench’12 when he was killed by enfilading fire from a German machine gun. Both Ego and Yvo had been members of ‘The Coterie’, the most glamorous circle of gilded aristocratic youth in Edwardian England. In addition to Ego and Yvo and their sister Cynthia (who married the younger brother of Raymond Asquith), the circle included: The Grenfell boys [who] wanted to be in the coterie, though Ettie’s [Desborough] deep disapproval of all their girlfriends often made things difficult . . . but Julian and Billy and Monica Grenfell . . . knew all its members. Edward Horner . . . belonged [killed in 1917], as did his beautiful sisters Katherine and Cicely . . . Charles Lister [killed in 1915, the son of Lord Ribblesdale], and Diana, and Barbara and Laura  – were coterie members too. But of them all, the most outrageous and sought after were the lovely Manners daughters: Lady Marjorie, Lady Violet [who married Ego Charteris] and Lady Diana.13

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Thus, the war ripped through the flower of the aristocracy, but most especially through a gilded group of young men, who were indeed a lost generation of unfulfilled potential. As David Cannadine states, it is not ‘necessary to join the clichéd cult of the Wyndhams, the Grenfells, and the Charterises, to recognize that they were uncommonly gifted and promising young men, whose greatness had been predicted before they died’.14 In 1915, Cynthia Asquith wrote: ‘Oh why was I  born for this time? Before one is thirty to know more dead than living people? Stanway, Clouds, Gosford – all the settings of one’s life – given up to ghosts.’15 Adding to the list of those killed, Margot Asquith lamented: ‘I would like to write of these and others that I loved who were killed in the war: Charles Lister, John Manners, Edward Horner, George Vernon, Eustace Crawley and Rupert Brooke, but the list of the dead that I cared for and the parents I mourned with would be too long to put in any single volume.’16 Not since the Wars of the Roses ‘had so many patricians died so suddenly and so violently’.17 The war scythed through Sir John French’s ‘ideal new officers  – “countrymen . . . accustomed to hunting, polo and field sports” ’18 sending a shockwave through English landed society. In 1915, George Heremon Wyndham of the Devonshire Regiment was killed while attached to the Northumberland Fusiliers. He was twenty-two and ‘gave promise of being a great man’.19 He is commemorated by a memorial in St Mary’s Church, East Knoyle, in Wiltshire along with his four cousins:  Edward Wyndham Tennant, Ego and Yvo Charteris and Percy Wyndham, of Clouds in Wiltshire.20 Percy was killed in 1914 serving with the Coldstream Guards ‘always in the thick of it’.21 Percy had only recently inherited the Clouds estate, East Knoyle, from his father George Wyndham. In the North Riding, in ‘one of the heaviest losses’ of 1915, the Hon. Hugh Dawnay, the youngest son of Lord Downe ‘who has lent Wykeham Abbey as a hospital for wounded soldiers’,22 was killed at the head of his men. John Buchan wrote: ‘His death was fruitful, for the charge in which he fell saved the British position,’ in him ‘we lost one of the most brilliant of our younger soldiers, most masterful both in character and brain. He would wish no better epitaph than Napier’s immortal words: “No man died that night with more glory – yet many died, and there was much glory.” ’23 In the West Riding, Lord Scarbrough, the ‘head of the house of Lumley’ and Chairman of the West Riding County Association, lost his nephew, Richard Lumley (serving with the 11th Hussars): ‘A keen solider with a fine future before him.’24 In Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire: Among the heaviest of the losses in the two counties are Lord Valentia’s elder son, the Hon. Arthur Annesley of the 10th Royal Hussars; the Hon. H. Stoner

30

English Landed Society in the Great War who fell while leading his men most gallantly in an attack on the German trenches; and the Hon. Richard George Grenville Morgan-Grenville, the Master of Kinloss, the eldest [son] . . . of Lady Kinloss and owner of the great classic of Stowe.25

In Kesteven, in Lincolnshire, ‘to take one division of this county of broad acres’,26 Sir Montague Cholmeley of Easton Park, serving with Grenadier Guards, and Lieutenant R.  W. G.  Welby serving with the same regiment, the son of Sir Charles Welby of Denton Manor, were both killed. The loss of so many young aristocratic officers exemplified, in the words of Viscountess Barrington, the ‘pride and exaltation of fond parents and wives’ and ‘their willing offering of their sons and husbands, to fight in so great a cause in the early days of the war’.27 County by county, Country Life recorded landed society fulfilling its military function. In Worcestershire, families were ‘setting a splendid and shining example of patriotism’.28 In Staffordshire: ‘There are very few . . . families which are not represented in the Services . . . the Ansons, the Pagets, the Seckhams, the Littletons, the Moncktons, the Morleys and the Bridgmans – to name but a few . . . but the heaviest toll has been taken from the de Trafford family. All the five sons of the late Mr. Augustus de Trafford of Haselour Hall have taken or are taking part in the war.’29 The accumulation of names and actions revealed how the ‘military, or fighting, spirit seems to run in families. Members of families do not necessarily take to the profession of arms in time of peace, but in an emergency like the present their patriotism carries two, three, and sometimes four members of one family to the King’s Standard. This has been revealed in Shropshire’.30 Likewise in Lincolnshire, ‘as in other counties the leading families are foremost in service’ with the Hon. Claud Willoughby . . . mentioned in dispatches . . . when at the front with his regiment, the Coldstream Guards . . . Lord Yarborough’s brother, Captain the Hon. Dudley Pelham of the 10th Hussars has been invalided home . . . his second son, the Hon. Sackville Pelham is with the 11th Hussars, and his youngest son, the Hon. Marcus Pelham, with the Lincolnshire Yeomanry . . . Lord Kesteven, who has lately succeeded to his uncle’s estate, was attached to the Indian Army and served in Gallipoli, has now returned to the Lincolnshire Yeomanry . . . Lord Heneage’s two sons are [also] with the colours.31

Regardless of four out of every five British and Irish peers and their sons who served returning home (many with physical and psychological trauma), the aristocracy had taken a terrible body blow. Before the war, Lord Yarborough’s eldest son, Lord Worsley, had been devoted to hunting and ‘whenever he had

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the opportunity . . . used to catch the newspaper train from London in order to spend a day in hunting at Brocklesby’.32 He joined the elite Royal Horse Guards in 1908 and in 1914 rejoined them on Salisbury Plain, alongside a veritable Who’s Who of officers from the titled and territorial classes, together with his favourite horse Bodmin ‘which he planned to take to Belgium’.33 Lord Worsley was killed in 1914, ‘valiantly defending himself when most of his men had been outnumbered and overwhelmed’.34 In Hertfordshire, no family stands higher than the Cecils . . . Lord Cranbrone [the eldest son of Lord Salisbury], who is in the Grenadier Guards, has been invalided home . . . [while] Lord Edward Cecil, who is a colonel in the reserve of officers, has lost his only son, Second-Lieutenant G. E. Cecil of the Grenadier Guards . . . a young officer of brilliant promise who was ‘devoted by instinct’ as a friend wrote, ‘to the profession of arms and had made it his consuming interest and study, not through any child’s delight in its glitter, but because he absolutely believed in the imminence of that very war in which he fell’.35

By devoting themselves to the practice, if not the art, of war on Army manoeuvres or on the hunting field (see Chapter 6), young country gentlemen sought to fulfil the military function of a landowning aristocracy on the battlefield, primarily as subalterns leading ‘their’ platoons. ‘ “Remember” ’, said an officer to ‘embryo subalterns of the governing class “you are in charge of twenty-five men, not twenty-six. What happens to yourself does not matter at all” ’.36 As Alun Howkins points out, to these young officers ‘my men’ or ‘my platoon’ had the ring of ‘my village’ and young officers, ‘when brave and willing to share danger, were worshipped’.37 The loss of such officers was grievous for their units and their families, as Country Life noted in 1915: ‘Most affecting of all is the sweeping away of so many young men who formed the hope of the families to which they belonged . . . No wonder if the most resolute lips become tremulous as to them they gave the last Ave atque vale.’38 Across the countryside mourning hatchments were ‘hung over the front door of many a mansion’ and the flags flew ‘at half-mast from towers and turrets’.39 In 1908, Wilfred Blunt described the Edwardian aristocracy as living life at a ‘perpetual gallop’.40 Confronted by the brutal reality of the war, junior members of the aristocracy galloped even harder, seeking ‘solace in their customary pleasures’ by continuing with their ‘usual round of parties and lavish entertaining with few concessions to austerity’.41 Looking back on ‘these nightmare years of tragic hysteria’, Lady Diana Manners remembered the young dancing ‘frenziedly to combat any pause that would let death [or the prospect of a violent death]

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conquer their morale’.42 The accounts of young aristocratic women like Sonia Keppel, Diana Manners or Venetia Stanley are like chapters ‘from a novel by Evelyn Waugh’43 as they combined their war work with a feverish social life, which in Keppel’s case included a full ‘Coming Out’ ball in 1918. Speaking in the House of Lords, in 1915, on the question of making munitions work compulsory for young gentlemen not in uniform, Lord St Davids attacked the ongoing frivolity: Most of the sons of the well-to-do classes are serving the nation, but I know quite well that even among the sons of members of your Lordships’ House there are a few who are not facing the dangers of war, but are hanging about the London theatres and music-halls as they did before. While that continues you may save yourselves the trouble of going to the working men and talking to them of conscription and of compulsory service. I heard only a day or two ago that within the last fortnight a member of this House who has held high office under the King gave a dance. That does not seem to me very good taste, but perhaps I am old-fashioned. The dance, I am told, was well attended; there were lots of young men there who have never served their country and never mean to. Those are the young men whom you have to get in before you talk of the working men. I am saying this because I believe that before the war is over you will have to call upon all the citizens of this country to do their duty in one shape or another. You may ask what would be the good of the young men to whom I have referred if you got them into works; they are unskilled. But to utilise to the full the labours of the skilled mechanic, you require unskilled labour to wait upon him. I would send these young men to do that work.44

If ‘High Society’ revels were still evident in London, the countryside was becoming more warlike and austere. When the King ‘declared that till the war was over his establishment must become teetotal’45 the Welbeck Abbey cellars were closed by the Duke of Portland. In addition, across England, hunting was, by necessity, curtailed, although not discontinued (see Chapter 6). Shooting was curtailed due to a lack of gamekeepers (see Chapter 5). This curtailment had an inevitable knock-on effect on Edwardian-style country house entertainments, which, regardless, would hardly have been in good taste. Nor, would they have endeared the aristocracy to the families of the estate workers and labourers (see Chapter  3) they had encouraged to join up. The aristocracy needed to set an example, by joining up; by turning their homes formerly ‘bastions of aristocratic exclusiveness’46 into hospitals for wounded soldiers (see Chapter  7); and by cutting back on entertaining, as Country Life noted in 1915:

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The Duchess of Beaufort, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Marchioness of Ripon, and their colleagues are doing what ought to be effected officially. They are endeavouring to organise the self-sacrifice of the women of this country by inaugurating a league, the members of which will bind themselves to bear privation and practice self-denial. There are six points to the programme, and in the forefront is placed the resolution to reduce expenditure on imported goods, and strictly limit the purchase of everything that comes under the category of luxuries. They vow to adopt simplicity in dress and restrict the use of motors to necessary and charitable purposes. They promise to give up all unnecessary entertaining both at home and restaurants and reduce home consumption to its lowest limits. They undertake in no case to employ men-servants unless ineligible for public service and, finally, they bind themselves to preach this doctrine to their friends. The manifesto of the league is signed by fourteen ladies of title, and they have been selected for the purpose on the principle that ‘the example must be set by those who have the widest margin of the unessentials of life’. All honour to them for doing it.47

There was, however, some residual reluctance to abandon the country house lifestyle entirely, prompting an early Parliamentary Recruitment Committee poster to ask: ‘Have you a Butler, Groom, Chauffeur, Gardener, or Gamekeeper serving you who at this moment should be serving your King and Country?’48 In 1915, Country Life posed the same question and added for good measure: Have you a man serving at your table who should be serving a gun? Have you a man digging your garden who should be digging trenches? Have you a man driving your car who should be driving a transport wagon? Have you a man preserving your game who should be helping to preserve your Country? A  great responsibility rests on you. Will you sacrifice your personal convenience for your Country’s need? Ask your men to enlist TO-DAY.49

Such promptings served to reinforce the determination of the aristocracy to mobilize their workers. The 5th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry included ‘many indoor servants, grooms, gardeners, chauffeurs [and] gamekeepers’,50 while the Royal Berkshire Regiment had a platoon of butlers and footmen and another of gardeners and workers from a peer’s estate.51 As a result, on estates up and down the country there was a noticeable reduction in the number of estate workers. On the Brodsworth Hall estate in Yorkshire, ‘the squire [Charles Thellusson] . . . has not a chauffeur left . . . a large number of the little army of men who find employment on the . . . estate are now serving their king and country’.52 The drive to mobilize the estate worker in the opening phase

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of the war, and the impact this had upon an estate, was a topic revisited by Alfred Ollivant in Country Life in 1917: One radiant Saturday afternoon of June 1914, I arrived for one of the week-ends that played in those days of long ago so considerable a part in the life of the more leisured class in England. Tennis was in full swing on the perfect lawn; men in flannels, girls in white skirts, a handful of onlookers sitting or sprawling on the slope under the great walnut tree. It was clear that all were there to . . . play. For they were all men and women in their prime – athletic, and ludicrously earnest at their games . . . Behind in the stable yard were a motor car, a trap or two, a horse peering out of a loose box, and a few servants loitering. Now all have gone – horses, servants and cars. Our host was the first to depart. He was forty, but he enlisted as a trooper in the Yeomanry, and took with him old Achaicus as his charger . . . After our host . . . rode out of the stable yard to battle there went [Gregson] the stud groom . . . The chauffeur followed later and more reluctantly  . . . he needed a little quiet encouragement, which we supplied . . . Gregson had a heart; George a mother: ‘Break the missus’s heart if anything was to come to me’ he told us . . . ‘it would break your mother’s heart if her son failed to his duty’ . . . [we] pointed out with cheerful severity.53

Recruits from the Stanway estate in Gloucestershire in 1914 included ‘the two footmen, stable boy, an odd [job] man and four gamekeepers’.54 In Kent, Lord Torrington enlisted as a trooper in the Royal Hussars ‘and induced young men in his village to follow suit’.55 David Niven, in his autobiography The Moon’s a Balloon, recalled how his father ‘had cheerfully gone off to war like a knight of old, taking with him as troopers [in the Berkshire Yeomanry] his valet, his undergardener and two grooms. He also took his hunters, but these were exchanged for rifles in Egypt en route [to Sulva Bay, where] . . . my father, his valet and one groom were duly slaughtered’.56 Conversely, recruitment could be hindered by the ‘narrow focus of . . . [this] quasi-feudal perception in which the employed population owed military service’ to a family or an estate ‘and had little voice in the process’.57 The perception that estate workers were obligated to go to war was, therefore, mediated by recognition of the financial hardships this would place on their families. Addressing a rent audit of the Crosby Hall estate in Lancashire, the agent regretted the absence of their landlord, Mr F. N. Blundell, but he had sent his best wishes from the camp at Canterbury. He had set them all a good example by joining the Lancashire Hussars as second-lieutenant as soon as the war broke out, and by offering free cottages and half wages to all the workmen on his estate

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who enlisted. It was their duty to follow his example by volunteering wherever possible and encouraging others to do so.58

Among the aristocracy, the Duke of Portland recognized ‘the national danger signal which ought to rally all for the one purpose’ and since the outbreak of the war ‘his life and that of his household has been ardently devoted to the service of the country’.59 His family were equally devoted; indeed, he would have felt ‘nothing less than a despicable wretch had not his son and every other member of the family bearing the name of Bentinck come forward at the present moment’.60 With his son and heir the Marquess of Titchfield serving in the Royal Horse Guards; Lord Henry Cavendish-Bentinck in the Derbyshire Yeomanry; and F. W. Cavendish-Bentinck, the eldest son of Hon. W. G. F. Cavendish-Bentinck, wounded while serving in the King’s Royal Rifles, there was no question in the Duke’s mind that members of his household and his estate workers would also be going to the war. To that end, ‘the endless activities at Welbeck  – building, planting, improvement – were brought to a standstill so that the hundreds of men employed might be free to devote their services to the country’.61 At Stanway, the Earl of Wemyss was more explicit and issued an ultimatum to all his estate workers and servants to enlist or be dismissed.62 Those who enlisted would have their positions kept open and their wives and dependants would continue to receive half their weekly pay. Lady Wemyss persuaded the Earl to withdraw his ultimatum by suggesting that: ‘Those who give their lives should have the grace and glamour of doing so freely and not be driven like sheep to the slaughter.’63 In excusing the Earl’s belligerence, the Countess made her own recruiting speech arguing her husband had no ‘wish to threaten or coerce but . . . [only] to make it easy for you to do what he thought it your duty to do’.64 It was under these conflicting ultimatums and inducements that recruits went to war with a parting gift of tobacco and a pipe from the Countess of Ancaster; soon thereafter, when the first of them was killed, she ‘gave the poor parents and the little brothers and sisters coffee and beef ’.65 Elsewhere, the Duke of Rutland: ‘In common with all other great landowners of the country . . . has come forward in a most patriotic manner, and, as an inducement to his employees who are able to serve with the Colours, he has made very generous guarantees [set out in a memorandum circulated across the estate], which no doubt will be accepted by a large proportion of the servants on the Belvoir Estate’.66 Under the terms of the memorandum: 1. All who serve the Colours will have their situations kept open for them. 2. Married men to have their ordinary weekly wage continued, subject to the deductions therefrom for the amount of the military pay and of the separation

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3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

and children allowances. After this deduction the balance will be paid to the wife during the man’s absence. Single men who have parents, brothers, or sisters dependent on them to be paid on the same basis as married men. Single men with no dependents will have their military pay, and in addition there will be placed to their individual credit the balance between their military pay and ordinary wages. If any of the single men want money remitting to them from their credit account, this will be forwarded on application being made to their head of department. Householders not to be charged any rent during absence. All men accepted for service to notify at once their head of department, the rate of military pay they receive, and also any additional pay on promotion. In arranging allowances under Clause 2 and 3, there may be special circumstances such as large family, illness, etc., but all such cases will be dealt with on their merits.67

The Duke told his estate workers ‘we must put those quarrels [see Chapter 3] behind us and pull together’.68 Every available man on his estates should instead ‘come forward to enlist and sacrifice themselves for the good of the Empire and of their country’.69 Keen to compete with her father, Marjorie Manners had ‘hardly anyone left here now [at Beaudesert]. My two footmen, odd man, four more gardeners, the estate chauffeur and the agent’s coachman all go off this morning’.70 Her father meanwhile highlighted the fact that his heir, the Marquess of Granby, was serving on the Staff of the North Midland Division to give moral weight to his appeals. The Division would ‘shortly be going to the Front . . . [and] my boy . . . will do whatever he can when he gets there’.71 Of course, serving on a General’s Staff was not the same thing as serving in the trenches with a platoon or a company and, in March 1915, of the seventeen heirs to dukedoms of military age, seven were attached to Home Forces or assigned to a Staff behind the Line. The other ten, the heirs to the Dukedoms of Argyll, Atholl, Devonshire, Grafton, Leinster, Marlborough, Portland, Roxburghe, St Albans and Somerset, were serving in the trenches.72 Similarly, not every landowner chose publicly to commit to compensating estate workers whose army pay was insufficient to provide an adequate income for their families, yet many others did. In Sussex, the Marquess of Abergavenny guaranteed housing to the families of workers who enlisted for the duration of the war. Lady Margaret Duckworth opened a Post Office Savings Bank account for every man who enlisted.73 The Duke of Rutland, Lord Ancaster, Lord Leconfield and the Duke of Bedford all ‘outdid each other in the generous

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37

terms they offered their tenants and employees’.74 Compulsion remained, however, something that employers were prepared to deploy. In Cumberland and Westmoreland, all single men employed by the Earl of Lonsdale were called upon to enlist. The Earl promised that their places would be kept open for them if they did and their families cared for; if they did not, they might be given notice and lose all allowances. On Lord Rothschild’s Hertfordshire estate twenty men ‘from the garden, timber yard, home farm and other departments were [sent] on their way to Aylesbury recruiting office’.75 In Lincolnshire, Lord Ancaster, having found upon enquiry that: Six men had gone from one family, and they were the only recruits from that village . . . the conditions under which he had endeavoured to obtain recruits from the young men on his estate . . . [now] included a week’s notice to all single men, with an intimation that if they enlisted their situations would be kept open for them. They would receive a gratuity of 50s. on joining, and a further 50s. on their return to his service after the war. The wages of the married men would be continued whilst they were at the war, less the amount received by the wife for separation allowance from the Government. In the case of single men supporting relatives, the amount they were contributing would be paid, and no rents would be collected during the war from families where the husband was in service.76

These terms had been offered on the assumption of it being a short war, even so, despite this becoming a long war, these commitments still held. Some families on the Duke of Bedford’s estate, for example, were still receiving their allowances in 191877 but, by then, the war and the England, home and beauty the landed aristocracy were fighting for had changed beyond all recognition. Before the war, George Wyndham had enjoyed training with the Cheshire Yeomanry and reading the poetry of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, poetry that was English, patriotic and expressed a passion for the land.78 Like fellow Edwardian country gentlemen his ‘love of army life was inextricably linked to a love of Britain and is countryside’ and found expression in: ‘My pleasure [in the manoeuvres] . . . there were the dawns and sunsets, the lovely English land, the old churches, the hedge-row elms, the stubble fields . . . the country folk  – and through all that mellow peace  – the humming maze of men, and horses, and bicycles, and guns . . ..’79 This same sentiment was shared by the Earl of Ancaster, who, when addressing a recruiting meeting in uniform, described his regiment passing through a countryside ‘undisturbed by the ravages of war, and the inhabitants of the villages bringing out fruit and other refreshments for the soldiers . . . Is that peaceful condition to continue in this country? . . . If it was

38

English Landed Society in the Great War

then recruits must come forward, and young men of this nation must respond speedily to their country’s call’.80 The irony is that in mobilizing their estate workers and placing their parks at the disposal of the War Office, in melding the pursuit of arms with their love of the countryside, the aristocracy was facilitating the transformation of rural England into an armed camp on a scale far beyond that experienced by George Wyndham or his Edwardian contemporaries. As Carole Dakers states, not only were villages overflowing with officers, soldiers and the machinery of war, ‘country houses were turned into hospitals and their parks were churned up by gun-carriages and [later] tanks’.81 The front lawns at Wentworth House were transformed into a troop training ground: Two batteries of the Royal Horse Artillery  – 400 men and forty-eight-gun carriages – thundered and rattled up and down the length of the great house. The soldiers were stylishly turned out. Wearing black gold-fogged jackets fitted tightly at the waist, they sported plumed shako caps; these were the Wentworth batteries personally raised by Billy [Earl Fitzwilliam] from his farms, factories and pits . . . spending thousands of pounds on their uniforms and their mounts: the finest hunters in the county . . . After a morning spent practicing traditional gun drills and manoeuvres on the lawn . . . the men dismounted to the open top cars [a fleet of luxury Sheffield Simplex’s ordered from his Sheffield factory]. Criss-crossing the roads through the Park in single-column cavalcades, gun carriages in tow.82

Parks were put at the disposal of a War Office desperate to find enough training grounds to quickly bring the Territorial Battalions and Yeomanry Regiments up to readiness to reinforce the regular army in France. Lord Lansdowne ‘placed his beautiful park at Bowood at the service of the War Office as a training ground’.83 The park at Blicking Hall, the Norfolk home of the Marquess of Lothian, became home to the Montgomeryshire Yeomanry. According to Country Life, if we may judge from the activity displayed in the countryside. The mutter of rifle-shooting and the roar of heavy guns have become more familiar to the ear than the whistle of the steam plough and the din of the threshing machine, which are the usual sounds of autumn. Quiet secluded lanes daily witness the march of infantry and are churned into mud by the heavy artillery . . . battle[s] are rehearsed on the sodden autumn fields . . . The farmer would look on a little ruefully but for his patriotism. When artillery are ordered to get their guns into position in some small field and to hasten the horses into a place of concealment, they are not always mindful of the gateposts; and infantry not seldom leave gaps

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in the hedges when given a command to advance that takes no account of those prickly obstacles. The farmer grumbles, but he has a warm side for the Army as for the local Hunt. After lamenting the loss to which he had been put, one of them the other day showed the writer a very fine lot of turkeys, and said, with a twinkle in his eye: ‘These be my present to the soldier boys at the camp. It has been a good year for I, and they’ll like a tuck in come Christmas’. His bark was worse than his bite.84

The already unprecedented level of military activity in the English countryside increased in scale in ‘the form of vast camps for the New Armies on the parklands which were owned by influential raisers of military manpower’.85 In Lincolnshire, Earl Brownlow placed Belton Park ‘unreservedly at the disposal of the War Office as a training ground for new troops’,86 specifically the new 11th (Northern) Division. This was a New Army Division (see Chapter  3) composed of the new ‘Service’ Battalions of the Prince of Wales’ Own (West Yorkshire Regiment); East Yorkshire Regiment; Alexandra, Princess of Wales’ Own (Yorkshire Regiment); the York and Lancaster Regiment; the Lincolnshire Regiment; the Border Regiment; the South Staffordshire Regiment; the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment); the Northumberland Fusiliers; Lancashire Fusiliers; Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding Regiment) and the Manchester Regiment. As the Earl explained: ‘In these days of war and anxiety, I feel that Belton Park cannot be put to a better use than to assist Lord Kitchener in his arduous task of training a portion of the hundred thousand men that he is raising.’87 In 1914, Bernard Darwin visited Belton on behalf of Country Life. There, he found between 15,000 and 20,000 recruits for Britain’s New Army ‘being turned into soldiers under the most pleasant imaginable conditions . . . [amidst Lord Brownlow’s] beautiful park’.88 The beauty of the parkland, the quintessence of a landowning aristocracy’s determination to defend England, home and beauty was thus, even at this early stage of the war, being subordinated to the necessities of defending the realm: In ordinary circumstances, there can scarcely be a more serenely peaceful spot than Belton . . . There was just a glimpse of the tops of tents . . . [and] the sun shone . . . on the long rows of corrugated iron huts that an army of workmen is building . . . The fallow deer had taken refuge close to the house . . . I was taken up on to the roof of the house to get my first view of the new Army . . . the Dutch garden slept in the sunlight, the peacocks, with sadly depleted tails, took their accustomed walks . . . Then, far away against the background of

40

English Landed Society in the Great War encircling woods, there appeared a long brown line . . . The [khaki] lines grew nearer and plainer; soon the words of command could be heard, while at the same time the air became full of ceaseless hammerings and clangings as work began again in the building of the huts. Gradually the park became full of soldiers. . . A great many of these recruits have not yet received their uniforms, and corduroy trousers, blue flannel shirt sleeves and a great variety of hats and caps make a sharp contrast with the neat symmetry of khaki . . . At first the more elementary manoeuvres  – the forming of fours and shouldering of arms . . . Later on come more exciting things. The men dash forward in extended order; then fling themselves flat on the ground, taking cover . . . in one of shallow bunkers in the park, which now fulfil a sterner purpose than that of golf . . . [another] big body of recruits is drilling . . . hard work is the order of the day. Here the click of rifles is to be heard. ‘A column of men at 700 yds. – three rounds’, says an officer, and there is an enthusiastic blaze of clickings at phantom Germans . . . A  little further on is a big circle of men with rifles, all uniformless at present, and the instructor, also in ordinary clothes . . . There is something indescribably thrilling about these recruits still in their workday clothes; they do bring it home that here is a citizen army spring into being for the defence of the State.89

Here, in Belton Park, was one of the nuclei of Britain’s ‘New’ model army which would swallow up the more socially exclusive regiments of the Edwardian Army, and their young aristocratic officers, who quickly found themselves, ‘for the first time in their lives, the anonymous victims of a chain of command that cared little for them en masse, and only rarely saw them as individuals’.90

3

Mobilizing the Farmworker

I know myself, from hearing the talk in villages, that in many villages working men are saying that since they have seen the way in which the landowners’ sons have served their country they are taking a different view of the position of landowners than they took before. The upper classes, as a whole, have come wonderfully well out of this great trial and call upon their patriotism. Lord St Davids, 9 June 1915.1 On the eve of the First World War, the power of the aristocracy’s ‘last bulwark, the House of Lords, had been sharply curtailed while the leading politician of the day was mounting an explicit attack on landownership’.2 In these circumstances, the elite’s priorities lay in protecting its property rights and remaining a landed aristocracy.3 Confronted by this ‘assault on the privileges of the landowner’,4 setting a patriotic example of national service and self-sacrifice would help counter any resumption of this assault after the war. Having held commissions before the war in the regular army in one of the more socially exclusive infantry or cavalry regiments, or the Reserve Battalions of their local county regiment, or in the local Yeomanry, many young aristocrats simply re-enlisted. Some, without a commission, enlisted as so-called gentlemen-rankers and then very quickly became officers. This patriotic response to the ‘Land Question’ was, as Lord St Davids observed, an apt riposte in the localities to Lloyd George’s Land Campaign of 1912–1914. The irony is that the Liberal Party saw land reform as a patriotic duty too. The 1907 and 1908 Smallholdings and Allotments Acts, championed by the Liberal Lord Carrington, and the subsequent Land Campaign, were all initiatives designed to keep farm labourers on the land. To contemporaries, the condition of the English countryside was synonymous with the overall condition and strength of the nation and its ability to defend itself. Land reform, targeting landlords through land value taxation and smallholdings legislation, was, therefore, a Liberal imperative to ‘preserve a

42

English Landed Society in the Great War

body of country-bred men ideally suited for military service’.5 Under the new legislation County Councils could obtain the land needed for smallholdings by compulsory purchase, and then let the same to labourers ‘who neither owned the soil they worked nor rented it from the landlords, but instead held it on state or local authority tenancies’.6 The presumption was that ‘being a tenant of an elected County Council was preferable to being a tenant of a private landlord’.7 The Bill passed because Lord Carrington judged the mood of their Lordships correctly:  Peers were ‘a bit alarmed’ and ‘hated the whole thing’,8 but opinion in the Lords was shifting towards using the agency of the state to broaden the ownership of smallholdings.9 Ultimately, Lord Carrington’s hopes of ‘a peaceful agricultural revolution’10 were to be disappointed. On the other hand, by 1911, while serving as President of the Board of Agriculture, Carrington complimented Tory grandees on their change of heart: ‘The Tory Party has been converted to the smallholdings idea in platoons, and they are now being baptised in battalions.’11 With the system of great estates apparently breaking up, there was ‘common ground’12 between Liberal and Conservative peers regarding an opportunity to increase the number of smallholdings; the question was, should they be County Council owned or privately owned? If peers were determined to keep the core of their ancestral estates in private ownership then surrounding them with a belt of privately owned smallholdings was ‘one of the best defences of the [Tory] peers in an increasingly hostile political environment’13 and their ‘preferred riposte to the Land Campaign’.14 Even Lord Carrington, while actively promoting a programme of County Council–owned smallholdings, and letting his own private smallholdings, ‘never even considered selling his “core” estates’ before 1914’.15 Considered in purely patriotic terms, both approaches sought to encourage young men to stay on the land, because, as the Earl of Malmesbury told the House of Lords in 1914, ‘the finest recruits we get for the Army come from the agricultural districts’.16 Opening up access to the land was one solution, the other was higher wages. In 1913, the Liberal Land Enquiry called for ‘a legal minimum wage, [fixed] by means of some form of wage tribunal’;17 this was endorsed by Lloyd George’s Land Campaign. These tribunals would come under a new Ministry of Land ‘ensuring the penalties laid against the landowner . . . passed through to the benefit of the labourer in the form of higher wages and better living conditions’.18 A new Ministry of Land would have been a direct assault ‘on the last bastion of aristocratic privilege’19 but this proposal, like those for a wages board, failed to materialize in peacetime. A  revival of unionism and strikes over wages in

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1913 and 1914 were, in the meantime, ‘perhaps for farmworkers a superior alternative to the Land Campaign’,20 although landlords could wield a big stick if farmworkers joined a union. Addressing the House of Lords in 1914, Lord Lucas, the Liberal Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, raised the case of the farmworkers on Lord Lilford’s estate to highlight the need for legislation: ‘I do not see that short of legislation there is any means of remedying the present state of affairs . . . if the report be true that a number of men on . . . [Lord Lilford’s] estate have been given a fortnight’ notice or the alternative of quitting an agricultural labourer’s trade union.’21 On the question of legislation, the achievements, or lack thereof, of the Land Campaign stand in stark contrast to the subsequent Food Production Campaign (see Chapter 4).22 Under the 1917 Corn Production Act skilled farmworkers and agricultural labourers were guaranteed a minimum national wage of 25s. a week, supervised by County Wage Boards answerable to an Agricultural Wages Board in London. In 1918, members of the National Agricultural Labourers Union (est. in 1906) became part of this new wage negotiation machinery. This legislation completely overturned the pre-war model outlined by the Marquess of Salisbury in the House of Lords in 1914: May I say – although, perhaps, it is not an observation which will be entirely acceptable to noble Lords on the opposite side of the House – I believe that the good feeling [in the countryside] is largely due to the landowner. The landowner is the solvent for many of the difficulties in agricultural life. He is on very good terms with his tenants; he is generally on good terms with his labourers; and he is able to adjust any difficulties that may arise between them . . . the landowning class . . . [can] act as conciliators now and [are] quite willing to act as conciliators in the future . . . [should] a system . . . be brought into existence which would solve the great difficulties of agricultural wages without the necessity [of] . . . industrial struggle.23

Responding to this classic evocation of the central role and purpose of the landlord within agriculture and rural society, Lord Lucas reiterated the point, finally redressed by the state in 1917, that there was ‘no gainsaying . . . the question of agricultural wages represents a most serious problem’.24 Low wages resulted in labour on the farms being done either ‘by the very old men or by very young boys’ because labourers ‘who are in what might be called the prime of life’25 were leaving the countryside. Lord Lucas continued: ‘No one who has had to administer the Small Holdings Act, as I have had to do since I have been at the Board of Agriculture, could fail

44

English Landed Society in the Great War

to realise that small holdings are by no means a universal remedy’ either for low wages or for a shortage of cottages. Lord Lucas estimated that there was a shortage of between 100,000 and 120,000 cottages. The cause of this shortage was attributed to low wages: ‘It is undoubtedly the case that the principal reason, almost the only reason, for the shortage of cottages is the fact that under the low wages that are paid [by farmers] in a great many parts of the country it is the custom not to charge an economic rent or a rent at which it is possible to [justify landlords] build[ing] proper cottages.’26 In essence, low wages resulted in a ‘low rent-paying capacity, which in turn reduced the incentive for landowners . . . to build new cottages’.27 In 1914, this assessment of cause and effect was challenged by Lord Lansdowne: In this House we have fortunately to deal with the noble Lord and not the Chancellor of the Exchequer [and there is] . . . a considerable amount of agreement . . . that there is a grievance . . . I am glad the noble Lord put in the forefront of his argument the close connection between the housing question and the wages question . . . but he altogether forgot another factor which contributes to the shortage of houses. Has he failed to notice the effect of the Land Taxes upon housebuilding? He said . . . there was a deficiency of 120,000 houses . . . but has he not been informed . . . [of] the drop in the building of houses which took place in the years following the passage of the Finance Act of 1910?28

In 1915, the subject of rural housing remained under discussion, and under these new conditions Rowland Prothero, formerly chief agent to the Duke of Bedford and the future President of the Board of Agriculture (1916–1919), offered a more nuanced analysis: I have a return for 260 estates in various parts of England and Wales representing over one million acres, dealing with upwards of 22,000 agricultural cottages built for agricultural labourers . . . I  would remind hon. Members that nearly oneseventh of these 22,000 cottages are occupied by old age pensioners – occupied through the sympathy of that class which is not always fairly treated by hon. Members opposite . . . [as regards a] shortage of agricultural cottages . . . in the unofficial land enquiry . . . 120,000 cottages was the shortage in rural districts . . . [but] those were rural districts, not agricultural districts, and that it was not a shortage of agricultural cottages, but a shortage of cottages required for other purposes than agriculture.29

On the great estates, landlords needed enough cottages to house enough farmworkers to be confident of attracting farmers.30 These ‘tied’ cottages were let with the farm allowing the farmer to then attract the stockmen, cowmen,

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45

horsemen, shepherds and ploughmen and the skilled farmworkers, who were regularly employed tending to, and working with, the animals on the farm. The general condition of ‘tied’ cottages could vary but the overall shortage of housing in rural districts meant ‘many workers had no choice but to accept the housing provided on the farms where they worked’.31 One suggestion for improving both the quantity and quality of ‘tied’ housing was for landowners to let them directly to the farmworker. The worker would then pay a more economic rent to the landlord, with the rent paid to the landlord by the farmer adjusted downwards to compensate for the lost cottage rent and the higher wages needed by the workers to pay a higher rent. But what if the farmworker promptly changed jobs and not their house? No farmer wanted a worker he no longer employed living on his farm.32 In the estate villages, the estate workers and employees rented their cottages directly from the landlord. These were ‘by and large better built and especially better looked after than in the villages around’.33 When combined with the ‘regularity of employment provided by estate work’ this was ‘probably the most important carrot for working people’.34 The regularity of the work on the farms involving animals was a similar inducement to working people to take a ‘tied’ cottage, with a garden or an allotment, to supplement the low wages paid by the farmer.35 In 1914, therefore, there was a pool of skilled farmworkers, cowmen, ploughmen, stockmen, horsemen, shepherds, as well as estate workers who were subject to both the carrot and the stick of the aristocracy’s patriotic outburst of ‘active paternalism’.36 On the estate of the Marquess of Lincolnshire (formerly Lord Carrington), where all the cottages were let directly by the Marquess to his farm and estate workers, instructions were given that where any adult member of the cottager families joined the Colours their families would live rent free for the duration of the war.37 Implementing a similar policy elsewhere was problematic given that ‘tied’ cottages were sublet by the farmer directly to the farmworker. In these circumstances, landowners had to bar farmers from housing substitute workers, intensifying the housing problem, because married men who enlisted were given a guarantee that their wives, widows and children would not be evicted from their ‘tied’ cottages.38 On enlisting, the farmer did stop a worker’s weekly wage and the landowner was under no obligation to provide financial compensation. The state, by contrast, was obligated to do so, and separation allowances gave wives (see Chapter  4), living on a farm in a ‘tied’ cottage, an income ‘not far from the normal’.39 Landlords accepted responsibility for housing the wives and children of the farmworkers who, unlike the younger aristocratic aesthetes, had enlisted for ‘patriotism, job security and a short war’.40

46

English Landed Society in the Great War

Landowners could do nothing less having ‘played heavily on the traditional values of patriotism, deference and a deeply paternalistic system of social relationships . . . wrapped in notions of privilege, duty and responsibility’.41 Farmworkers, living in a ‘tied’ cottage, were expected to go to war ‘as much as a part of their duty to the social structure of rural areas as to King and Country’.42 In Sussex, as elsewhere, landowners ‘immediately started to employ their local leadership roles in the cause of voluntary recruiting’ and, in so doing, hoped to demonstrate ‘the continuing utility of paternalistic social relations . . . to a nation preparing for war’.43 According to Keith Grieves, landowners with clearly identifiable local economic, political and leisure interests ‘attended to the search for recruits [in the] . . . expectation that the deferential labourers would follow their “betters” to war’.44 But what of the unskilled farmworkers and agricultural labourers living in the villages neighbouring the great estates? By the early 1900s, while some features of the old model of ‘open’ and ‘close’ villages remained ‘especially in the extreme case of estate villages, labour shortage had done away with the problem just as surely as labour surplus had created it’.45 This resulted in far closer bonds developing between the landowner and the farmworkers living in the cottages ‘tied’ to their farms,46 but the labourers in the neighbouring villages remained outside this system of social relationships. In these villages, the appeals of landowners to join the Territorials were given moral weight, as Lord St David’s recognized, by highlighting the patriotic actions of the younger members of the aristocracy. One country gentlemen ‘of ancient family’ who ‘hardly seemed to recognise the military age limit as a bar to his services’, told his audience: Unluckily for me I  have got to the age when I  shall be regarded by the War Office, indeed have already been regarded, as perfectly useless for the purpose. Within two days of the war breaking out I sent to the War Office offering my services either at home or abroad, as seemed best to them. They told me my services would not be required. At all events I can say for myself, I have only two sons: one of them is fighting in France, the other is with the Territorials and ready to go the moment they send him. These are my two sons. If I had ten sons I would thank God for the opportunity to be able to give them to the service of my country.47

The Earl of Powis, the Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire and the President of the Shropshire (Salop) Territorial Force Association had an ‘active interest in recruiting for the Territorial Army’.48 His campaign was inestimably assisted by the actions of his son Robert Percy, Viscount Clive, who when serving with the

Mobilizing the Farmworker

47

2nd Battalion Scots Guards at the Battle of Ypres in October 1914, ‘was sent home with frostbite . . . [and who] on the formation of the Welsh Guards [raised in 1915] . . . joined that regiment and he is now serving with it in France’.49 In 1914, in Leicestershire, the Duke of Rutland and Sir Charles Welby addressed a recruiting meeting where: His Grace set before his audience four points . . . In the first place, there was an urgent necessity to keep our fighting forces at full strength; all gaps must be filled . . . Secondly, we had to do something in helping to keep the reserves of the fighting army up to full strength and properly efficient; also the Territorials [training to go to France], who had had their baptism, not of fire, but of being embodied [mobilised] and coming into active being for the first time in their history. Thirdly, we could help the new armies being created by Lord Kitchener . . . Sir Charles Welby then mentioned that he had a son fighting in the Expeditionary Force, and just as he was leaving home to come to that meeting he received a telegram intimating he had been slightly wounded.50

The first to go from the countryside were the Reservists, the ex-Regulars who re-joined the regular battalions of their local infantry regiments having remained on the Reserve List at the end of their military service. Alongside them went the Territorial battalions which, despite Kitchener’s initial reservations, successfully covered the gap between the ‘virtual death’ of the pre-war Regular Army battalions and the arrival of the ‘Service’ battalions of his New Armies.51 Kitchener had been doubtful of a force recruited by the County Associations that relied on appeals to local patriotism based upon a sentimental attachment to local families or estates. By contrast, the application, by an interventionist state, of ‘the “Pals” principle beyond the control of the aristocracy and gentry’, brought into being battalions that were more ‘genuine expressions of local patriotism . . . because more universalised motifs of landscape . . . provided wider reference points for enlistment than could be provided . . . by “gentlemen of influence” ’.52 Equally, as Britain’s continental commitment was scaled up from fielding six Regular Divisions and fourteen Territorial Divisions to a seventy Division army, a ‘nation in arms’, the ‘dominantly paternalist mode of recruiting became an increasingly inadequate social response to the demand for military manpower’53 by the War Office. On the other hand, if ‘regional magnates’ had been ‘more significant sources of recruitment supply than the War Office in the first six months of the war’54 could they continue to perform a role recruiting men ready to sign up for three years’ foreign service in the ‘Service’ Battalions of the New Armies?55

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English Landed Society in the Great War

Landowners and the County Associations continued to raise recruits for their local Territorial Battalions up to the introduction of conscription, often helping to raise a ‘Second Line’ Battalion.56 But to stay relevant they needed, as the Duke of Rutland and the Sir Charles Welby recognized, to shift their focus to the New Armies by ‘emphasizing a sense of place and locality rather than ambiguous notions of paternalism’57 under the auspices of an increasingly interventionist state. Country Life was convinced that recruitment was greatly assisted where there was a ‘natural and hereditary head’; and like the Earl of Derby or the Duke of Portland was to Lancashire and Nottinghamshire, ‘the Duke of Devonshire is to Derbyshire – at once its true leader and the centre and mainspring of the patriotic activities in the shire . . . [having] thrown himself heart and soul into the work of raising the New Armies . . . [he] has been . . . indefatigable in raising recruits’.58 The result, prior to conscription, was that a dual recruiting system developed in which the New Armies and the Territorial Army were set up in ‘competition rather than co-operation’ with each other, but with recruits being raised for both ‘by much the same people’.59 As the Earl of Dartmouth explained in 1915, he was looking for recruits to replenish the ranks of all the units being hard hit: ‘Whether it is the old regiments which we knew, or the Territorial Force which we helped to raise, or whether it is the New Army.’60 Speaking on behalf of the Council of the Territorial Associations, the Earl highlighted some of the problems that arose from competing systems of recruitment where there had been ‘a certain amount of conflict between Territorial and Regular recruiting . . . [when] A  was trying to pinch B’s men’61 that had now been overcome, although: ‘The Regular recruiter . . . has [a] complete machinery; he has the War Office at his back . . . The Territorial recruiter . . . his machinery is incomplete, he has only the County Association to back him up.’62 Regardless, the work of the County Associations was recognized by Sir John French and ‘every month . . . we hear . . . of the splendid work which the Territorial Force is doing at the Front. The one great asset of the Territorial Force is that it is territorial . . . each battalion is raised . . . in its own . . . county . . . and that is of the utmost value in fostering the territorial sentiment’.63 This was also the territorial sentiment, or sense of place, fostered by the territorial influence of local landowners which Lord Kitchener and the Earl of Derby had now co-opted to raise recruits for the New Armies. This is evident in Country Life’s review of recruiting in the two ‘almost purely agricultural’ counties of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire in 1915: ‘Besides the two regular battalions of the county regiment and its 3rd and Special Reserve Battalion, which have to be kept up to strength, there are five

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battalions of the New Army. The 4th [Territorial] Battalion and three squadrons of yeomanry are already serving at the Front.’64 The Earl of Derby, who was described in Country Life, in 1915, as ‘the best recruiting sergeant in the three Kingdoms’ helped to raise whole Battalions of ‘Pals’ in Manchester and Liverpool:  ‘His sphere of territorial influence spreads wide throughout the county, but it is strongest in the Liverpool area . . . and Manchester, determined not to be beaten by Liverpool, took up the challenge.’65 Once again, the ‘fine example’ set by the Earl was set against that of his family: ‘His eldest son, Lord Stanley, whose coming of age would normally have been celebrated . . . throughout Lancashire . . . holds a commission in the Grenadier Guards.’66 The influence of the Earl was felt far beyond Lancashire. On becoming Director General of Recruiting in 1915, he proposed a scheme for would-be recruits to ‘attest’ to their readiness to be called up in a ‘last attempt to find recruits short of conscription’.67 The impact of this scheme, when combined with a rural elite who ‘exercised their position within local communities to press men into army service’,68 was captured by the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon: Memorial Tablet (1918) Squire nagged and bullied till I went to fight, (Under Lord Derby’s scheme). I died in Hell – (They called it Passchendaele) . . . At sermon-time, while Squire is in his pew, He gives my gilded name a thoughtful stare; For, though low down upon the list, I’m there; “In proud and glorious memory” . . . that’s my due. Two bleeding years I fought in France, for Squire: I suffered anguish that he’s never guessed. I came home on leave: and then went west . . . What greater glory could a man desire?69

By July 1915, as the Earl of Dartmouth informed the House of Lords, ‘no fewer than 150,000 men have been taken from the agricultural industry’.70 Overall, estimates of the number of agricultural workers in England and Wales who joined the armed services between 1914 and 1918 vary considerably and range from 243,000 to 300,000.71 Their eulogy was written by F. E. Green: ‘Two hundred thousand farm labourers volunteered in England and Wales . . . and exchanged the fields they knew intimately for . . . bloodstained battlefields . . . [for a] country of which they did own a single rod . . . for the country which had refused them a living wage.’72 The majority were unskilled farmworkers exacerbating the pre-war labour shortage of young men in the prime of life,

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necessitating the mobilization of older labourers and young boys and village women (see Chapter 4) for farm work. Skilled farmworkers had been exempted from recruitment in 1915 under the ‘starring’ system introduced under the 1915 National Registration Act in an effort to protect a pool of vital farmworkers. Recruitment in rural districts was unable to compete in numerical terms with more populous areas;73 nonetheless, as Lord Selborne, the President of the Board of Agriculture, told the House of Lords in 1916, in 1914, farm labourers had ‘flocked to the Colours in their patriotism’.74 So many had in fact enlisted that it quickly became apparent that a balance had to be struck between the needs of the Army and the needs of agriculture. It was not, in Lord Selborne’s opinion, ‘striking a just balance if . . . a flock [was left] without a shepherd, or a team without a ploughman’.75 Clearly, it was the responsibility of the Board to retain for the farmer the skilled farmworkers ‘without whom the farm could not be worked’; and this included the men who ‘look after the horses . . . the cattle . . . the sheep; the men who thatch, or who drive the steam plough [and] the blacksmiths’.76 Once these workers were placed in reserved occupations then ‘the War Office would be entitled to . . . say: “We will take the greatest number we can of the fit men of military age” ’.77 The Duke of Marlborough expressed his misgivings: ‘We all know that Lord Derby must have his recruits . . . but it is not easy for Lord Selborne to come to his aid by promising to burn the candle at both ends’78 by accepting the loss of farmworkers while at the same time attempting to grow more food (see Chapter 4). But, that, as Lord Selborne explained in 1916, was exactly what agriculture had to do, every man who can possibly be spared from agriculture should go and fight in the ranks of the Army. At the same time, it has been my duty to stand up for agriculture, and if I did not do that nobody else would. It was not the business of Lord Kitchener to stand up for agriculture; it was his business to stand up for the Army . . . I have taken the strongest line I could in defence of agriculture [but the] . . . first duty [of farmers] as patriotic Englishmen was to cultivate the land with the least possible retention of labour that could be spared to the Army.79

By November 1915, the Marquess of Lansdowne, working from the National Register, estimated 123,000 men working in the agricultural industry had been ‘starred’.80 Unfortunately, due to what Lord Selborne labelled ‘carelessness’, while he was ‘able to prove that many men who ought to have been starred had not been starred . . . Lord Derby, on behalf of the Secretary of State for War, was able to prove . . . that a great many men had been starred who had no right to be starred’.81 To address this, the War Office and the Board of Agriculture

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established a system of local tribunals to strike a just balance between the future needs of agriculture and the needs of the Army. In 1916, Lord St Audries was the Chairman of his local Recruiting Committee, War Agricultural Committee and the Board of Agriculture’s representative on the County Appeal Tribunal:  ‘Of course, no one man ought to occupy all these positions, because the interests conflict, but I’m sorry to say there is nobody else in my county available, as all are otherwise employed.’82 Following the move towards conscription, landowners serving within this new official machinery were working to resolve the needs of one Whitehall department versus another over the ‘conflicting manpower needs of the armed forces and agriculture’.83 Farmers, meanwhile, could apply to their local Labour Exchange requesting the release of farmworkers from the Army on a temporary furlough. In August 1916, Country Life described a harvest scene where ‘the working party consisted of the farmer, two boys, three women, and four soldiers on agricultural furlough’.84 There was another pool of soldiers available, namely, German P.O.W.’s, but their use was, understandably, controversial. In 1916, the Board of Agriculture deflected criticism for not using them by blaming the ‘obstinacy of the War Office’85 for being unwilling to allow the use of German prisoners in small groups. By 1917, this anomaly had been rectified, as Country Life reported, German P.O.W.s were now often seen: ‘They come along in fives, with a soldier behind them carrying a rifle. It is slung on his shoulder but loaded . . . they are soldierly-looking . . . compact, erect, blue-eyed and taciturn.’86 Utilizing this pool of workers made sense but their use was a source of tension among farmworkers who were not ‘overpowered with joy at finding representatives of other lands in their midst’.87 The Portuguese labourer by ‘not interfering with any local work when [for example] engaged in trimming up and cutting the great elms’ was ‘tolerated’ and more so because of the ‘way in which he tips his hat . . . with a salute and a smile to the passer-by . . . Not so the Germans’.88 These men ‘marching into a little town . . . come as workers, and among those who look on are many whose sons, fathers or brothers have died on the battlefield . . . it is not to be expected that they should receive a cordial welcome, and the Government is not winning any favour by treating them with so much liberality in the way of food and lodging’.89 More British soldiers appeared in the countryside in 1917 when the War Office formed its CII and CIII recruits in agricultural companies. These were deployed onto farms by the new County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs; see Chapter  4).90 In West Suffolk, the  Executive Committee agreed to a motion by the Marquess of Bristol that once allocated to

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a farm, men should not be taken away except for military purposes. This was in response to the transfer of men ‘from the agricultural battalions of the Suffolk Regiment . . . to the Labour Battalions of Southern County Regiments’, taking away men ‘who were acquainted with the conditions of the land . . . where they were now employed’, hence the motion which the Marquess hoped, ‘would prevent them going from one farm to another at the sweet will of the military’.91 This new agricultural army was by way of ‘a compensatory gesture’92 for the calling up of 30,000 men from agriculture by the War Office in early 1917.93 In response to this ‘staggering blow’ the new President of the Board of Agriculture, Rowland Prothero, accepted that the Board had to work with the War Office but ‘when you have to choose between two such conflicting claims as the increase of food production and the increase of our military force abroad, and when you have to do it when both of them want the men at the same time, it is difficult to arrive at any satisfactory compromise’.94 In seeking to resolve the situation the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, told Lord Derby, ‘unless we are able to increase food supplies . . . we shall be beaten by starvation’.95 Derby, who resented ‘the insinuation . . . that the War Office has only one idea and that is to get men and to pay no consideration whatever to agriculture’96 concurred. Prothero, suitably relieved, observed that the War Office ‘has always endeavoured to do its best for agriculture . . . [and] gives us man for man, but the quality varies’.97 This qualitative gap was accentuated by the plough-up campaign of 1917 and 1918 (see Chapter  4) ‘which was hampered from the start by a shortage of skilled ploughmen’,98 hence attempts had to be made to find ‘soldiers who could plough, and supply them to farmers for the ploughing season’.99 In June 1917, it was agreed that there could be no further loss to agriculture without the consent of the CWAECs.100 These Committees ‘composed of prominent landlords and farmers’101 were responsible for overseeing the Food Production Campaign, specifically the ‘plough-up’ campaign initiated by the new Food Production Department. This campaign, by shifting the balance in agriculture from livestock to arable production, increased the demand for labour ‘conflicting further with military needs’102 and concerns regarding labour shortages. Christopher Turnor, the Lincolnshire landowner and Chairman of the Kesteven WAEC, referring to the statement by Lord Derby that there were 60,000 men supposedly non-essential to agriculture, challenged the War Office to ‘show a tenth of that number, and it was really very serious if they had to submit to 30,000 men being taken . . . in contravention of all pledges given’.103 The following spring, however, ‘agricultural needs were once more subordinated to

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the military’104 as the huge German offensives of March and April 1918 ‘changed the situation’ resulting in a ‘military demand [being] . . . made on agriculture for thirty thousand of its most efficient workers’105 selected by the CWAECs to fill quotas set by the Food Production Department.106 The landlords who served on these committees were working to resolve the needs of an agricultural industry subordinated to the conflicting needs of Whitehall departments. On the ground, the social influence of the landowner as an aid to recruitment had become redundant with the introduction of conscription in 1916 under the Military Services Act. Meanwhile, on the question of wages, ‘on the eve of the war’ the ordinary English agricultural labourer ‘was one of the worst paid of all manual workers’.107 In 1915, with inflation ‘increasing both the profits of the farmers and the price of food for the labourer’, the Earl of Leicester helped to negotiate an increase in farm wages from 15s. to 18s. a week in a ‘a triumph of common sense and patriotism’.108 By 1917, the paternalistic influence of the landowner over the agricultural labourer and the skilled farmworker had been supplanted by wage negotiating machinery which ‘took bargaining for wages out of the paternalist relationship and placed it within the sphere of the state’.109 In addition, the state had ‘taken to itself unprecedented interventionist powers in relation to vast areas of agriculture’110 and by extension the ancestral acres owned by a landowning aristocracy.

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Landlords and Food Security

In December 1916, the new coalition government led by Lloyd George, confronted by a poor North American grain harvest and Germany’s U-Boat campaign threatening ‘the four-fifths of breadstuffs consumed in the UK but produced overseas’1 opted to act decisively to stimulate agricultural production ‘and inaugurated a radical food production policy’.2 Instead of ‘producing one loaf out of five’, declared Country Life, ‘we must produce the whole of the five loaves’!3 In 1917, a new Ministry of Food Control led by a Food Controller was established. The Ministry was twinned with the Board of Agriculture’s new Food Production Department (FPD) led by a Director General. The Ministry of Food was responsible for regulating the supply of food and for controlling prices – much to the annoyance of the Earl of Kimberley who called the attention of the House of Lords to the prices of beef per cwt. fixed by the Food Controller . . . Speaking as one who farmed land, he assured the House that farmers were dumbfounded at the prices fixed . . . [and were] likely to lose money . . . some farmers had already ploughed up their turnips, and had decided to grow wheat instead, which would pay them better. Farmers were not unpatriotic, but they could not afford to lose from £7 to £8 per head of their stock of bullocks.4

The FPD meanwhile was responsible for increasing the production of wheat, oats and potatoes by encouraging farmers to plough up grassland and pasture, backed by the Corn Production Act of 1917, which guaranteed farmers a minimum price of 60s. a quarter for wheat and 38s. and 6d. for oats.5 Both the Agricultural Consultative Committee of 1914, which included Christopher Turnor, Charles Bathurst and Edward Strutt, and the Departmental Committee of Production of Food in England and Wales of 1915, which comprised, Lord Milner (Chair), Rowland Prothero, A.  D. Hall and Edward Strutt, had recommended a guaranteed minimum price for oats and wheat.

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The Corn Production Act of 1917 was, therefore, a victory for agricultural reformers and improving landlords grouped around Lord Milner who had argued the state could no longer afford to continue its pre-war neglect of agriculture. Under the Corn Production Act ‘the state undertook to lay down the duties incumbent upon and attaching to the ownership and occupation of land and its development in the national interest’.6 To traditional landowners the involvement of the state in the management of their estates was an anathema, but to Conservative agricultural reformers what other option was there? Viewed from their perspective, the future of agriculture depended on involving the state, a fact the war served to accentuate, because despite there being much excellent estate management and much high farming practised in Britain, they believed there was much more slack estate management and bad farming. This imbalance . . . could no longer be tolerated [especially] when the safety of the state was at issue . . . [and when there] were growing doubts . . . as to the efficiency of utilising the individual landowners as the instruments of reform. Many landlords were seen as having already lost interest in increasing the productivity of the land [in favour of sport]. The consequences of this apathy were reflected in the acceptance of non-economic rents, under-capitalisation, and the retention of ‘unprogressive’ tenants.7

The agricultural management of the great estates had been a contentious issue before the Great War. The ‘Indian Summer’, described by Girouard, had landowners sipping gin and keeping the core of their estates in cultivation for partridges. Landowners had, according to County Life, ‘ceased to live on the produce of their acres. They liked to own land if they were rich enough to afford it, but their income was in an ever-increasing degree derived from other sources’.8 R. J. Thompson calculated that the average rent of agricultural land in England and Wales in 1900 was 30 per cent below the figure for 1872.9 Visiting Orwell Park in Suffolk, in c.1901–2, Rider Haggard was informed by Ernest Pretyman, who explained: ‘To own a great estate of this nature is to keep a ravening wolf of which the hunger is never satisfied. The more money that is spent on it, the more it demands. The farming does not really pay; the rents of the tenants . . . do not equal the amounts expended on the buildings; the cottages erected bring in little or no interest and so forth.’10 Considered in these terms, as Fisher suggests, ‘the elite’s priorities lay in protecting its property rights’11 rather than improving the productivity of their estates. Hence, A. D. Hall in his pilgrimage of British farming between 1910 and 1912 concluded that ‘the owners, however kindly and helpful to their tenants, are yet deficient in leadership . . . at their worst

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landlords became mere rent receivers and must . . . take some higher view of their function’.12 There were Edwardian landowners who, as Peter Mandler has indicated, were  managing the core of the ancestral estates more closely. In c.1901–2, Haggard met with Sir Charles Knightley in Northamptonshire and Edmund Turnor in Lincolnshire. The former managed ‘every acre of his great estates without even the aid of a foreman’, while the latter did ‘much the same and even keeps a cropping book of each individual field of his domains, whether it is in his own hands or in those of his tenants’.13 Lord Carrington, who owned estates in both Lincolnshire and Buckinghamshire, managed on an income derived ‘almost entirely from agricultural land rental’.14 According to Andrew Adonis, ‘the experience of Carrington may not have been uncommon’ among a substantial section of the peerage ‘possessing broad rural acres . . . [with] little else yielding income besides’.15 Between 1902 and 1912, the fall in their money incomes, linked to the collapse in the price of wheat, was at least halted, if not reversed.16 Moreover, as Mark Rothery argues, despite frequent claims of poverty and extinction the total wealth of the gentry ‘remained substantial’ and those ‘able to sell land during periods of high capital values were able to sustain the family patrimony’.17 Between 1902 and 1912, when it came to the management of an agricultural estate the involvement of Edwardian landowners could vary considerably, although, by 1912, the context within which more agriculturally minded landlords were managing their estates was very different from that described by Haggard in 1902. With mixed arable and livestock farming beginning to recover and Lloyd George targeting landowners, the land and its management, as A. D. Hall noted had suddenly become a matter of interest to our general population . . . the break-up of the great estates seemed to have begun, though it now would appear that the sales of 1910–11 were due to a combination of more temporary circumstances than to any settled policy on the part of the owners . . . [at the same time] the farming community was just becoming conscious of a return of prosperity that promised to last for some time.18

Then came the war, at which point landowners focused on their military function as opposed to their agricultural function. ‘With little exaggeration’, Ernest Pretyman could ‘defy the detractors of his class “to find a rural landowner or a landowner’s son of military age who is not serving his country”  ’.19 To the territorial landowner, the true test of one’s patriotism ‘was clearly to fight

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for one’s country, not to lead a campaign to upgrade farming’.20 This was about to change. Welbeck Abbey, the seat of the Duke of Portland, ‘a great country gentleman and agriculturalist’ was ‘full of visitors come to take part in a function lying very near to his heart, the annual estate show or review of the year’s agricultural work’21 when war was declared. It was, in the view of Country Life, fortunate that before the war broke out the Royal Agricultural Society of England was able to secure the services of the Duke of Portland as President. He is not only a great, popular and enterprising landowner, but one who has the closest interest in agriculture, and in whom patriotism is still more pronounced. No one is fitter to combine the interests of agriculture with Imperial interest . . . indeed, they are one and the same. As important as the conduct of the campaign is the maintenance of our food supply at its highest level.22

Co-opting local landowners into a system of state-controlled agriculture was, as Rowland Prothero recognized, an ‘opportunity to re-establish agriculture under a system of state support which would secure good farming by the farmer and good estate management by the landlord’.23 Unfortunately, improving landlords were in the minority. Moreover, the ability of landlords, more generally, to lead a campaign to upgrade the farming on their estates was, ironically, hindered by the absence of so many landlords at the front. In these circumstances, the actions of the agricultural reformers actually ‘weakened the landed system . . . creating conditions under which the tenant farmers were able to emerge as the representatives of the agricultural interest’, resulting in a ‘fundamental change in the position of leadership in the countryside’.24 In 1914, the system of landlords and tenants ‘had reached its apogee’,25 but already the role of agricultural landlords in the management of their estates had been modified by the Agricultural Holdings Acts of 1906, 1910 and 1914. By 1914, the landlord ‘could no longer exercise control over the tenant’s farming’26 except in the last year of a tenancy, whereupon tenants could claim compensation for unexhausted improvements; for any repairs and fixtures promised but not provided; and for disturbance costs if the tenant had to quit the farm following the sale of the estate. Subsequently, the ‘enormous impetus given to increased intervention by the state by the First World War resulted in the balance being shifted even further’.27 As J. R. Fisher argues: The exigencies of war saw Prothero [cr. Lord Ernle in 1919] become President of the Board of Agriculture, under the great assailant of landlordism, exercising draconian powers over [food] production with scarcely a cursory

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acknowledgment of the landowner. The irony of his position typified the fate of the land question [and the landowner]. In the War, it was relations with the farmer, the manager of the production unit which were all important in state policies.28

The balance within British farming had shifted too. By 1914, livestock dominated British farming.29 By 1914, the permanent pastures of the dairy and livestock enterprises in the north and west of England were supplemented by the pastures, meadows and temporary grasslands on the mixed arable and livestock enterprises of the south and east of England.30 In the 1890s, imports of North American wheat had produced a slump in the price per quarter of wheat grown in the UK. In 1894–1895 the price of wheat per imperial quarter bottomed-out at 22s. 10d. and 23s. 1d.31 On enterprises formerly geared to growing wheat, where the primary function of livestock had been to produce manure, farmers shifted the balance to livestock by laying down arable land to grass. After 1907, the price of wheat recovered slightly and never fell below 30s., but by now it ‘had become a commodity of less importance to farmers at large’.32 In 1914, however, there were still ‘considerable fields of corn’33 bounded by hedgerows inspiring the aristocratic warrior-aesthete and affecting recruiting patterns as farm labourers delayed joining-up to gather-in the harvest. This was because, ‘a large part of the cereals went for animal feed’34 and straw was a farmyard essential. Barley, rather than wheat, was also ideally suited to the light soils, hot summers and timely rainfall of the east of England.35 In 1915, the President of the Board of Agriculture, Lord Selborne, had sought to shift the balance back to wheat by encouraging farmers to plough up their pastures and temporary grasslands by combining ‘the incentives not only of patriotism, but of personal interest’.36 He appointed a committee, chaired by Lord Milner, which recommended a minimum price for wheat of 45s. a quarter, a ‘plough policy’ and that each County Council set up a County War Agricultural Committee (CWAC); of these, only the recommendation to establish CWACs was implemented. A key function of CWACs was to find additional farmworkers and they were encouraged by Lord Selborne to pay particular attention to organizing women for farm work.37 Lord Selborne, personally ‘appealed to the women of England . . . [to] take the places of their husbands, their brothers, and their sons who are in the trenches’.38 He was joined in his appeal by the Duke of Marlborough, who said any woman ‘prepared to offer her services for the purpose of developing the produce of the soil . . . is helping to win the war just as much as those men whose duty it is to go into the trenches’.39 The challenge, as

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Lord Selborne recognized, was that a woman living in a village with experience of the countryside was the one who least needs to go to work . . . owing to allotments, allowances, and billeting money . . . she never was better off in her life . . . Therefore, you can only get at her by putting this to her as a patriotic duty, and the person to put it to her is not the Minister sitting in an office in London but . . .. the women of other classes whom she knows. Those are the women whose patriotic duty it is to go to her and put the case in its true light.40

These were women who had overturned concerns about ‘ladylike behaviour . . . [and] observing appropriate codes and conventions . . . notable among the gentry, or those aspiring to gentility’.41 Speaking on behalf of the Association to Promote the Employment of Women in Agriculture, the Marchioness of Londonderry had appealed to the ‘country woman, born and bred [who, though] . . . not trained . . . is not inexperienced [regarding] . . . farm work. She should surely come forward in this crisis’.42 Training would, according to her father, Henry Chaplin, be provided by a ‘number of landowners and farmers [who] have generously come forward and undertaken to have women trained in practical work on their own farms; but we are anxious to obtain more assistance’.43 Writing in Country Life, in 1917, of the war in his village, Alfred Ollivant observed: The women of the upper class . . . have to-day put their own sorrows aside . . . The cavalryman’s widow organised and led the cherry-pickers in the orchards this summer . . .. Others in gauntlets, overalls and high boots are busy in garden and fields, stoning, weeding, hedging and ditching. One is head-cowman . . . it is among the women of the upper and, before the war, the leisured class that the greatest change has been wrought  – for they have turned their energies from pleasureseeking to national service – the women of the cottages are playing their part too.44

A similar voluntary recruitment campaign was led by ‘C’ as she told the readers of Country Life in 1916, ‘the sportswoman’s war ought to be done on the land’.45 ‘C’ had responded to the ‘sudden call for women’s labour on the land in the Mother Country’ by leaving her 328 acre farm in Canada where ‘I carried out the business of stock and grain raising almost entirely by the labour of women’ to return to England as ‘it seemed to me that my most useful war work would be the organisation of such labour’.46 On the estate of Major Peake, near Bawtry in Yorkshire, ‘C’ discovered in the midst of several hundred acres of ‘glorious’ farmland, a ‘roomy, hospitable’ house standing empty, and ‘fine’ farm buildings filled with the best kinds of horses,

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cows, calves, pigs, sheep and poultry, complete with up-to-date equipment and tools in the mind of a true patriot such a house, such an equipment, formed the very place for a training . . . centre. Within a week, Mrs Peake had furnished it to accommodate twenty agricultural recruits. An instructress was found to act as principal; a cook and housemaid were engaged to ensure the comfort of the recruits indoors. There is nothing to pay at this centre. All that is asked in return for two weeks’ hospitality and training is an undertaking to take up agricultural work in response to the national appeal . . . My training centre has . . . brought into being others of its kind. Mr Christopher Turnor starts this week on the home farm of his Lincolnshire estate; Lady Ancaster is also starting with six recruits who will work under an instructress at Grimthorpe; in Yorkshire, Lady Sykes has added the privilege of accommodation to that of training at Sledmere; Lady Dorothy Wood and Lady Chetwynde are both ready to start if sufficient applications come forward from recruits. Lady Lawson Tancred is leaving home and will not be able take the same active part in the movement of which she was a pioneer in the Ripon district of Yorkshire, but her enthusiasm is as keen as ever and she is [still] seeking recruits . . . [indeed] the roll of the village registers of England, now running to many thousands . . . [requires] every sportswoman, every woman with knowledge of horses, implements and the land, to come forward and act as captains or forewomen to groups of untrained labour.47

The registers referred to by ‘C’ were compiled by the  Women’s War Agricultural Committees (WWACs) set up by the CWACs in 1916. As with the voluntary campaigns to recruit and train ‘educated women’,48 the WWACs relied on local energy, initiative and persuasion to draw up registers of ‘village women’ willing to do farm work, given that ‘the women of the villages, particularly the wives, daughters and other relatives of the agricultural labourer, are very handy on the farm’,49 if untrained. Women who registered received a certificate declaring how they were serving their country ‘as the man who is fighting in the trenches’50 and on completing thirty days’ approved service were given a bottle green baize armlet marked with a scarlet crown. This visual reminder of the patriotism of ‘village women’ would have been an important marker in the social relationships between labourers and landowners. For example, a meeting of the Kesteven WWAC, presided over by the Countess of Ancaster, reviewed the distribution of ‘armlets and certificates, representing a month’s work on the land; stripes representing six months’ full work; and diamond-shaped badges, representing four stripes, or two full year’s full-time work’.51

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In January 1917, however, the CWACs ‘became virtually defunct’,52 being superseded by new County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs), linked to the FPD of the Board of Agriculture. These ‘provided farmers for the first time with an opportunity to play a definite role in the management of agriculture beyond their own farm gate’ and as such they ‘were seen by the squirarchy as menacing their hegemony in local affairs’.53 The CWAECs were now ‘the body authorised to exercise on behalf . . . of the Board in each administrative county the powers conferred by Regulation 2M [of the Defence of the Realm Act], and their action will not be subject to confirmation by the [County Council’s] War Agricultural Committee’.54 The CWAECs were thus the ‘essential link between farmers and the planners in Whitehall’55 in a system of state control ‘reaching from Whitehall through county and district [and even parish] committees to individual farmer’,56 enabling the state to control agricultural production ‘to the level of the individual field’.57 Under the powers conferred by the Defence of the Realm Act, the CWAECs could evict a bad farmer or even take control of a neglected estate.58 The exercise of these ‘draconian’ powers was, however, moderated, as Lord Milner explained, by the fact ‘these powers are, in practice, going to be worked by local people, farmers and landowners knowing the local circumstances, men whose whole bias will be on the side of the agriculturalists’ and not by ‘some official or officials in Whitehall . . . plunging about the country and telling everyone how he is to cultivate his land’.59 Orders to plough up grassland or pasture were often an official confirmation of what had already been agreed after ‘a friendly word in the ear [or] an appeal to patriotic duty’.60 In E. H. Whetham’s opinion, the plough-up campaign was ‘primarily an exercise in self-government by the farming community, based upon the persuasion and experience of the respected farmers, estate agents, and landowners who composed the county committees’.61 This approach was endorsed by Arthur Lee, the Director General of the FPD, who observed that the farmer ‘cannot be ordered “over the top” like a conscript in the trenches’.62 The FPD itself ‘was not intended to be a farming dictator’, having devolved its powers to the CWAECs who ‘relied heavily on local persuasion’.63 Similarly, as Country Life noted, Rowland Prothero’s experience in ‘the management of the estates of the Duke of Bedford . . . would be no bad training for one who has to attend to the interests of the national agriculture’64 and by his speech to the Federation of War Agricultural Committees, Mr Prothero has gone far to justify his selection as President of the Board of Agriculture . . . There was a note of compulsion in his address . . . [but] the law is to be applied in a spirit of persuasion and not in a spirit of force. That principle should be inculcated in

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the officials who are to carry out the policy outlined by Mr Prothero . . . [the] Food Controller . . . the county war committees [and] . . . inspectors who will survey the land and say what is required to be done . . . [under this system] Mr Prothero has built a communication trench between Whitehall and the working farmer.65

Under the plough-up campaigns of 1917 and 1918, the area of tillage in Britain, mostly in England and Wales, expanded by 2.1 million acres, from 10.3 million acres in 1913 to 12.4 million acres in 1918; as a corollary, the area of permanent grassland was reduced  from 17.5  million acres to 15.9  million acres and temporary grass from 4.0 million acres to 3.5 million acres.66 The acreage under wheat rose less impressively, by only 0.75 million acres, nonetheless, ‘probably never before had the use and management of land changed so dramatically’.67 In spring 1918, the Commissioner for Lincolnshire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire and the Soke of Peterborough was able to report that on estates covering 9,800 acres, only 2½ per of this acreage remained under pasture.68 But what of the owners of this land? Did the communication trench between Whitehall and the farmer extend to the agricultural landlords, or had they been entirely marginalized or bypassed as the leaders of the agricultural interest? In 1917, the Board of Agriculture recommended the Buckinghamshire WEC ‘consider the question of representation of landowners on the Committee’, which resulted in the Marquess of Lincolnshire (formerly Lord Carrington) being appointed to the Committee.69 The Executive Committee was now composed of members ‘of whom a preponderating majority [seven out of nine] directly represent the landed interest, six of them being tenant farmers, and one, the Marquess . . . a local landowner’.70 Corresponding with the Somerset WEC, Prothero emphasized the role of both the landowner and the farmer: The whole of the land of the county should be carefully inspected in order to select that which is the most suitable for arable cultivation. No rule of thumb methods . . . The capability of each county, of each district, of each parish, and of even each farm in the parish, should be ascertained by a complete survey of the land suitable to increased arable cultivation . . . [it] is only by careful selection that the War Agricultural Committee will be able to carry the feeling of the landowning and the farming community with them in the work.71

Likewise, a circular issued to the Chairmen of the Executive Committees by the FPD on 2 June 1917 reiterated this view by recommending they appeal . . . to the landowners and farmers, to meet in conference and to indicate the area of grass land which they are prepared to break-up in the national interest, provided that the necessary assistance in the way of labour, horses or

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English Landed Society in the Great War machinery will be supplied in due course. In several counties there have been such conferences with the agents of the principal estates who have supplied particulars of the properties under their management and have indicated the land which might be broken up . . . These conferences have proved of great assistance to the work of the committees, and it is suggested that they should be arranged in all counties.72

Within these appeals the social influence of the landowner over the tenantry could still be observed. In May 1917, a meeting of the Kesteven WAC and Executive Committee, presided over by Christopher Turnor, and attended by the Earl of Ancaster, Sir John Thorold, Bt. and Sir Charles Welby, Bt., reviewed the efforts being made to meet the FPD’s target to plough up another 50,000 acres. The Executive Committee had sent a letter to all landowners in the county ‘appealing to them to do their utmost to assist in the work, and to arrange, where possible, directly with their tenants for the breaking up of any suitable grass land’.73 Sir Charles Welby called a meeting of his tenants who ‘met him in a most loyal spirit, and everyone showed a desire, whether in accordance with their own wishes or not, to do their “bit” to help the national difficulty’.74 Lord Ancaster urged his fellow landowners in Kesteven to follow the example of Sir Charles, and only plough up land by voluntary arrangement. At the same time they should ‘resist doing anything on a large scale unless there was a definite pledge that men and horse would be available’.75 Together with Lord Lansdowne, Walter Long and Henry Chaplin (created Viscount Chaplin in 1916), Lord Ancaster was conducting a ‘stubborn and largely surreptitious’76 flanking operation against this new government-led land campaign. Their truculence is, perhaps, indicative of a sense of a loss of control, or even marginalization among some agricultural landlords. Regardless of their social influence, the agricultural management of their own land was no longer exclusively  in their hands and it rankled. The CWAECs may have been representative of both landowners and farmers, with reform-minded landlords keen to do their patriotic bit by serving on these committees, but their targets were set in Whitehall, by Arthur Lee, considered by more traditionalist landlords to be ‘the landowners’ bête noire’.77 At a conference of landowners and land agents in Derbyshire, Lord Walter Kerr moved the following resolution: That this meeting of landowners and land agents of the county of Derby pledges itself to do all in its power to carry out the requirement of the Board of Agriculture for the harvest on 1918, on the understanding that the labour and machinery asked for by the County Executive Committee is forthcoming,

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and that an assurance is given by the Government that such compensation will be paid for grass land broken up under the scheme as will ensure that the landowners and farmers are not called upon the bear the loss now or any future date. Also, that this meeting approves of the action of the Executive Committee in having made it clear to the Board of Agriculture that the bringing of an additional 35,000 acres under the plough for the harvest of 1918 depends upon whether these assurances are forthcoming, and that without them, they cannot put their scheme into operation.78

The resolution was carried, and it was further proposed that copies of the resolution be sent to the Lord Lieutenants of each county in England and Wales ‘with a request that it should be supported by the County War Agricultural Committees generally’.79 These were, however, state agencies tasked with delivering a national programme and so outright opposition, along the lines of 1909–1911, would have been considered unpatriotic and smacking of ‘selfinterest and class selfishness’.80 In May 1917, W.  Fitzherbert-Brockholes of Claughton Hall, the Chairman of the Lancashire WEC, wrote to landowners and agents in the county asking them to cooperate with the CWAEC in achieving the government target for Lancashire: The serious shortage in the supply of breadstuffs . . . can hardly be exaggerated. The Government have stated that the needs of the nation require about 3,000,000 acres in England Wales now under grass to be broken up and brought into arable cultivation, and that Lancashire’s share should be about 60,000 acres. Landowners and their agents can be of the greatest assistance to their country in regard to this question, and I am venturing to make this appeal to them to look into this matter, in conjunction with their tenants, as soon as is possible, with the view of formulating schemes for increasing the acreage of arable on their estates. In the selection of grass land to be ploughed, the importance of bringing about a maximum yield during the next two years must always be borne in mind. Very extensive powers are being given to the County War Agricultural Executive Committee with regard to compulsion, but the Executive Committee are hoping with confidence that owners and occupiers will come forward so readily in their country’s need that it will be only in very rare instances that any question of compulsion will arise.81

The Board of Agriculture recognized that the success of the plough-up campaign ‘depended on the goodwill of farmers and landowners’.82 In Yorkshire, at a conference of local landowners in 1917, the Chairman of the North Riding War Agricultural Committee urged them to agree ‘wherever possible with their tenants about ploughing out additional land, and to notify the War Agricultural

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Committee of their recommendations at once, so as to save making any compulsory Cultivation Order’.83 Sir Henry Beresford-Peirse, Chairman of the North Riding County Council, assured the Chairman of the WAC ‘that those present were fully alive to the situation, and would do all they could to support the splendid efforts of the men at the Front’.84 By 1917, in England, defending home and beauty, and ancient pastures, hedgerows and immemorial elms had to be subordinated to the defence of the realm with the landlords who served on CWAECs, like Earl Fortescue in Devon, following ‘the instructions they had received from their superiors in London’85 which changed farming practices. The teams of plough horses which were once a familiar feature of the landscape had been taken for service in France. Many were blown up along with the gun-carriages they pulled through the Flanders mud. Instead, in the wake of the newly invented tank, tractors and steam ploughs belched and rumbled across English fields. Farming had become more mechanised . . . All this was a long way from the vision of an unchanging pastoral landscape.86

Under these changed conditions, what became of the sporting amenities associated with owning these fields?

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In 1910, sporting rights amounting to almost £1.3  million a year were leased out by the landed aristocracy ‘and much shooting land was kept in hand for the entertainment of estate owners and their guests’.1 Each autumn shooting parties would descend on country houses and compete for the largest number of bags. Shooting had always been one of the principal amenities of landownership, but, under the Edwardians the scale of aristocratic shooting on the great estates reached a crescendo. In 1899, on Lord Iveagh’s Elveden estate in Suffolk, a British record was achieved with an aggregate bag of 103,392 head, including 21,053 pheasants.2 By 1907, on just one of the noteworthy shooting estates identified in Suffolk by Nicholas Everitt, 20,000 pheasants (and nearly 100,000 rabbits) were shot in the 1905–1906 season.3 In the 1909 season, according to the Duke of Portland, 2,500 pheasants were shot on each day for three days in succession on the Marquess of Ripon’s estate in Yorkshire.4 The Marquess himself shot 10,000 birds and beasts in 1911 and again in 1912.5 In 1912, during the visit of George V to Elveden, 3,247 head were killed in one day (the total for the three days was 7,785). This figure was, in turn, exceeded in 1913 when a new British record was set with 3,937 pheasants shot in one day at the Buckinghamshire home of Lord Burnham.6 It was against this backdrop of thunderous shooting parties and lavish country house entertainments that Lloyd George went to Limehouse in London’s East End, and took aim at the heart of landed society, and at its sport:7 I claim that the tax we impose on land is fair . . . They [the Lords] go on threatening that if we proceed they will cut down on their benefactions and discharge labour. What kind of labour? . . . Are they going to threaten to devastate rural England by feeding and dressing themselves? Are they going to reduce their gamekeepers? Ah, that would be sad! The agricultural labourer and the farmer might then have some part of the game that is fattened by their labour. Also, what would happen to you in the season? No weekend shooting with the Duke of Norfolk or anyone.8

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Shooting parties fulfilled a number of social functions. Unlike foxhunting, shooting was not a public sport. As Alun Howkins points out, although tenant farmers might hunt ‘they seldom shot with their landlords, since this was a much more closed and private world’.9 Shooting occurred on private land, helping to underpin the ‘social position of landownership’ and ‘the territorial power of the gentry’ while also being ‘an opportunity to mix with social peers’.10 Shooting was both a reflection of the social hierarchy and was itself hierarchical. As Lady Augusta Hervey explained to her son, the Marquess of Bristol, ‘there is no doubt that the King [Edward VII] will want to shoot some day at Ickworth . . . Middleclass entertaining won’t do nor really bad shooting’.11 Recalling his childhood at Sudbourne Hall, in Suffolk, Kenneth Clark explained, ‘no-one, of course, could have been invited who was not a good shot as this was a highly competitive sport, and throughout England, shots were graded, like lawn-tennis players, with Lord Ripon and the Prince of Wales at the summit’.12 Good shooting was an absolute prerequisite for anyone wishing to host a shooting party consisting of the upper echelons of Edwardian landed society, or maybe even the monarch. The Edwardian businessmen when buying an estate were likewise attracted by the opportunity to shoot, because the aristocracy, as Mandler has suggested, were their role models both in style and in habits of leisure.13 The cotton-rich Kenneth Mackenzie Clark, from Paisley, bought Sudbourne Hall in 1904 because, ‘the bags had increased enormously . . . and this, of course, was his reason for buying it . . . he was an excellent shot and he was determined that his guests should have the opportunity of shooting more pheasants than anywhere else in Suffolk’.14 The shooting parties at Sudbourne were ‘those great events in our lives . . . which were in effect the only point in our living there at all’.15 In 1916, an article in Country Life criticized the neglect of agriculture by landowners before the war who had ‘ceased to take any vital interest in husbandry . . . They did not . . . depend wholly on their land for a living. On the contrary, they let it at a rent of less than its real value, and prized the land chiefly as providing shooting, hunting and other sporting facilities, while the house was a pleasant centre of social life’.16 This narrative of agricultural neglect by indulgent or indifferent agricultural landlords, or landowners newly attired in tweed, was particularly applicable to estates situated on the poorer soils where the cost of improving the productivity of the soil had always been high. The cost of new farm buildings for livestock or field-drainage, given the low level of rent available, made this a particularly unattractive investment prior to 1914. On the Elveden estate, therefore, farming ‘as on many other similar estates, was entirely subsidiary to the shooting and was carried on solely as a necessary accessory to it’.17 Given this

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focus on game conservation over agriculture, Everitt concluded ‘no counties in the Kingdom can compare with Norfolk and Suffolk for pheasant and partridge shooting’.18 After Norfolk and Suffolk, and Yorkshire, game shooting was avidly pursued in Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Dorset, Kent and Shropshire, although there were fewer gamekeepers in Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire ‘where fox hunting took precedence over shooting’.19 The economic value, as well as the amenity, of good shooting was equally well known and was a great benefit to Edwardian landlords financially incommoded by low rents. They, like the landed gentry, could lease or even sell their sporting rights to an expanding sporting tenantry of ‘nouveaux riches, who valued the status which the purchase or renting of an estate could bestow, or who needed the dignity of a landed property to support their aspirations to the peerage’.20 Before the war, therefore, landlords could derive more income from shooting tenants than farming tenants and when estates were offered for sale ‘more emphasis was laid on their sporting advantages than upon their agrarian possibilities’.21 According to Everitt, writing in 1907, nearly all the Breckland estates had been bought ‘or leased by men of wealth who cultivate the Brecks for game, in order to improve their shooting; game thriving best where cultivation is carried on’.22 Only a few years earlier, on visiting Orwell Park, Rider Haggard had interviewed Ernest Pretyman for whom the amenities of owning a large estate were the pleasure of living in a fine house on a large extent of private ground, and the value of the shootings, which here of course is very large . . . the owners of such properties would be better off if they abandoned all attempt at agriculture, except such as might be needful to the preservation of partridges . . . and contented themselves with letting their shooting to South African millionaires.23

Reconsidered amid the opulent shooting parties and entertainments enjoyed up to 1914, this same example can be inclined towards the model proposed by Mandler. This is a model which ‘has brought seriously into question the whole business of just how bad things really were for the landowners of early twentiethcentury Britain’.24 The shooting party was the subject of Isabel Colegate’s 1980 novel, set in 1913, of the same name. In the novel, Sir Randolph Nettleby reiterates the concerns that had beset the Edwardian landowner, by writing in the back of his Game Book:  ‘Everything’s against us now. The politicians are determined . . . to take away the power of the landed proprietor . . . do nothing to help agriculture . . . and now the Liberals are crippling us with taxes . . . It will be the ruin of rural

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England.’25 Sir Randolph concluded, if ‘you take away the proper functions of an aristocracy what can they do but play games too seriously’?26 On the other hand, the Edwardian aristocracy still recognized its function as a military caste. This was a function, they believed, perfectly utilized the skill set they had developed through hunting and shooting. Indeed, for young aristocratic officers ‘the pursuits and life style of country gentlemen’27 provided the model for being an officer. The style of shooting enjoyed by these landowners differed depending on the bird they were aiming at. Pheasants were driven towards the guns. This became ‘more of an art as more trouble was taken in the flushing of the birds’ to put them up ‘so that they rose over high trees before coming to the gun’ to produce a ‘bouquet of birds in a grand rush’.28 At Elveden, where 20,000 pheasants were reared every season, shooting brakes would take eight or nine guns to the beat where the birds were driven towards them by a hundred beaters in a uniform of white smocks with red collars and chummy hats, the keepers wearing bowler hats, brown suits and leather gaiters.29 Similarly, at Sudbourne, the birds were driven over the guns ‘by an army of beaters who wore specially designed smocks with red lapels . . . accompanied by keepers who wore bowler hats. Each district had about five beats and the six or seven guns were so aligned that the birds flew out of the wood high over their head’,30 each drive having the precision of a military manoeuvre. By contrast, partridges were walked up into the air by the guns advancing over fields of turnips, where ‘the lines were kept with mathematical precision, and . . . neither dog nor man dared to forestall the advance . . . the solemn and noiseless tramp’.31 Shooting was thus inextricably bound up with the prospect of fields under tillage, bounded by hedgerows and coverts that  inspired the young aristocratic warrior-aesthetes. As H.  B. Macpherson, writing in Country Life in 1915, observed: The sporting estates of Britain have been the means of training a large proportion of her ablest men . . . they have learnt to handle rifle and gun, to ride a horse, and many a lesson of endurance besides. The life of sport has made the young Briton what he is, a natural athlete; has cleared his brain and developed his muscles, and has thus produced men who, when trained, have no equals for coolness, courage, and discipline in the world. The hundred lessons which he has learned in the hunting field and on the moors, in the coverts and in the fields, have fitted him for more arduous work.32

What could be said of these young officers could also be said of the gamekeepers whose job it was to preserve the tens of thousands of partridges

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and pheasants they had reared from eggs from the depredations of predators and poachers. Given the scale of shooting before the war the number of gamekeepers expanded accordingly, and in 1911, according to Lloyd George, there were 25,000 gamekeepers.33 The rush of country gentlemen to the Colours was accompanied by the departure of the gamekeepers too, leaving the work of rearing and preserving game to be done by those too old or too young to wear khaki. In a letter to the Editor of Country Life, in 1916, A. H. wrote as soon as war was declared they flocked to the Colours in large bodies, and on many big estates more than two-thirds of the staff have exchanged the shotgun and the traps for the service rifle and the bayonet . . . They are of the right stuff . . . They are plucky, fearless and resourceful . . . From the first day that they assumed the care of game they have been subjected to very strict discipline . . . [that helped] develop their initiative and self-reliance. They are certainly, the kind of recruits that Lord Kitchener specially wants.34

With their departure the primary agents in facilitating the mass rearing and preservation of game were removed from the English countryside. This, inevitably, ‘disrupted the prevailing system of game conservation as the number of gamekeepers plummeted’.35 In their absence, the number of birds reared plummeted as Country Life observed in 1915 ‘game is being very much neglected, especially pheasants. On many estates where vast numbers used to be reared no eggs at all are being set [by gamekeepers] this year and on other estates the number is strictly limited’.36 The vast numbers of game birds hand-reared each year were fed on corn. Continuing to use corn as a feed for game birds once the war began was, unsurprisingly, hugely contentious. In the 1914, Country Life considered it ‘rather a nice point of conscience with some owners of covert shoots this season to what extent they were justified in feeding pheasants with the corn which . . . might be very badly needed to supply human wants’.37 In response, some landlords gave immediate orders that all their pheasants were to be netted, killed and put in cold storage, only to repent ‘of their excessive haste’ once the price of corn failed to increase ‘to anything like the figure expected’.38 Others, in contrast, had ‘gone on feeding their pheasants, just as if it were a time of piping peace, right up to the present date of covert shooting’.39 Between these two extremes the majority opted to keep their pheasants but cut down considerably on their corn bill: ‘luckily it has been such an extraordinary year for wild fruits, acorns, berries . . . [that pheasants] have been able to pick up much of their own living’.40 Nonetheless, as Country Life proposed in 1915,

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English Landed Society in the Great War since Britons can eat pheasants as well as corn . . . there is much more to be said [by the owners of coverts and game farmers] in favour of rearing pheasants on the assumption that they can be raised and kept . . . on a corn expenditure less by two-thirds . . . In districts where the birds can do no harm to agriculture and can pick up for themselves most of their food, in shape of wild berries and insects, it would be sheer bad economy not to encourage them.41

By 1916, the issue had become more acute. In December 1916, Captain Charles Bathurst, the owner of the 4,000-acre Lydney Park estate in Gloucestershire, became the spokesman in the House of Commons for the new Ministry of Food Control when he was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Food Controller.42 In December 1916, he informed the Commons, ‘the handrearing of game by means of food fit for human consumption is, under present circumstances, to be deprecated. The necessary powers to stop game preserving are being obtained, and will be exercised’.43 Under Regulation 2F of the Defence of the Realm Act, gamekeepers were prohibited from feeding grain to game birds.44 In Country Life, in March 1917, M. Torin contrasted the approach adopted by Lord Devonport (Lord Rhondda’s predecessor) as Food Controller, regarding a patriotic appeal for the voluntary self-rationing of flour and meat, with the compulsory measures applied to feeding corn to game. A local head keeper in charge of a large estate had shown Torin a Game Order ‘prohibiting the feeding of pheasants. No appeal whatever was made to the patriotism of the people as in the case of human food’, but the Order was never taken seriously, since it would encourage an ‘already diminished stock of hungry pheasants to prey on the growing corn’.45 Such Orders were taken more seriously when, following the discovery that pheasants had been fed with grain on the Witley Park estate in Surrey, the home of Lord Pirrie, his gamekeeper was prosecuted and fined. Lord Pirrie was acquitted because he ‘did not know what had been going on. No man realised more than he did how vital was the food supply of the country’.46 In 1914, as in 1915, Country Life had argued that game birds reared each year were themselves a ‘valuable addition, which we certainly cannot afford to lose just now, to the nation’s food supply, but there are other ways, beside shooting, for killing them as required’ given ‘there must be comparatively few people to shoot them’ and for the same reason ‘it will be impossible for the Hunts to take all the toll that they should of the foxes’.47 Considered in these terms the game birds reared and preserved on the great estates ought not be ‘regarded not as objects of sport but of utility – that is, of food – pheasants [being] . . . the most important of our game birds’.48 Lady Wernher, for example, had the game killed on the Luton Hoo estate placed in cold storage ‘for the benefit of the sick and

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wounded, and to assist in alleviating the distress amongst the deserving poor of the neighbourhood’. In addition, ‘owing the present circumstances, no shooting of pheasants . . . will take place . . . but other means will be devised to secure the game for the admirable purpose for which Lady Wernher has decided it shall be used’.49 The difficulty of killing pheasants by means other than shooting was ‘nothing like as great as with partridges’ and avoided the ‘unpleasantness of the biting of a hard shot and of the spoiling of the flesh of the bird by the shot wounds’.50 Partridges, on the other hand, had to be walked up. In November 1914, according to Country Life, ‘even if it were possible to get together the guns and the beaters, people hardly have the heart, this year, to be entertaining house-parties. The most they will do in that way is to ask down a friend or two to come out and shoot the birds by walking up, if they care to do so’.51 Reviewing the 1914–1915 season in January, Country Life acknowledged there had been ‘few big shooting parties; but a great many young soldiers had leave about . . . New Year, and pheasants were shot later than usual’.52 Meanwhile, for ‘those who have the game to kill, and whose circumstances . . . compel them to be at home . . . the best duty that they are able to perform, [is] to kill some . . . of that game which has its value for food’.53 The supply of game to hospitals, especially, enabled landowners to deflect the charge they were continuing to enjoy the amenities of their estates in wartime. In 1914, Guy C. Pollock summed up the ethics of sport in war time: I could wish that it were possible to cease from debating the question of duty and propriety when field sports in war time are concerned . . . [despite] all the best guns and truest sportsmen in this country . . . called to sterner work . . . [and] the thought of friends in trenches overseas . . . [as] the shadow of war stretched from the trenches of Flanders to the woods and fields of a home county . . . The fact that half of the game shot will go to make convalescence more palatable in the new local hospitals seems to invest the business of shooting with some sanction . . . for myself, I should feel happier if I could assure myself that the due performance of certain duties undertaken officially for the defence of the realm cleared me of all possible guilt or suspicion in taking part in any field sport at this time. It remains, however, to put these uneasy ideas so far away as may be and to kill so many pheasants that the local hospitals and their wounded and sick may benefit . . . We shall be hard up for beaters . . . [still] we are not reluctant to serve, as best we may.54

In 1915, Macpherson, likewise, highlighted the importance of game as ‘a valuable source of food supply, and the bulk of it this season has gone to the hospitals for the use of the wounded or has been distributed among the

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poor’.55 The quantity of game being sent to the hospitals, and thus the patriotic justification for continuing to shoot them, was not specified, but 1915 was a year that broke existing records for the number of partridges killed. ‘Naturally, and rightly enough’ according to Country Life, ‘relatively little attention is being paid at the present time to . . . sport; but if anyone has a spare glance to cast in the direction of shooting, and of partridge shooting especially . . . it is very nearly a “record” partridge year’.56 On some estates the bags had beaten all former records, even allowing for the difficulty of bringing together a good team of guns. Looking ahead, ‘people will not, generally speaking, be able to [afford to] rear pheasants [after the war] on the scale they that they did before the war. There is all the more reason, therefore, to rejoice in the vastly improved outlook for the other principal game bird of the lowlands’.57 Justifying this continued slaughter on the grounds of supplying local hospitals with game birds was, ultimately, unsuccessful. In December 1916, shooting was deemed by the state to be an unnecessary amenity rather than a beneficial utility much to the annoyance of Viscount Chaplin. In 1918, in the Lords, he attacked the Food Controller, Lord Rhondda (Lord Devonport’s successor), for the restrictions placed on the rearing and preservation of game by the Ministry of Food Control when ‘the chief sufferers’ of this decision had been ‘the wounded soldiers in our hospitals . . . [as] nearly the whole of the game produced in the country since the war began has been purposely sent to the hospitals’.58 The patriotism of England’s landowners was now, however, being measured by their willingness to sacrifice this amenity rather than boost the number of head of game sent to the local hospitals. As the Coventry Herald explained in 1915: We hear a great deal with reference to the farmers’ duty to the nation, but we do not hear quite so much with reference to the landowners’ duty to the nation. It is the landowners who have the whip hand in the matter of the game problem, and one can only express the hope that the majority of landowners will see that game preserving is not exactly the business that should come first in such strenuous and critical times as these in which we are living.59

Having analysed shooting on seventy-two estates, Stephen Tapper of the Game Conservancy Trust concluded that game rearing did virtually cease.60 That was certainly the impression at the Board of Agriculture. In 1915, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, Sir Harry Verney Bart, stated that ‘a considerable number of landowners and shooting tenants will not rear game this season’.61 In 1916, his successor Francis Dyke Acland (himself,

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heir to a Baronetcy) informed the Commons ‘game preserving has been very largely decreased, if not wholly abandoned . . . [if there were] any cases in which this may not be the case . . . action may be taken through the War Agricultural Committees’.62 With the rearing of game prohibited by the Ministry of Food and the Board of Agriculture, and the preservation of game curtailed by the War Office taking away gamekeepers, the Great War offered only an echo of the Edwardian shooting party. On the Brodsworth estate in Yorkshire the departure of the head gamekeeper was felt ‘keenly’ by Charles Thellusson, whose game books ‘show a marked decline in the number of birds shot after 1916’.63 Similarly, on the Canwick estates of the Sibthorp family in Lincolnshire, up to the Great War, there were around forty shoots per season supervised by a head gamekeeper and two under-keepers. In the five seasons, between 1914 and 1918, there were only seventy-six shoots and only 4,000 head of game killed.64 More problematically, how could landowners continue to let shooting if there was little to shoot? The reduced availability of good shooting had obvious implications for landlords and their sporting tenants, but this was compounded by new regulations empowering the former’s farming tenants to shoot game birds too. Under the 1831 Game Act, game became a form of property reserved for landlords. As a result, ‘subletting became common to shooting tenants, who had even less of a common interest with the farm tenant’, and whereas a hundred head of game was once regarded by a group of gentlemen as a good day’s sport, by the end of the century shooting had degenerated ‘into the slaughter of numbers in excess of a thousand’.65 In 1880, the Ground Game Act had attempted to ‘restore harmony between farm tenants and the landlord and his sporting tenant’66 by giving farm tenants the right to protect their crops by shooting ground game, namely, hares and rabbits. In 1906, a new Agricultural Holdings Act tilted the balance a little more toward the tenant farmer by giving him the right to claim compensation for damage done to his crops by pheasants and partridges.67 By 1913, the Land Enquiry Committee highlighted the prejudicial consequences of the shift from agriculture to game conservation, driven by the better income landlords could derive from sport than from farm rents. This was somewhat self-perpetuating because under-cultivated land producing low rents was under-assessed for local and imperial taxation.68 Between 1914 and 1916, the complementary or conflicting issues of game conservation, the cultivation of arable land and the supply of food were in dynamic contention, as Alan Simmonds states, ‘in its first two years, then, the war largely filtered its effects more through rural society than the farming

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industry’.69 In December 1916, the state chose the farming industry over English landed society, subordinating the latter’s defence of England, home and beauty to the defence of the realm. Not only was the rearing of game birds now to be deprecated, and effectively prohibited given the ban on feeding them grain, but the existing stock of game birds was also now to be eradicated. In February 1917, after consultations with the Board of Agriculture, Charles Bathurst announced the Ministry of Food’s decision ‘to issue an Order [under Regulation 2R of the Defence of the Realm Act] authorising occupiers of agricultural land to have the concurrent right of killing the pheasants on the same lines that they have in respect of ground game’.70 Writing in Country Life in March 1917, Charles Kent expressed his indignation: Alas! The death-knell [of the pheasant] . . . has been sounded by the President of the Board of Agriculture . . . the sport they afford, have brought fame and wealth to an estate [in Norfolk] where blowing sand renders the soil of little value for agriculture. This is known as one of the crack shooting estates of England, and a crack-shot and splendid sportsman of Badminton fame is its owner. Without warning the blow has fallen . . . Never again will kings and princes and millionaires . . . tread our heaths and warrens . . . followed by an army of keepers, loaders and brushers . . . The shooting tenant, always a rich man, comes as a godsend to this district. Without him . . . [people will be] much the poorer in pocket and in sport and in recreation . . . Sic transit Gloria mundi!71

This, and subsequent Orders, completely overturned the model of the Edwardian land market, because the sporting value does not for the present moment count. The preservation of game is thoroughly discouraged by the Legislature, and shooting is diminished by the reluctance of the authorities to issue cartridges. We cannot believe that a permanent ban is going to be placed on sport. That is out of the question. But it is very exceptional for a man to look forward and buy property in order that he may have some shooting when the war is over. The leading feature of the purchases accomplished is that the land is wanted for agricultural purposes only.72

In May, in an accompanying Order, made under the Defence of the Realm Act, County War Agricultural Executive Committees, which reported to the Food Production Department of the Board of Agriculture rather than the Ministry of Food, could authorize tenants to shoot the pheasants on their holdings. According to the President of the Board of Agriculture, Rowland Prothero, this

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authorization could be given ‘if the Committee are satisfied that the pheasants have not been so reduced as to prevent substantial injury to the crops’.73 More significantly, ‘where occupiers of land are authorised by an Agricultural Executive Committee under the Destruction of Pheasants Order to shoot pheasants . . . the close season does not apply, and no game licences is required’.74 In the same month therefore, the Kesteven Agricultural Executive Committee granted seven Orders to farmers to shoot pheasants, but it also ‘directly approached landowners with the request to reduce the number of pheasants, believing this to be the most effective line to take’.75 Landowners were, however, still recovering from the February announcement by Captain Bathurst. The shock felt by English landed society was palpable. In March, The Tatler highlighted the passing of the Game Laws – privileges one had thought neither wars nor the makers of wars could ever filch from those former backbones of England, the owners of sporting land. Needless to say, many and pathetic are the cries that have gone up of – Don’t shoot all our game! Sportsmen fainted right off in rows in the House the other day when Captain Bathurst . . . callously announced that pheasants were to be killed off by the tenant farmers . . . even in the breeding season. ‘They are taking food required for human consumption’, said the gallant Captain, and not even the moan that if we upset the laws of nature by destroying game birds . . . served to move him from his fell purposes.76

In Country Life, Torin referred to this ‘as a thunderbolt . . . Had the patriotism of shooting men been appealed to, to further reduce their stock of birds . . . [and] that in the present crisis the feeding of game birds was inadvisable; then . . . there is not the least doubt that the request would have been loyally complied with’.77 The intervention of the state even extended to the availability of cartridges. Under an Order issued by the Ministry of Munitions, and supported by the Army Council and the Board of Agriculture, the purchase of cartridges was controlled  – to reduce the use of lead–lead shot. Cartridges could only be obtained for the protection of crops from damage by game and only under licence from a CWAEC.78 The limited availability of cartridges again ignored, in Sir Basil Peto’s opinion, shooting pheasants and partridges for food.79 Sir Basil raised this point in 1917 with the Minister of Munitions: ‘is [he] . . . aware that in the last two seasons over 30,000 head of game have been dispatched by one organisation to the London hospitals . . .?’80 The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions was informed, ‘1 oz. of lead shot correctly applied will

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render available for human food from 1 to 8 lbs. weight of game’ and that ‘one small agency under the presidency of Lord Selborne . . . delivered to the London hospitals for wounded soldiers 25,000 head of game in the seasons of 1915 and 1916’ in which case ‘will he consider the advisability of withdrawing the Order issued by his Department forbidding the provision of lead for shot?’81 Sir Basil was informed by the Ministry of Munitions that twenty million cartridges had been manufactured and that if his use of 1 oz. of shot was realized, ‘a large addition should be made to the food supply’.82 Sir Richard Winfrey, on behalf of the Board of Agriculture, reminded Sir Basil that ‘the purchase of cartridges for shooting game . . . from the point of view of providing food is a matter for the Food Controller’ – who had, of course, determined that pheasants were pests rather than food.83 Both the Duke of Richmond and Lord Salisbury, along with ‘many owners’ had given permission to their farmers to kill any pheasants found in their hedges willingly sacrificing their sport ‘before the issue of the Food Controller’s edict’.84 But, this was now no longer their decision, although Country Life suggested they ‘recognised that the slaughter of their birds has not been ordered from antipathy to sport, but only because as long as the war lasts England cannot afford so expensive a pastime as shooting’.85 It would have been wrong indeed to penalize ‘the great county families’ who had done their bit willingly sending their sons ‘to the field of battle and number a very great proportion among the slain’.86 In December 1918, Hugh Gladstone wrote we ought, perhaps, to forget that it is not really so very long ago since one of our leading statesmen assured us that landlords cared less for peasants than for pheasants . . . In view of this statement . . . and considering the wartime legislation which has been passed regarding game, there seems reason to fear lest the preservation of game may become a dead letter. But with the return of peace we hope for better things and the repealing of many of the orders made to suppress game during the war. Possibly, we shall never again see those battues where the pheasants killed in a day totalled upwards of 2,000 or 3,000–3,824 is, we believe, the record bag. After all, these battues were only manufactured sport, though undeniably calling for skill and accuracy on the part of the guns. But because the fashion for such battues may have died out, it is no reason why the pheasant should be extirpated.87

Landowners would not have disagreed with this sentiment and so, despite the restrictions, limitations, prohibitions and regulations imposed on shooting by the state, under the Defence of the Realm Act, English landed society continued

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to go shooting during the Great War. At Gorhambury, for instance, while most of the game keeping staff had left by 1918, the bag of partridges and pheasants ‘was kept up at little less than half its pre-war figure, and fairly frequent shooting parties were held throughout the war, with many officers among the guests’.88 Here perhaps is the key point, the determination to keep the sport going for the benefit of these young officers. Macpherson had considered it the duty of those sportsmen who remained at home ‘to do everything within their power to maintain the present stock of game . . . to ensure as far as possible a successful season in the 1915 year’.89 The priority was to ‘give our friends when they return to us the best possible sport as a small compensation for their trials and sufferings at the Front . . . Let those go to the Front who can, but let those who must remain do their best to safeguard the interests of our country at home’.90 January 1915 did see the return from the fighting ‘of numbers of eager young sportsmen, mercifully unscathed, or at worst not so badly wounded but that they could sit at the end of a covert and shot birds driven over them’.91 Lord Northampton, in the course of a short leave of four days from the Front, was able to bring ‘some of his pheasants at Castle Ashby into the firing line – “Just to keep his hand in for the Germans,” as the head keeper phrased it’.92 The guns consisted of a small family party of Lord Northampton, Lord Spencer Compton and Lord Douglas Compton, with Lady Loch spectating. This gathering was now more ‘typical of the kind that has been seen at the comparatively few and small shoots of this season’.93 Going shooting offered something familiar to the young officers coming home on leave. The effect of the war on their shooting was, however, with no hint of irony, considered to be deleterious: we hear it said by all the soldiers who have come back and have been able to take a day or two’s covert shooting, that the war seems to have had a disastrous effect on their marksmanship. They are disposed to attribute it to a little natural ‘jumpiness’ of the nerves after listening to the shells screeching and bursting around them for so many days . . . [and when we] see these young officers . . . return to their fighting, after the brief holiday which has been given to them while the mud of Flanders makes the active use of cavalry a sheer impossibility, taking with them a couple or more brace of pheasants . . . it is surely not to be expected of those who have come home for this short respite that they should feel any misgivings about the enjoyment of sport . . . we all wish for them that they may be able to forget for a while all the horror, though it is more than likely that some of that indifferent shooting which they deplore is to be attributed to a difficulty in giving full attention to the sport immediately on hand, while

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English Landed Society in the Great War subconsciously they can hardly fail to be preoccupied with all that they have lately passed through and taken part in.94

Considered in these terms, to abandon shooting entirely would have been a betrayal of the young aristocratic officers whose self-identity was shaped by the fields, hedgerows and coverts where they had taken aim at their pheasants and their partridges.

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Fox Hunting and the War

Now, those who set their hearts upon this science [the chase] shall reap many advantages; for they shall both gain for their bodies a healthy habit and improve their seeing and their hearing, and delay the coming of old age. And it is an excellent education for all that relates to war. Xenophon.1 Nicholas Mansfield’s study of recruitment in the Shropshire village of Lydbury North reveals that the infantrymen who volunteered for the Kitchener battalions of the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry were almost all farmworkers. By contrast, the yeomen who fought with the Shropshire Yeomanry ‘came from higher up the social strata’.2 The recruits were equally discerning, as ‘every man had to supply his own horse . . . [and so] considered themselves a cut above the normal infantry regiments like the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry’.3 The same pattern is visible in Lincolnshire. In 1914, in the village of Corby Glen, the ‘young men from the farms joined up, enlisting in the Lincolnshire Regiment’.4 The farmers’ sons who went to war with the Lincolnshire Yeomanry had joined ‘in the years before the war . . . The qualification for membership . . . being an ability to provide one’s own horse . . . [and] the summer camps in the parks of the great houses were a break from the routine of village of life’.5 Farmers, and more especially their sons, were a ready pool of N.C.O.’s and troopers for the local Yeomanry because they, like their landlords living in the great house, hunted. The Norfolk Yeomanry, for example, ‘consisted mostly of men from the hunting fraternity . . . Members of the aristocracy . . . served as captains, large farmers were N.C.O.’s and the sons of tenant farmers made up most of the troopers’.6 The local Yeomanry and the local hunts were effectively ‘hand-in-glove’,7 with the local hunts forming the basis of the Yeomanry8 which, in turn, comprised those countrymen of the ‘right stamp for a Yeomanry regiment’.9 In Cheshire, ‘probably the best county for . . . hunting apart from Leicestershire’10

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the Honorary Colonel of the county Yeomanry (the Earl of Chester’s) was a ‘renowned fox hunter’, the Earl of Harrington, and the commanding officer, Lt. Col. Hubert M.  Wilson, was the late Master of the Hunt and a ‘keen soldier and  enthusiastic rider to hounds’.11 This enthusiasm was shared by other  Cheshire officers including Captain William Hubert Roylance Court, who was killed in action near Ypres, in 1915, while serving with the 9th Lancers: For sport Captain Court had an inherent predilection. His father, a noted polo player and shot, has followed the Cheshire Hounds from his youth up and for the last four seasons was Joint Master. His grandfather, too, was one of the best cross-country riders ever seen in the saddle in Cheshire, and his greatgrandfather also rode to the same hounds. Captain Court himself hunted with the Cheshire, played polo . . . and rode in the regimental steeplechases.12

To contemporaries there was an obvious connection between fox hunting, steeplechasing, polo and the ideal cavalry officer and air officer.13 The former, serving in the elite cavalry regiments, fought as dismounted infantry in the trenches alongside fellow fox hunters and officers serving in the Yeomanry regiments, which despite being converted to infantry retained ‘their cavalry uniforms [illegally] and an interest in hunting’.14 As George Bigwood explained, ‘the commissioned ranks of the Shropshire Imperial Yeomanry are mostly held by well-known Shropshire sportsmen, principally foxhunters’.15 These same Yeomanry regiments also produced ‘enormous numbers’ of new, temporary officers and gentlemen, as many of the ‘rank and file, being officer material, were commissioned [and] . . . officered the mass armies’.16 Among them were the gentleman rankers of whom Siegfried Sassoon, who enlisted in the Sussex Yeomanry, was the archetype.17 His Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man reveals an individual ‘brought up as a country gentlemen . . . [whose] love of the land not only dominates his life, but also consoles him at times of despair’.18 The archetypal British infantry officer was, therefore, a fox hunting man as ‘G’ explained in 1915, in Country Life: ‘Jorrocks’ was fond of calling hunting ‘The himmage of war without its guilt and with twenty per cent of its danger’. In the modern conditions of war I  fear that the actuary would find his estimate of the percentage of danger somewhat out; but the successful pursuit of the ‘flying pack’ calls for quick observation, and eye for a country and the determination to get there. All of which qualities after all come as near ‘the himmage of war’ as is possible in peacetime.19

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Subsequently, in 1916, George Bigwood wrote in Country Life: The great advantages to be obtained from hunting as a preparation for war were held by Xenophon, the celebrated Athenian general, and they are as true today as they were in the days of the ancients. Hunting cannot be too highly extolled as a sport that tends to promote valour and to cultivate those virtues which go to the making of good cavalrymen. Shropshire is famed for its hunting fields and for its hunting men, and the latter have proved, if indeed proof were needed, the truth of the saying of Xenophon that hunting is an ‘excellent education for all that relates to war’. Distinguished officers who followed the chase have returned to the Service, and practically all the hunting families are now represented in the field of action or are performing important war work in this country. There are not a few who have given their lives for their country’s good.20

More importantly, Sassoon’s memoirs are an indication of how hunting became, for these officers, the apotheosis of Englishness and consequently ‘all that they were fighting for at the front’.21 This was the England of coverts where the oaks were ‘heavy in leaf . . . the ridge and furrow, the pastures and the spreading steady growth of the roottops . . . bathed in the heavy autumn dew’ where ‘cobwebs glisten wet  along hedgerows in the pale sun of . . . [a] cubbing morning . . . on the threshold of another hunting season’.22 In defence of this England, of home and beauty, there was a ‘prompt and loyal response from the Hunts both with horses and men . . . of the 10,000 or more hunting men with the Colours . . . they shall do and they shall dare, as becomes their blood and breeding’.23 ‘Alas’, wrote ‘G’ in Country Life in October 1914, their readiness to do and dare meant that ‘already we know of many whom we shall never meet at covert-side again, but we will remember them none the less kindly when we visit scenes associated with them’.24 Writing in 1935, and recalling happy years spent hunting in Lincolnshire before the war with the Brocklesby and other hunts, George E. Collins described Lord Worsley as someone who, took a great interest in the hounds and their breeding, and loved being in the kennels – ‘giving Jim a hand’, as he called it. One day when I called there I found him, with his coat and waistcoat off, busy forking straw into the barn! Had he lived he must have been a worthy descendent of his famous ancestors, a Lord of Yarborough and a Master of the historic pack that would have carried out the ancient traditions to the very letter. But alas! For he was one of the many young lives so willingly given for his country and freedom’s cause in the early days of the War.25

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Lord Worsley, the heir to the Yarborough Earldom and Brocklesby Park, had command of his regiment’s Machine Gun Section at Ypres in 1914. When a squadron of the Royal Horse Guards was relieved by C Squadron of the 1st Life Guards under the command of Captain Lord Hugh Grosvenor, the son of the 1st Duke of Westminster, Lord Worsley’s section remained behind. ‘It was’, according to George Collins ‘typical of the boy that I knew that, although he had already been eight days in the trenches with no relief, when told he would have to remain there when his regiment was relieved, he only laughed. And yet, as one of their number said, they were all worn out by fatigue and cold, wet to the skin, and “all so hungry” ’.26 Unfortunately, when it came time for Lord Worsley and his section and C Squadron under Lord Grosvenor to retire they were cut off: ‘What happened when the Teutonic flood swept over those gallant men . . . no one knows, for there were no survivors, no wounded, no prisoners. They were simply wiped out of existence.’27 For those officers who survived the opening phases of the Great War there were opportunities to go hunting behind the line. A  pack sent out from the Quorn, for example, was hunted behind the lines by the Leicestershire Yeomanry over the winter, when there were at least six packs of beagles operating on the Western Front.28 ‘Hounds will meet – war permitting’ was a common instruction in regimental orders, with the Northants Yeomanry collecting together a scratch pack and hunting hares and foxes behind Arras in 1916 once killing a fox ‘within a few fields of the second-line trenches’.29 In most operational squadrons of the Royal Flying Corps ‘several horses were kept for the recreational use of officers . . . thundering around the fields of France on horse-back’30 and in the BayeuxArmentières sector, ‘a most distinguished field, beautifully mounted on their first chargers’31 hunted hares with hounds behind the gun lines. By the end of August all 56 Yeomanry Regiments had complied with Lord Kitchener’s call for all territorial units to volunteer for overseas service. In the Leicestershire Yeomanry, ‘of the crack hunters of the Quorn and Belvoir – 94 per cent volunteered for general service as did 85 per cent of the Gloucestershire Yeomanry, veterans of the Berkeley and the Beaufort Hunts’.32 At the same time each regiment was ordered to raise a second-line regiment to train recruits and provide drafts for their first-line counterpart. However, following the departure of the Yeomanry first line, ‘it soon became clear that their natural rank and file constituents – the farmers and their families that remained – perhaps prompted by labour shortages, were not inclined to volunteer’.33 Thus ended the more socially exclusive composition of the Edwardian Yeomanry regiment; indeed, with the Yeomanry fighting with the infantry, new recruits need never have

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ridden a horse. The farmers who chose not to serve overseas with the Yeomanry, who opted for home service, could ‘go home for the hay harvest’ if grass farming or if arable farming they could ‘go home for the corn harvest’.34 One of the ‘sorest grievances in the countryside’35 was the ability of farmers to keep their sons out of the trenches by swearing they were essential to the running of their farms. Lord Dartmouth informed the House of Lords in 1915, ‘in many cases the farmers’ sons are taking the place of the agricultural labour that has gone’.36 Under the Military Services Act of March 1916 farmers were exempted from being conscripted, their sons were not, except where an exemption was given by the Local Appeal Tribunal. In April 1916, Lord St Audries highlighted certain cases ‘in which farmers’ sons were improperly described on the National Register as cowmen and ploughmen who were not so’.37 The Marquess of Lincolnshire, who lost his son, Viscount Wendover (a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Guards), in 1915, countered that in ‘the part of the Midland counties that I know best, and in Berkshire as well . . . I can say that I have not on the whole of my estate a farmer’s son who is single who has not joined the Colours; there is not an unmarried man left’.38 In 1915, Country Life reported that the new Earl of Feversham (suc: 1915), formerly ‘Lord Helmsley when the war broke out – has been in command of the 1st Yorkshire Hussars, who responded splendidly, more volunteering for foreign service in the late August days than were at first accepted, and the regiment was soon at full strength. He has just returned to Duncombe Park to raise a regiment of farmers and farmers’ sons in the Northern Command’.39 To contemporaries, the record of the farmers who ‘turned the hay and carried the harvest in that glorious summer of 1914’ and who would subsequently ‘improvise and worry and over-work for the harvests [to feed] . . . a hungry nation’40 compared unfavourably to that of the labourers and landlords at the front. In early 1915, ‘G’ was more generous in recognizing the job farmers had to do at home, in keeping the nation fed and in ensuring that hunting continued and continued to produce ‘the finest horsemen and cavalry in the world’.41 Before the war, the success of fox hunting rested on the ability of the Master of Foxhounds to handle the claims of farmers for damage done to fences and crops ‘sensitively if the goodwill of the countryside was to be maintained’,42 reinforcing the goodwill already felt by those farmers who participated in the sport. Hunting was, thus, a ‘major prop to the existing social order’43 in the Edwardian countryside, by contrast, during the war, the survival of the sport was largely in the hands of farmers at the present unprecedented time. They to a very great extent, are tied to the land, and though many are serving in the Yeomanry

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English Landed Society in the Great War … there are many who cannot do so; these may serve their country in this minor way, as well as in the more evident one of helping to provide the food supply. To those, therefore, would we make the most earnest appeal. Hunting, usually regarded only as a pastime, has proved its usefulness and justified its existence to every thinking man.44

Hunting had traditionally been the ‘sport most preferred by the farmer himself and his sons when times are good’, especially in grass country where ‘the greatest amount of hunting is carried on’.45 The fattening pastures of Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, for example, with their ‘endless hedged fields of well-cropped grass provided excellent hunting country’.46 With the recovery of mixed arable and livestock farming before the war, A. G. Street wrote of the ‘spacious days’ on a Wiltshire sheep and corn farm in the early 1900s, while Joseph Gibbs wrote of the better class of farmer on the Gloucestershire Cotswolds who ‘does not have a bad time . . . Hunting, shooting and fishing’, often leading the lives of squires.47 The well-mounted and hard-riding farmer was thus very much a part of Siegfried Sassoon’s South Down Hunt in 1914.48 In the era of the Corn Production Act, farmers would continue to enjoy hunting; even allowing for the impact of the plough campaign on hunting.49 Recalling these years, in 1932, A. G. Street wrote: ‘I was as bad, or as daft or, possibly more truthfully, as criminally extravagant as any one. I kept two hunters, one for myself and one for my wife; and glorious days we had together with the local pack . . . in short, farmers swanked.’50 If the goal of English landed society in the opening phase of the Great War was to keep hunting going by looking to farmers ‘to whom all hunting men gladly acknowledge so much indebtedness’,51 the motivation of the former was more complex than merely preserving a pastime. Fox hunting was integral to the identity of the country gentleman and his alter ego, the cavalry or infantry officer serving in one of the more socially exclusive regiments. It encapsulated the ‘essential England’52 of home and beauty that the young, aristocratic warrior-aesthetes had gone to war to defend, having galloped ‘across the grasses’ where he ‘knows where the going is good [or] . . . toils across the ploughs and knows where the soil is deep . . . [and] has come into touch with all the traffic of the land’.53 By the early 1900s, the aristocracy, as Alun Howkins has suggested, formed an international class, ‘yet the national part of their culture, and especially its presentation, had to be retained’54 and defended. Fox hunting was the ‘supreme county ritual . . . it was . . . as Bagehot recognised, a show, a grand theatrical spectacle, which demonstrated  the power of the rural elite’ yet, in going fox  hunting up to the

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Great War, they also ‘managed to retain the image of a county-based, organised and essentially English group’.55 The ‘debt the country owes to hunting’ and by inference to that essentially English group that hunted was, according to ‘G’, writing in early 1915, ‘acknowledged by all, from the War Office downwards, as a nucleus of horse supply, as well as a training ground for our brilliant cavalry soldiers’.56 The hunting field was ‘the school of our cavalry, so also it is the playground of many, both cavalry and infantry officers’, and if ‘they who are fighting our battles for us could be asked, one and all would say, “keep hunting going, keep the ball a rolling till we come back” ’.57 Considered in these terms victory on the battlefield would be won on hunting field, allowing English landed society to claim its share of that victory, having ‘continued the tradition amply demonstrated abroad at present, that our country, through the medium of the hunting field, produces the finest horsemen and cavalry in the world’.58 Moreover, if hunting was justified by the ‘indisputable fact of its utility at all times as a school for cavalry officers’59 whose abilities were considered essential to achieving victory, then, when the first suspense is over we who must stay at home should try to keep hunting alive, for the sake of those at the forefront of the battle, showing the world, what many of us have always known, that the athlete and sportsman is two-thirds a soldier and all a fighting man. With fewer hounds and mounted on ponies it will be our pride that all our hunt horses have gone to the front – we must try to keep foxhunting alive.60

The Duke of Rutland, by contrast, had already instructed his kennel-men to destroy all but four of the Belvoir Hunt’s twenty-four couples of foxhounds: ‘I am unwilling to pay for the upkeep of the kennels, when it is unlikely that the hounds will be hunted for many a year.’61 Lord Willoughby de Broke, by contrast, regularly brought out the officers of the Warwickshire Yeomanry when they were stationed in Essex, thereby helping to ‘keep going the sport they loved, and which helped to make . . . the best sportsmen and the finest soldiers in the world’.62 And, ‘what on earth are officers home from the front to do with their time’ asked Lord Lonsdale, who hunted with the Cottesmore, ‘if there’s no hunting for them’?63 One officer wrote home: ‘I simply long to get on a horse again. We talk hunting shop by the hour.’64 Referencing this quote, in October 1914, Country Life hoped ‘that some of these enthusiasts of the saddle and the chase may come across these lines . . . Nothing will help us more in our efforts to keep the chase alive than the sympathetic interest with which our efforts [in England] will be followed by those who are fighting our battles in France’.65

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Again, in February 1915, in Country Life, ‘G’ emphasized the need to support these young officers and what they were fighting for: How many of them, in writing from the front, have referred to the sport they love, and expressed the wish that they made find it going strong when they return, as we hope devoutly they will. One feels that nothing is too good for those who are fighting for us, and when the war is over I venture to say that all will feel this sentiment deeply. Let everyone, therefore, do what he can now, and till that wished-for time comes, to keep their home at least as they left it, and leave barbed wire for its fit use – to protect war trenches and trip up enemies, not friends, nor the gallant lads who are fighting and dying for our homes and country, the home of the finest sport on earth.66

A more immediate problem was the increased quantity of barbed wire to contend with, due to ‘many of those who in normal seasons would attend to its removal . . . serving their country, and partly to the fact that farmers who would normally remove it voluntarily are carrying on their exceedingly important business very shorthanded’.67 Hunts were left short-handed by ‘the wide and general calling up of hunt servants’ which compounded ‘the absence abroad of a host of Masters, Field Masters and Secretaries’.68 In their absence, ‘the wives of many of our noted Masters have taken charge . . . assisted by old men, boys, girls and disabled or invalided heroes’69 who tried to clear the barbed wire, the ‘pernicious product of the war’ from among the spreading ‘thorn and bramble in the untrimmed and untended hedgerows’.70 Nonetheless, describing a day hunting with the York and Ainsty, among a field of black and grey jackets, what caught the eye of ‘X’ were: The men in khaki from the barracks of the Yeomanry and the Scots Greys. One the latter was wounded, and snatched a day before returning to his regiment at the front . . . it was said of certain sportsman that he always rode a hunt as if he had never seen one before and would never see one again. Some of these gallant horsemen may well not see hounds for a long time, if ever. The covert . . . held foxes. A holloa set everyone galloping . . . The huntsman, conspicuous in his pink, is with his hounds, and a line of khaki is on terms with the pack . . . ‘Ware wire. Perils from our own countrymen’, says one soldier. Then with hardly a pause, one khaki rider goes straight for the rails in the corner. They have wire along the top, but it does not stop him or the other soldiers, who are soon over in his wake.71

Among these so-called khaki hunts the York and Ainsty takes a very high place . . . None . . . with the possible exception of the Bicester and Pytchley  – has done more for soldiers. The York and Ainsty farmers are

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owed a debt for the many men now serving their country, who have learned the lessons hunting only can teach a soldier across the Yorkshire farms. It must have been some reward to the farmers to see the khaki class men who led the field in the good hunt on December 29th . . . Lord Furness was out . . . and a strong contingent in khaki . . . with plenty of wet weather the Ainsty plough carried a rather better scent than do the arable fields in the Fitzwilliam grass country . . . Everyone was full of ride . . .72

The absence of stud grooms, helpers, kennel-men and whips was keenly felt, but as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, Francis Acland, told the House of Commons, in 1916, ‘hunt servants are . . . in no sense in a reserved occupation, and I  hope that very few would now be found who are of military age’.73 Although, when the South Shropshire Hunt applied for an exemption for one of their kennel-man, the chair of the Tribunal concluded, ‘the military had no objection at all to the application . . . [as] hunting should be kept up’.74 In the opening months of the Great War, with the cavalry acting as a screen for the infantry, local hunts were an invaluable source of horses for a War Office desperate for remounts. Under leadership of Lord Lonsdale, a keen horse breeder, the Cottesmore Hunt sent many horses ‘exactly of the type that delight the hearts of cavalry colonels’.75 In the opinion of ‘X’, the patriotic response of local hunts to the War Office’s appeal revealed how ‘our efforts to keep up foxhunting as a training school for men and horses . . . [had raised the] sport to the higher level of a national service, and we are proud to have given our best men and choicest horses to the service of the country’.76 In August 1914, Country Life listed the hunts fulfilling this national service: The Duke of Beaufort’s, Lord Middelton’s, the Hertfordshire [Lord Cavan], the York and Ainsty [Lord Furness], the Bramham Moor [Mr. Lane-Fox], the North Warwickshire [Mr. Jackson], the Pytchley [Sir Charles Lowther]. It is . . . notable that the Masters of these hunts are either actually on service or have near relatives going, and all have contributed some excellent horses . . . The Masters of fox-hunting . . . [are] recommending thorough cub-hunting and a sufficient number of days hunting to keep fox-hunting alive . . . but not as means of sport.77

In going hunting in late 1914 and early 1915, English landed society saw itself engaging in a form of national service, providing a source of officers and horses that would successfully fulfil the aristocracy’s traditional military function. Among them was Lord Torrington ‘and the cross-country riders who . . . volunteered to join the Army as privates . . . a gallant little band, who have set a splendid example . . . all they want [is] . . . to fight the Germans’.78 Their actions

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were considered an example to ‘those disappointed youths who have not gone to the front because they could not [for the moment] get a commission’.79 On returning home, these young soldiers would then be able to enjoy an essentially aristocratic conception of England, home and beauty, having answered Lloyd George’s charges made at Limehouse. In reality, the ability of these young aristocratic officers to influence the outcome of the war disappeared in the retreat from Mons and in the Ypres Salient. By the end of 1915, the national service performed by hunting for the War Office was ‘the production of the general utility horse’.80 Already, in 1914, the voluntary offer of hunters by the Masters of Foxhounds had been accompanied by army remount officers charged with obtaining ‘more than a hundred thousand horses in the first weeks of the war’, requisitioning them ‘from the nearest farms and private stables . . . [in] the first experience of a common discrepancy between the public policy of the War Office towards civilians and civilian property, and the actions of local officers’.81 By 1917, of the horses in use by the British Army in France, a third were riding horses, slightly more than half were light draught and ‘only 16 per cent were heavy draught horses of the type used on farms’.82 This distribution reflected ‘the object in view’ at the War Office, in January 1916, that in the vitally important work of securing the continuance of the breeding and raising of light horses . . . the maintenance of hunts is necessary. Lord Derby expressed the hope that, as far as possible, men ineligible for military service would be employed, but indicated that that the question of retaining men of military age who may be considered indispensable for the maintenance of the hunt should be referred to the local tribunal . . . it is not a question of maintaining mere attendants upon the hunt who have no special aptitudes.83

Hunting persisted because of its utility to the War Office in supplying the army with horses and thus, another aspect of the essential England that had inspired the young warrior-aesthetes to go to war was subordinated to the needs of the state. An added justification for allowing hunting to continue was its utility in reducing the number of foxes preying on the expanding poultry industry. Before the war, measures to protect foxes had led to a ‘trebling of numbers . . . in the Grafton country’, with the best fox coverts ‘planted with gorse to deter cub-thieves’.84 Such numbers now had to be drastically curtailed but, ironically, unlike the pheasant which was to be eradicated as a pest, foxes could not be exterminated because, as Henry Chaplin pointed out in 1915, ‘the destruction foxes means the destruction of hunting, and, if hunting, horse breeding’.85 This

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placed fox hunting in something of interdepartmental no-man’s land between the Board of Agriculture, the Food Production Department, the Ministry of Food and the War Office because, if hunting was to continue then there had to be foxes. In 1915, therefore, the official position of the Board on ‘the desirability of securing, by legislation or otherwise, the destruction of foxes during the War’ was that ‘those interested in fox hunting will do their best to take such action as will make legislation unnecessary’.86 A  similar answer was given when the Board was asked about the ‘depredations of foxes, especially among poultry; and whether, in view of the fact that foxhunting has [now] for the most part been abandoned, and that economy in the matter of food is being generally advocated, steps will be taken to destroy foxes?’87 In 1916, the Board was again asked to consider ‘suppressing for the period of the war fox-hunting’ as there were, in fact, 250 of these hunts [still] in existence . . . [and]  an average of 40 or 50 persons are associated with each of these hunts, maintaining valuable animals for this purpose alone . . . [means that] not less than £20,000 a week is expended in hay, oats, straw, etc., . . . each of these hunts on the average spends £250 in compensation for poultry killed by foxes, which for the 250 hunts represents a destruction of £50,000 worth of food annually; and, seeing that, in addition, these hunts maintain packs of dogs or hounds . . . [will] steps will be taken to shoot or trap the bulk of the foxes now to be found in this country?88

Legislation was not needed because the cost and availability of food saw packs reduced by half and forced some ‘to cut down even more drastically’89 and in 1917, horses were placed on fixed rations. The Board, meanwhile, sidestepped the issue as ‘the question of the necessity of maintaining hunts in wartime is rather for the War Office than the Board of Agriculture’90 which had set out its official position in January 1917. The War Office position was that the breeding of light horses for the Army necessitated the continuation of hunting but, by 1917, hunting had ‘been reduced to very small proportions indeed’.91 F. M. L. Thompson suggests that fox hunting was ‘generally given up by 1917’92 but the Belvoir Hunt was still active. Despite the Duke’s instructions to his kennel-men in 1914, by 1917, one of the Australian pilot-instructors at Harlaxton aerodrome described ‘the bustle and activity in the bright frosty morning . . . [the] yapping [of the fox-hounds] . . . and the stamping of the horses . . . [followed by] the Hunt Ball . . . [with] many of the local gentry . . . some still in their little red coats’.93 In 1918, the  Under

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Figure 3 Belvoir Hunt, hounds © RAF Museum.

Secretary of State for War was asked whether the continued existence of 160 hunts, with about 30 people per hunt, keeping 5,000 light horses ‘available for his Department’ justified ‘the destruction of poultry by foxes and consequent depletion of British egg supply?’94 The Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Food was likewise asked to ‘issue a reward of 20s. per head for every fox killed [and] . . . inform those who desire to retain foxes for sport that they can easily renew the supply by importing from Ireland and America when the War is over’.95 The Ministry saw no reason to do so given ‘the Food Production Department [is] . . . in communication with the Master of Foxhounds Association . . . to effect a normal reduction of foxes throughout the country’.96 When balancing the pros and cons of controlling rather than eradicating foxes, while the Board of Agriculture agreed with the War Office’s position, Francis Acland offered, what he himself described as a more ‘cryptic’ explanation of the Board’s position in 1916:  ‘Undoubtedly there would be a very great increase of food supplies in this country if there were no foxes. On the other hand, we should lose something which a great number of members of the farming community would not lose for a very great deal, even many of those who habitually lose poultry through foxes’.97 Hunting was, as A.G. Street observed, close to the heart of the farmers whose connection to the Board now

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by-passed the landlords. But what of their landlords? In 1918, Country Life was unequivocal. After the scares of March and April 1918, when the Germans had overrun the Somme basin the drain on our resources in light horses, and the contribution to the glorious roll of honour made by those who had proved their courage and fearlessness in the hunting fields . . . had threatened horse, hound and fox. Yet we are surely going hunting again . . . the fox is not to be allowed to multiply so that his existence may be threatened by the man with the gun . . . hunting is going on! It is undefeated still.98

In this interpretation of the war, fox hunting, which ‘means so much to our countryside’ was a key component of victory by making ‘men brave so that they have fought and died for their country’ and ‘maintained and improved our incomparable breed of light horses’.99 In the Edwardian countryside, after estate management, fox hunting had been the chief preoccupation of many landowners who regarded the fox ‘as a vital element in local society and as an instrument with which to bind together the governing classes and to ease tensions between different classes in rural Britain’.100 As a consequence, ‘the fox was one of the principal reasons for the continued social predominance of the landed aristocracy’101 yet in seeking to defend this predominance English landed society paid a heavy price in the lives of the best men. The noble, never-to-be-forgotten dead, the disabled, the broken in health, the shattered in nerve, the blind – they are gone from the old fields forever. And there are older men, and women, who, for the sake of some gallant son they have lost, some brother, or some lover, will never care to ride to hounds again.102

When Guy Paget made a tour of the Belvoir and Pytchley country in the 1930s, he was struck by ‘how few pre-war landed gentry survived, and few of those who did, hunted. So many of their sons had been killed in the war’.103 There was, nonetheless, a determination to make a fresh start after the war. According to The Field:  ‘Your enthusiastic hunting man does not allow such disabilities as a lost arm or injured leg to interfere with the sport if he can help it.’104 At the same time, Country Life envisaged that the sport would ‘be rejuvenated . . . by the dash and vigour of our cavalry and yeomanry officers, and by the reckless valour of the flying men returned . . . yielding nothing in dash and keenness to the sportsmen of before the war’.105 The image of these Edwardian sportsmen who would, subsequently, become Sir John French’s

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ideal officers was captured by Siegfried Sassoon’s memories of fox hunting before the war: For me hunting is inevitably associated with the pleasant country house life of the past . . . There was a traditional flavour about hunting which has never been the same since 1914 . . . since it was derived from the ‘design for living’ of a prosperous and privileged upper-class society . . . Those were indeed the days, and delightful they are to remember.106

His Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man is, in consequence, ‘concerned almost entirely with the sporting diversions of this class’ and, more importantly, ‘their behaviour in the hunting field [which] teaches much of their manners and ways of thought’.107 Sassoon, according to Michael Thorpe, offers the reader an evocation of Edwardian life in the Shires, a ‘local, limited world’ existing in ‘an atmosphere of ideal rustic beauty and peace, of slow and even life, of sunshine and permanence . . . [with] carefully planted hints and foreboding . . . of what lies beyond the golden haze that wreathes this idyll’.108 This world had vanished, not just because of the losses sustained by English landed society in fulfilling their military function, and in defending an England of home and beauty, but because the state had broken the ‘symbiotic relationship of landed wealth and military function . . . most obviously evident in the mediating shape of the horse’.109 Before the war, Lloyd George had focused on the pheasant rather than the fox due, possibly, to the intervention of the Prime Minister’s wife who, in January 1913, had demanded: ‘Promise me you won’t mention fox hunting in your land speeches.’110 On this issue, Avner Offer suggests, the ‘Liberals were compromised by the complicity in the culture of the rural ascendency’.111 By 1918, the War Office still referred to hunting as a ‘national sport’ but it was one now only ‘essential to the maintenance of the supply of riding horses which are needed for the Army. It is for this reason that, hunts have with difficulty been kept together upon a very much reduced scale by patriotic masters and the agricultural communities which support them’.112 The War Office no longer looked to the patriotism, coolness113 and daring-do of the officer who hunted. In an increasingly anonymous war: ‘Their tradition was only carried on by the chivalry of the air.’114

7

Landowners and the War

In December 1916, the House of Lords sought to amend Subsection (1), paragraph (b) of the Defence of the Realm (Acquisition of Land) Bill by leaving out the words, ‘authorise the compulsory acquisition of the whole of such property, including the mansion house . . . where they are satisfied that it is of national importance that it should be acquired’ and insert instead: by order authorise the compulsory acquisition of the park, garden, pleasure ground or farm, or any part thereof, where they are satisfied that it is of national importance that it should be acquired . . . if the owner so requires the whole of such property, including the mansion house . . . before the order made by the Commission comes into effect, a draft thereof shall be laid before each House of Parliament for a period of thirty days . . . and if either of those Houses before the expiration of that period presents an address to His Majesty against the draft . . . no further proceedings shall be taken.1

The amendment was defeated as their formerly private mansions and parks were now considered to be ‘national property’.2 Landowners had already voluntarily repurposed their mansions as auxiliary hospitals or convalescent homes, sometimes because they were too large and expensive for the family to run.3 The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer described the offer of mansions for use as a hospital as an act of ‘patriotism that will always stand to their credit’.4 Tragically, the owner of country houses converted into hospitals might themselves be seriously wounded or killed. Country Life reported: ‘One of the heaviest losses to Surrey and the Army was Lieutenant-Colonel Laurence FisherRowe of Thorncombe, near Bramley, who died of wounds received . . . He had given Thorncombe as a military hospital for the duration of the war, and it has been running for more than a year.’5 In Yorkshire, the Earl of Harewood offered to set aside part of Harewood House for an auxiliary hospital which opened in

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January 1915, enabling ‘some hundreds of sick and wounded men . . . the benefit of residence and treatment at the Yorkshire home of the Lascelles family . . . amid some of the most picturesque scenery of the North of England’ indeed: Among the meadows, groves, and glades of the charming park the soldiers are allowed to wander at will. At all times of the year there is something in these far-stretching grounds and beautiful gardens to afford pleasure to the patients, especially to those who love country life. Those with a taste for angling try their luck with rod and line in the beautiful lake:  the gambols of frisky squirrels among the branches of the trees afford entertaining diversion, and now and again a venturesome fox spins across the park, occasionally with hounds in full cry . . . and every Saturday the patients who are well enough are taken [to Leeds] . . . in motor cars for a specially arranged entertainment. The thousands of people who . . . were permitted in pre-war days to visit . . . probably never dreamt that some of the large, lofty, and artistically furnished and decorated apartments, with their . . . beautifully painted ceilings, would one day be transformed into hospital wards . . . [where] the Earl and the Countess  – her Ladyship being Commandant – take a sympathetic interest in the work of the hospital.6

Ensuring the smooth running of a hospital in a country house was a role for which the ladies of the house saw themselves as uniquely suited. Lady Victoria Leatham recalled: ‘Burghley became a hospital for wounded soldiers. Reading my grandmother’s diary for 1916 . . . it seems that no one could have worked harder. Every minute of every day was absorbed with the management of the wards and entertaining those wounded soldiers who were well enough to go out.’7 At Woburn Abbey the riding school and the indoor tennis court became a 100bed hospital with orderly duties carried out by ‘domestic servants, gardeners, chauffeurs and grooms on the estate who were unfit for military service. The Duchess herself . . . never left the hospital for a single night’.8 The Countess of Carnarvon converted Highclere Castle into a hospital ‘with trained nurses and domestic servants to wait upon the patients . . . she treated the men as guests, in much the same way as she would have treated her friends at [weekend] . . . house parties before the war’.9 Echoes of the pre-war country house party persisted at Somerley, the home of the Earl and Countess of Normanton. On the outbreak of war, they offered the War Office a wing as an Auxiliary Hospital: The alterations necessary were completed in November, and the hospital now consists of well-appointed wards with 50 beds. The superintendent of the hospital is the Countess of Normanton, who is assisted in her work by her two elder daughters, the Ladies Georgina and Alexandra . . . together with a

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trained staff of sisters and V.A.D.  nurses . . . The wounded receive every care and attention, and those that are able the Earl and the Countess allow to fish in the private water adjoining the park, whilst the Earl is frequently seen taking a party on an excursion in his motor.10

Lord Clinton, meanwhile, killed part of his deer herd to provide venison for the wounded soldiers recuperating in his hospital-home.11 In the long war, patriotic landowners had entailed away control of their fields to the Food Production Department and endured the curtailment of the amenities of shooting and hunting by the Food Controller and the War Office. Yet always more was required, and the beautiful parks surrounding their homes were not immune from the patriotic obligations and expectations placed upon landlords by the FPD and the Board of Agriculture. In 1917, the Tatler observed, it’s the thing now, you know, if you want to be held up to an admiring public as a practically patriotic thing in peers, to put your parks under the plough, let sheep graze on your velvet lawns, or at the very least, give up to the masses such corners of land as you don’t care about for the making of small holdings. Lord Fitzwilliam, wealthiest of nobles, has lent bits of his Yorkshire colliery land to the colliers to grow vegetables on. Lord Kenyon . . . lets sheep graze upon the lawns at Gredington, his lovely old sixteenth-century place in Flintshire; Lords Berkeley and Ancaster are ploughing up their deer parks at Berkeley Castle and Drummond, and for many months in the Duke of Marlborough’s park at Blenheim the plough has been at work.12

The Luton News and Bedfordshire Advertiser supposed the ‘many thousands of acres of park-land surrounding the stately homes of England’ were excluded ‘from the operation of the scheme’.13 If so, while not being an advocate of ‘the ruthless breaking-up of the big estates which add so immensely to the beauty of the country . . . if everything is to be sacrificed to food production . . . we cannot quite see why the parks should escape’.14 Members of the landowning aristocracy had, in fact, realized by 1916 that maintaining privately owned parks, to support large herds of deer, could be considered unpatriotic. The Earl of Derby, in December 1916, issued instructions ‘to plough up and sow corn on about 100 acres of deer park’15 at Knowsley Park in Lancashire. His fellow Lancashire landowner, the Earl of Lathom, ordered the immediate winter ploughing of 100 acres of his park at Lathom House for the ‘production of wheat and potatoes’.16 The ‘Earl’s patriotic example’17 followed his offer of the park and house to the War Office, as a remount depot, on the outbreak of the war. By 1917, the depot was ‘the largest in the world . . . and the

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land now released will feed all the men at the depot and a large proportion of the horses trained there’.18 In 1917, the Duke of Westminster announced he was breaking up 30 acres of Eaton Park, ‘close to the polo ground, and will devote the land to a crop of spring-sown oats’.19 Meanwhile, in Devon, at a meeting of farmers addressed by Earl Fortescue on the ‘food problem’, Sir Ian Amory, presiding, announced that he ‘and another large landowner had undertaken to break up some of their park land in order to grow corn’.20 A month later, at Knightshayes Court, there were three teams of ploughmen ‘busy with the work’.21 In Gloucestershire, in 1916, ‘with a view to increasing food production during the war’, the Earl of Berkeley, having inherited the Berkeley estates on the death of Lord Fitzhardinge, decided ‘to convert his deer park at Berkeley Castle to agricultural purposes’.22 In consequence, the herds of red and fallow deer ‘which for 700 years have roamed through Whitcliffe Park, attached to the castle’23 were to be disposed of ‘during the coming season at such times and in such manner that the maximum amount of food many be obtained from them’.24 Keeping private herds of deer, like preserving game birds, was now a luxury that landowners could no longer indulge. At Coombe Abbey, in 1917, therefore, the Earl of Craven decided to dispose of ‘his celebrated herd of deer . . . The animals are to be killed, and sold for human consumption’.25 Similarly, the Earl of Feversham (d.1916) decided to kill the deer in Duncombe Park for food, as the Beverley and East Riding Recorder reported: Duncombe Park has for many years been looked upon as one of the largest and most picturesque demesnes in the country. It embraces a very large acreage of most richly-wooded and lovely hills and valleys, while immediately in front of the mansion is a big stretch of rich pasture land known as the Park Plain. Here roamed a herd of hundreds of black, white, spotted, and fawn fallow deer, which attracted the attention and admiration of all who visited the neighbourhood . . . The herd was greatly prized by the first Earl of Feversham, and also by his grandson and successor . . . While the Duncombe Park herds of deer constituted an attractive feature of the park they have become so numerous that, in view of the shortage of meat supplies in the country the late . . . Lord Feversham, decided that a large number should be killed, and the venison made available for the market. What has been done under the orders of the late Lord Feversham was done mainly with a view to increasing the food supply of the country, but the herd will be by no means exterminated.26

On Lord Gerards’ Eastwell Park estate in Kent, several deer shoots were organized to deliberately thin out his herd, venison being ‘the cheapest meat that can be bought today’.27 But, if a deer herd was to be deliberately managed

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to produce food then someone had to be employed to do so. In 1916, in West Suffolk, an exemption was sought by a landowner for his head gamekeeper on the grounds he had ‘charge of a herd of deer marketed for food . . . the deer numbered about five hundred, and required special care and treatment’.28 Given the owner of the estate had shown ‘every desire to release his employees for service with the forces’29 and in consideration of the number of keepers who had been released or were due to be released, an exemption was issued by the local Tribunal, on condition he remained in the same occupation. Being managed as a food source ensured celebrated herds of deer could be maintained. In Kent, for example, The announcement that Ashford butchers have been supplying venison to their customers in place of the customary joint of meat is accounted for by the fact that the town is particularly well situated with regard to facilities for obtaining carcases of deer. Large herds of deer are kept on no less than four estates in the locality, namely, Eastwell Park (Lord Gerard’s), Mersham Hatch (Lord Brabourne’s), Surrenden-Dering (Sir Henry Dering’s), and Godmersham Park (Lord Masham’s). Never before has venison been so generally consumed as at the present time, and the herds are, in consequence, being much reduced in numbers.30

The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News reported in 1918, ‘owing to the prevailing conditions herds of deer are being more than usually thinned down’.31 This was illustrated with photographs of the thinning out in Lord Brownlow’s park at Ashridge in Hertfordshire ‘where for centuries past herds of both red and fallow deer have been in existence’.32 In Devon, rather than break up their parkland, landowners were reducing their deer herds ‘and offering the use of their parks to the farm tenants for the grazing of stock in order that more grass land on the farms might be available to be broken up for the growing of corn’.33 Lord Fortescue, as the only member of the County War Agricultural Executive with a deer park, felt obliged to respond to a claim that there were ‘hundreds of acres not producing anything but deer’, by pointing out ‘my deer park at any rate is used as agricultural land rather than anything else’.34 Asked to advise Lord Fortescue to plough up his deer park for food production, G. C. Smyth Richards replied: Lord Fortescue’s Deer Park has for many years carried a very full stock of sheep in addition to the deer. From the commencement of the war Lord Fortescue has reduced the head of deer and at present there are about 25, including fawns. The Home Farm and the Deer Park contains about 575 acres of old pasture, of which about 130 acres is mown for hay. This land is at present stocked with 32 cows

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in milk, two bulls, 120 heifers . . . [mostly in calf], 4 colts, 3 working horses, 147 rams, 637 ewe lambs, and 38 other sheep . . . I believe most farmers will agree that the Home Farm and Park are doing all that is possible for the production of food.35

Not ploughing up a park avoided the problem identified by the Survey Subcommittee of the Staffordshire County War Agricultural Committee regarding the erection fencing. The surveyors thought ‘that large areas of park land ought to be ploughed up’; the Board of Agriculture, however, had laid down ‘that as far as possible land should not be broken up where it would entail a large expenditure on fencing’.36 Grazing livestock in their parks ensured landowners avoided the expense of paying for new fencing. Beyond their park palings, and in the absence of a large non-agricultural income, the prevailing level of rents between 1895 and 1912, and the limited potential for increase, had ‘justified only a very modest level of investment’37 in new farm buildings, field drainage, cottages and repairs. Just before the Great War, for example, A. D. Hall was unimpressed by the condition of farm buildings in Norfolk.38 Similarly, Paul Brassey has concluded, ‘much land . . . was still in need of drainage in the First World War’.39 Equally, Edwardian landlords were reluctant to raise rents to remove a tenant ‘who farmed reasonably and paid their rent regularly’.40 Moreover, given the ‘current agitation against the existing powers of landowners’ such a move would, as A. D. Hall recognized, be ‘a delicate and unpopular task’.41 This all changed in 1917. Under the Corn Production Act, farming came under the purview of the CWAECs. In the opinion of Rowland Prothero, with ‘every landowner who is of age . . . serving at the front’, those who remained England would now be able to do their bit too by helping ‘us in every way to promote the cultivation of the soil . . . [the Act] will help landowners to do what they are reluctant to do, get rid of a worthless tenant’.42 Landlords had already been doing their bit by keeping their rents low ‘as part of their patriotic response to the nation’s need for more home-grown food’.43 Nonetheless, under the 1917 Corn Production Act, the state sought to guarantee that farmers’ costs were kept down by inserting the proviso ‘that rents were not to be raised consequent upon any changes brought about by the Act’.44 As Prothero explained, Part III [of the Act] . . . carries out the pledge given by the Prime Minister that no landowner should be allowed to use to his profit the advantage the grant of minimum prices given [to farmers] by the State for the public benefit. The clause does not apply to re-letting to a new tenant, but it does apply to a sitting tenant who holds a yearly tenancy . . . At the same time [while] there is nothing

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. . . to prevent any landowner, by arrangement with his tenants, from raising rents, provided that they are not raised upon the guaranteed minimum prices . . . I have no reason to believe that the rule of landlords not to raise to sitting tenants is likely to be departed from . . .45

More traditionalist landowners were ‘convinced that it remained Lloyd George’s long-term aim to reduce their position to that of mere rent receivers, with little influence in agricultural development’.46 County Life complained that ‘the politicians . . . have done their best . . . to block the landowner’.47 Unlike the farmer who ‘gains from the high prices and the labourer by higher wages . . . the landowner is left out in the cold. If the landlord is of any use on an estate, he ought to receive his share of the extra profits made during war-time . . . On him rests the responsibility for doing the permanent work on a farm’.48 In the context of the plough campaign this presented landlords with a conundrum. The rent restrictions imposed on agricultural landlords by the state had effectively ‘deprived the landowner of capital he could have employed to fulfil his obligations to provide drainage, construct buildings, and so on’.49 As Country Life recognized, in 1917, rents were ‘extremely low at the present time’ yet many ‘permanent improvements . . . will be needed if on a large-scale pasture is to be turned into arable’.50 For example, It means more men on the farm, and therefore more cottages, more stock, and therefore more stable accommodation. Much draining is required. Small fields, to obtain the best use of machinery, must be replaced by large, that is to say, fences must be removed, and it is neither cheap nor easy to grub up hedges and remove the immemorial elm. The fixed rent is therefore a barrier to the enterprise of the owner.51

Regardless, landowners were expected to do their bit, hence a letter published in the Times in February, signed by the Dukes of Bedford, Norfolk, Portland, Northumberland and Buccleuch, the Earls of Leconfield and Powis, Lord Clinton, Mr H.  W. Fitzwilliam, Mr G.  R. Lane-Fox and Mr F.  J. S.  Foljambe declared: We wish now to make it clear that during the continuance of the war we neither desire nor intend to take any steps toward raising the rent of any tenant farmer on our estates whose present tenure continues unchanged. Whilst we cannot claim to speak for anyone but ourselves, we believe that this course will . . . commend itself to all agricultural landowners, despite the heavy burdens and great difficulties under which they are labouring.52

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If the Corn Production Act guaranteed prices for farmers, but precluded landowners from raising rents, then perhaps it was time to consider joining the ranks of the gentleman-farmer?53 In January 1917, inspired by the action of the Earls of Derby and Lathom, Major Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, Bt., of Rufford Hall, in Lancashire, ordered his ‘spacious park . . . to be ploughed up for wheat and potatoes’ and to facilitate this he purchased ‘a powerful motor plough to do the work’.54 His agent then applied to the West Lancashire Rural Tribunal for the exemption of an electrical and mechanical engineer and an agricultural tractor driver. The Tribunal refused the application. The same Tribunal also expressed its concern that four tenants had been served with notices to quit their farms.55 Major Hesketh explained that having decided to plough up and cultivate his park, he was convinced that ‘more food could be grown if he took [his] . . . farms over himself ’.56 The concern expressed by the Tribunal was echoed by the District War Agricultural Committee. But, as the Major, again, explained to Sir Harcourt Clare, Honorary Secretary of the County War Agricultural Executive Committee: His sole idea in taking the steps he had done was with a view to increased food production. He had purchased valuable up-to-date agricultural machinery for the ploughing up of Rufford Park, which was now under cultivation, and which would be utilised for the farms he desired to take over.57

A report from the local Inspecting Committee showed ‘that all the farms were in a high state of cultivation’58 whereupon the Chairman of the District Executive Committee concluded: The committee was concerned with food production, and from the facts before them he did not think the farms would grow more if the present tenants had to leave. Major Fermor-Hesketh had declined to withdraw the notices . . . diplomacy had been tried so far . . . [but] he was legally entitled to give the tenants notice . . . [because] under the Corn Production Act [while] a landowner could not give his tenants notice to quit after February 27th last . . . the present notice was given prior to February 2nd . . . It was [nonetheless] resolved . . . [that it was] inexpedient in the national interest of food production that the four tenants should leave their farms . . . [and] that produce could be grown with less labour by the present tenants and their families than under estate management, which would require an additional staff of labour, which was not in the national interest at a time when men were required for the Army . . . It was further resolved [to again appeal to] Major Fermor-Hesketh . . . with a view to getting the notices withdrawn.59

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The Chairman forwarded this resolution to the Lancashire War Agricultural Executive Committee but, in a surprising twist, Major Fermor-Hesketh then joined the district committee! The Chairman later claimed he had been ‘forced’ to issue the invitation: ‘There was an instruction from the Board of Agriculture and the Lancashire War Agricultural Committee that they must appoint a landlord.’60 With any other landlords unavailable because they ‘were all at the war’61 Major Fermor-Hesketh was duly appointed. Major Hesketh offered an alternative explanation: ‘Surely these gentlemen, whose sole interests are the interests of the farmers, who have such . . . drastic powers in their hands, would hardly offer the post of district executive officer to anyone whose interests were not consistent with their own?’62 This whole episode was unusual as most landowners preferred to limit themselves to the management of a home farm. Closer to home, their parks remained an obvious addition to the grassland that could be scheduled for ploughing by a CWAEC. In Devon, at a meeting of a District War Agricultural Committee, it was revealed that: ‘Parkland had not been taken into consideration in making the survey for corn. Such land was generally an amenity to a mansion, and had not, in consequence been considered.’63 Whereupon a resolution was passed asking the Executive Committee ‘to take into consideration the advisability of breaking up and cultivating park land . . . as other agricultural land’.64 In Staffordshire, the CWAC Survey Subcommittee reported that there were ‘considerable areas of land in parks which could be cultivated for the 1918 harvest’.65 Similarly, an inspection of Hardwick Park in Derbyshire, on behalf of the Chesterfield WAC, found the park ‘to be in excellent condition, and grazing a large number of cattle’ and 37 acres were earmarked for cultivation with ‘every prospect of this recommendation being acted upon’66 by the Executive Committee. At a meeting of Suffolk landowners and the Chairmen of the District War Agricultural Committees with the West Suffolk War Executive Committee, the Chairman of the latter was more candid: There were large parks in front and around gentlemen’s mansions throughout the county from which they could get a considerable acreage of land. Some members of the Executive Committee . . . inspected two such properties with the result they would get something like 700 acres of very useful land. There were many more parks in different parts of the county still to be inspected, and they wished the landowners interested to work with the Executive in providing a proportion of that class land where suitable for the purpose of growing corn. He was certain he was not appealing in vain, even if it might spoil the amenities of their home for a year or two.67

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In Cheshire, the executive of the CWAC received and accepted an offer from Sir Richard Brooke, of Norton Priory, of 90 acres of land ‘forming part of his park, for cultivation for the production of food’.68 The sacrifice of even a portion of an ancient park was clearly a notable gesture, yet it frequently amounted to only a small proportion of the whole, leaving landowners open to criticism. In January 1918, it was reported in the Derby Daily Telegraph that the Duke of Devonshire’s agent had notified the Derbyshire Agricultural Executive Committee of ‘his willingness to plough up 16 acres of land in Hardwick Park’.69 This report prompted a reply from a ‘Humble Observer’: This to me seems playing with the job, and such examples will never win the war. If 100 acres had been added it would look a little better, and even then I imagine it would be difficult to locate in the vast domains owned by these peers. When I recall . . . 28 Dukes own, in 158 estates, 4,000,000 acres . . . and then read of 16 acres being spared at such a critical time of our nation, I stand aghast . . . these landed gentry are the owners of . . . vast estates a good portion [of which] is already under cultivation . . . yet . . . there are [still] thousands of acres of good grass land lying comparatively idle in parks, pleasure grounds, game preserves, depasturing of deer . . . [which] could all be put under the plough without in any way . . . detracting the beauty of landscape or the stately homes of England, say for one year . . . landed proprietors . . . [must] rise to the occasion and come to the saving of the nation and the terrible loss of life now going on.70

They must, in other words, fulfil their military function in both England and Flanders. Landowners would argue that by sacrificing the amenities of their parks they were, and were equally keen to publicize this with reports and photographs in newspapers and even in newsreels. The ploughing of the Duke of Marlborough’s Blenheim Park by motor tractor was filmed and screened in Blinkhorn’s Picture House, Banbury, in 1917.71 The controversy over the ploughing up of parkland was exacerbated by parks no longer being required as temporary camps, readying Territorial and New Army battalions and Yeomanry regiments for service overseas. Some of these temporary camps had, however, become more permanent. At Belton Park, in 1914, Bernard Darwin had described ‘the tops of tents’ and the sun shining ‘on the long rows of corrugated iron huts that an army of workmen is building’,72 with the herd of fallow deer taking refuge near to the house. In a letter to the Sheffield Daily Examiner, Private S. Hales, C Company, 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment ‘with the section of Lord Kitchener’s new army now in the making at Belton Park’ described the park as ‘a beautiful

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place . . . There is a straight drive up to the house, bordered by huge trees. You can quite see the camps will have to be tremendous affairs to accommodate anywhere about 20,000 men . . . At present the men sleep in [canvas] tents, but huts for winter quarters are being built across the park – fine structures of wood and corrugated iron’.73 The Lincolns, followed by the Staffords, were the first battalions to be moved to these more permanent quarters, the men being ‘highly pleased with their new barrack rooms’74 (see Figure 4). In 1915, the 11th (Northern) Division departed and was replaced by another New Army division, the 30th Division. As many of its battalions were raised in Manchester and Liverpool by the Earl of Derby, his family crest was used as the Divisional insignia. The Division included the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th Service, City or ‘Pals’ Battalions of the Manchester Regiment, and as they marched to Belton, ‘the grey corrugated iron huts stood out clearly against the dark wooded background . . . On nearing the park the surroundings were seen to be more picturesque than ever’.75 Prior to the war, Earl Brownlow, in keeping with the aristocracy’s determination to be involved in the country’s preparations for war, had offered his park to the

Figure 4 Belton Park camp, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum.

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4th Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment (Special Reserves). Heavy rain failed to hinder their training, even though they were under canvas because, ‘the camping ground is one of the best naturally drained grounds in the country, and the men were very little inconvenienced. The water soaked into the ground as fast as it fell, and there was no flooding’.76 By the winter, with thousands of soldiers in his park, the Grantham Journal reported that the approach to their encampment, together with the ground between the lines ‘was so cut up by the constant traffic backwards and forwards that mud was everywhere several inches in depth. This unpleasant situation was borne with commendable equanimity considering the conditions were such as to raise the ire of any man’. Subsequently: The deplorable conditions which have prevailed in the lines of the Battalions . . . on account of the wet weather, are now gradually being overcome . . . the Yorks. and Lancs. barrack-rooms have all been linked up with well-made stone and gravel paths . . . A trench is dug on either side for drainage purposes . . . the earth is thrown onto the path. Then a layer of twigs is spread along . . . being covered with stones, and finally gravel is strewn over’.77

In 1915, and for the remainder of the war, Belton Park was the home of the Machine Gun Corps. At the nearby Harlaxton Manor the conditions in Flanders were replicated even further with the construction of a trench-warfare training school in the park, replete with opposing German and British trench lines (see Figure  5) photographed by a pupil-pilot training at the Royal Flying Corps aerodrome overlooking the park (see Figure 6). In 1916, the expansion of the RFC’s pilot training programme necessitated its geographical expansion beyond the increasingly congested skies of the south of England. At Harlaxton, six huge hangers rose up out of the fields requisitioned for the aerodrome following the harvest in 1916 (see Figure 7).78 The competing need to produce more food or to produce more pilots was tilted in favour of the latter by the 1916 Defence of the Realm (Acquisition of Land) Act which gave aerodrome planners the statutory right to requisition the 386 acres needed for Harlaxton aerodrome. The requisitioning of farmland for new aerodromes was, unsurprisingly, another source of friction between the War Office and the Board of Agriculture. In December 1916, Lloyd George, now Prime Minister, intervened:  ‘Regarding aerodromes, the War Office simply gave authority for setting up aerodromes, and he thought it would be a mistaken policy for them to choose for aerodromes land that would produce corn. He would see that representations on that subject were made.’79

Landowners and the War

Figure 5 Harlaxton Park, trench school, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum.

Figure 6 Harlaxton Manor and aerodrome, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum.

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Figure 7 Hangers, Harlaxton aerodrome, Lincolnshire © RAF Museum.

The tensions over labour, land and aerodromes eventually boiled over in 1918 with the resignation of the Duke of Marlborough as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture. The Duke’s complaint was ‘the old, old story of inadequate labour on the land to carry out the decrees of the Government’.80 His position in the Board had, he believed, become ‘invidious’ given he was defending the plough-policy of the Board in the House of Lords while ‘simultaneously, in my private capacity, I was attempting to prevent, or indeed almost to resist, the application of that policy when enforced upon me by the executive committee of my own county’.81 Meanwhile, lorries belonging to the Air Ministry ‘are perambulating our villages inviting the inhabitants to go and work at aerodromes, and promising them £3 a week’82 including agricultural labourers who would be needed on the fields. In Hampshire, Essex, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and East Suffolk work on constructing aerodromes was blamed for taking farm workers away from agriculture. In 1918, Major Brassey, the owner of an estate in Northamptonshire, criticized the very unsatisfactory reply which was given to me by the Hon. Gentleman representing the Air Board [regarding] . . . contractors engaged in the

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construction of aerodromes in rural districts . . . taking men from the land . . . The men are tempted to leave the land by the offer of a very high rate of wages . . . [and] motor lorries are sent to the villages for men . . . and they are taken back in motor lorries at night. The right hon. Gentleman [Sir Frederick Bunbury] alluded to the fact that the farmers can apply for soldiers or for female labour . . . the soldiers I have had have done most useful work [and] . . . having been in a position to employ several ladies . . . [they] have also done excellent work for me. But . . . they do not take the place of men over military age with lifelong experience of farm work.83

The concerns of the Food Production Department regarding the loss of arable land  to the Department of Military Aeronautics, led by Sir David Henderson, were addressed. In September 1917, the War Cabinet sanctioned the allocation of 4,000 acres of arable land for new aerodromes after Henderson informed the War Cabinet that ‘his Department had consulted the FPD in this matter, and that he had endeavoured, in putting forward his proposals, to select land with the lightest soil and the least valuable for food production’.84 The War Cabinet endorsed his proposal on condition he ‘exercise every consideration . . . to avoid, as far as possible, taking over any ground that was likely to be of a highly productive nature for the growth of cereals’.85 To facilitate this outcome, whenever a site was being inspected by the Inspecting Officers of the Royal Flying Corps, Commissioners of the FPD were invited to be present. It was hoped ‘that by this means closer co-operation will be secured between the two Departments’.86 By November 1918 there were 401 aerodromes in Britain; and by the following spring, 116 had ‘already been relinquished for purposes of cultivation’.87 As for the farmer, the propensity for pilots practising crosscountry flying to crash in a field produced an all too familiar conversation between a pilot and a ‘horror-stricken agriculturalist amongst whose turnips you may happen inadvertently to crash, who, as he directs you towards the nearest telephone [usually about four miles away], remarks confidentially, “I durs’n’t go up in one of they things, mister [indicating the crash], not if you was to offer me a thousand poun’!!!” ’88 Landed society, by contrast, saw much of themselves in the young, temporary gentleman and airmen whose self-identity bore such a similarity to the aristocratic, fox-hunting, cavalrymen who had set their stamp on the early Royal Flying Corps (est. 1912) ensuring ‘it represented the bringing together of technology with the aristocratic, martial spirit’.89 Subsequently, while the flower of the aristocracy perished in the trenches their military tradition was carried on by their successors in the RFC, ‘in the chivalry of the air, where the boys from

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the public schools passed into the Air Service, in company . . . with boys of a very different class, with whom they would never have associated with at home’.90 These young pilots were welcomed into stately homes neighbouring their aerodromes. Among the owners of country houses in Hampshire ‘the RFC was always persona grata’.91 In Lincolnshire, Sir Charles Welby, ‘extended hospitality widely to the young [flying] officers in the neighbourhood’.92 Young officers would even, on occasion, fly to a stately home for a weekend. Subsequently, in 1919, Harlaxton became a repatriation camp for pilots drawn from across the British Empire. Here, they were able to enjoy ‘five weeks of playing fields and lounging in the sun on lordly estates . . . five weeks of healing from war’s wound’.93 Lady Diana Manners ‘hoped to entertain the boys before they left’94 at Belvoir Castle. At Harlaxton, ‘one of the most pleasant features of . . . Harlaxton Aerodrome has been their full use of the thousand-acre estate of their neighbour, Mr T. S. Pearson-Gregory, whose particular pleasure it has been to extend his hospitality to [us] . . . and to point out some of the rare beauties of his furniture, antiques and the various gardens’.95 Before departing for home, a New Zealand pilot wrote: To those of us who have spent the most of the past month in and around Harlaxton, these will be remembered as halcyon days. Certain it is that placing a military camp in such surroundings savoured of sacrilege, yet we are the gainers thereby. In later days, when amid Canadian snows, in the dusty cities of the Union, on the parched plains of Australia, amidst the tussock-covered hills of New Zealand, or in the sweltering heat of the Tropics we think of the peaceful setting of Harlaxton Manor in the golden days of May, well can we realise how those exiled Englishmen hunger for a glimpse of the green fields and hedgerows of the Motherland.96

Would the owners of these green fields and the hedgerows with their immemorial elms and the beautiful parks with their spreading cedars be able to heal from war’s wound?

Conclusion

Between 1910 and 1921, landowners, who since the 1890s had wanted to sell the settled portions of their estates, following the Settled Lands Acts,1 finally found the opportunities to do so. In the four years between 1910 and 1914, as mixed arable and livestock farming began to recover, some 800,000 acres were sold by landowners keen to reduce their exposure to Lloyd George’s land value taxes, land valuation and land campaign. As B. A. Holderness suggests ‘in the exceptional circumstances of political foreboding among the landed interest’ in 1911–1913, ‘much property was thrown on the market’.2 Yet, as J. V. Beckett dryly observed: ‘Surprisingly, given the extent of the complaints, the estate system remained largely intact in 1914.’3 By comparison, according to Michael Thompson’s 1963 estimates, between 1918 and 1921 something between 6 and 8  million acres changed hands.4 John Beckett and Michael Turner have demonstrated that ‘there was little doubt that a significant number of large and influential members of the traditional landed aristocracy were disposing of significant acreages’.5 This was certainly the perception at the time. In 1922, C. F. G. Masterman concluded that what had just taken place was ‘the greatest change which has ever occurred in the history of the land of England since the days of the Norman Conquest . . . [or] the Reformation. It is being effected . . . by enormous taxation . . . sales are being announced every day in the newspapers, of an average of perhaps half a dozen . . . greater or lesser historic country houses, and of estates running into many thousands of acres’.6 Income tax had increased from 6 to 30 per cent between 1913 and 1918  ‘seriously eroding the elite’s ability to maintain its traditional lifestyle’.7 Before 1914, on the Earl of Pembroke’s Wilton estate, income tax had taken barely 4 per cent of the gross rental; by 1919, it was accounting for a quarter of that figure. The situation was similar on the Marquess of Ailesbury’s Savernake estate, and the overall burden on these two estates ‘of direct taxes together, namely land tax, rates, and incomes tax had risen from 9 to 30 per cent of

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the rental’.8 In addition, a super-tax was introduced on incomes over £10,000 per annum. Likewise, interest rates had risen from 3.5 to 6 per cent.9 At the same time the cost of repairs and maintenance had increased due to wartime inflation, which hit anyone on a fixed income such as ‘landowners heavily reliant on rents’.10 This compounded a problem already ‘evidenced before 1914 in the inability of landlords to raise rents despite the modest revival of agriculture [which was] . . . confirmed by the wartime rent freeze’.11 During the war, landlords had barely ‘raised the rents above the low level which prevailed before the war . . . [giving them little] inducement to improve the buildings and general equipment of the holdings on their estates’ having ‘gained little or nothing from the improved conditions in agriculture [under the Corn Production Act], while on the other hand their expenses have been largely increased’.12 Rent restrictions were thus ‘another nail in the coffin of the landed interest’.13 On the other hand, it was possible to make a virtue out of this predicament. The announcement in the Times, in 1917, by several landowners of their decision not to raise their rents was applauded in the Sketch magazine in suitably patriotic terms: The great landowners have issued a manifesto against – themselves! Their taxes are higher than ever before, and their improvements and repairs cost them more; but the farmers are assured in this not uncharacteristic document that the rents shall remain as now they are . . . To this sporting offer the names of great sportsmen are attached, Leconfield from Sussex, Lane-Fox from Yorkshire  – names that carry the very earth of England in their own sound. The Dukes too, are out in force to keep down – their own incomes . . . England as rent-rising area is in wartime under an interdict.14

Such self-sacrifice was in keeping with the wider curtailment of the aristocratic lifestyle. In 1916, Lloyd George had established a new Ministry of Food Control, led by Lord Devonport as Food Controller. Under the Defence of the Realm Act while he could ‘make Orders regulating the production, supply, sale, or purchase of any article for the purpose of encouraging or maintaining the food supply of the country’,15 he preferred a scheme of voluntary rationing over food controls, ‘essentially a Derby Scheme for food’.16 In 1917, his successor, Lord Rhondda, another millionaire businessman, decided to subsidize bread prices, introduce price-fixing and, eventually, in 1918, rationing. The impact of what was a patently fair17 system of rationing upon the aristocracy was a subject ripe

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for satirical comment, as in the ‘Letters of Eve’ which appeared in the Tatler in 1917: My Dear Betty, It was funny to see ’em  – duchesses in dozens and commercial peers’ wives in clumps  – at Mrs Lloyd George’s Economy-in-the-Home meeting at the St James’s Theatre the other day. The pearls alone . . . What? And one or two sable scarves . . . The imagination of Eve is fairly vivid as you know. But d’you know I just couldn’t see the Duchess of Rutland, f ’instance, or her Grace of Abercorn, or even Lady Lansdowne, who all ‘supported’ on the platform, taking that intimate interest in their stockpots . . . For one thing, in the big country houses, kitchens are such miles away, aren’t they? And I’m making a tour of Mayfair on the first fine morning just to see in how many Mayfair windows they’ve stuck up the Food Controller’s card (with red, white, and blue border) – IN HONOUR BOUND WE ADOPT THE NATIONAL SCALE OF VOLUNTARY RATIONS It’ll look so saucy where they still give the best dinners, won’t it? Or where, at that last ‘little’ dance for the poor dear darling on-leavers, the Bisque d’Homard was the very fine flower of lobster, and we drank their healths in – Beakers full of the warm south, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene With beaded bubbles winking at the brim . . .18

In the countryside there was always the option of a brace or two of pheasants, or partridges, or venison, and most landed families had the added benefit of having their own home farm and kitchen garden, and the opportunity to extend their vegetable plots. In 1915, at Blenheim Palace, the Duke of Marlborough had substituted sheep for mowers and planted cabbages in his flower beds. The ‘national food problem’, the Times observed, ‘may not have been greatly lessened by these practices’ but it was still a patriotic gesture.19 Regardless, landowners felt themselves unduly targeted, especially by death duties given the heightened risk of a double-death, where the death of an owner could be followed by the death of the heir, or their deaths could occur in reverse order. Either circumstance could compel a family to sell. In Wiltshire, the Amesbury Abbey estate was put up for sale in 1915 on the death of Sir Edmund Antrobus Bt., following the death of his son, killed in action in 1914, while serving with the Grenadier Guards.20 In 1914, Percy Wyndham was killed in action while

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serving with the Coldstream Guards, having succeeded to the ownership of the Clouds estate in Wiltshire in 1913, his father, George Wyndham, having only recently succeeded to the estate.21 Percy had no direct heir, and so the death duties owing on three inheritances in quick succession passed, along with the estate, to his cousin who was taking his chances at the front ‘together with young officers, who included . . . most of his male cousins and the trustees of the Wyndham estate’.22 The trustees of the Clouds estate were thus confronted by the invidious prospect of ‘a gallant young soldier . . . killed in France, leaving only a collateral to bear the unreduced charges on an estate already crippled’.23 Recognizing the increased likelihood of multiple heirs being killed, the state offered some relief. Under Section II of the Death Duties (Killed in War) Act of 1914, where ‘estate duty has again become payable on the same property . . . passing on the death of some other person [killed in the present war] . . . the whole of the estate duty payable on such subsequent death in respect of the property so passing shall be remitted’.24 This, of course, did nothing to help an immediate heir. In 1917, while on active service, the Duke of Sutherland put a subsidiary estate in Shropshire up for sale. In a letter to the tenants he explained ‘the burden of taxation, which I  think is heaviest on a landlord whose patrimony consists mainly of large landed properties, and particularly the very heavy death duties consequent on the death of my father, have compelled me to take this step’.25 Similarly, the Willoughbys, the Lords Middleton, facing two sets of death duties in 1922 and 1924, sold most of their Nottinghamshire estates, including Wollaton Hall, their Elizabethan prodigy house.26 In 1919, death duties were raised again, in what the Duke of Marlborough attacked as a deliberate attempt to end the inheritance of great houses and great estates by compelling an heir to sell, thereby razing these ‘fortresses of territorial influence . . . in the name of social equality’.27 More significantly, in 1919 a new basis of land valuation was adopted when calculating death duties; the valuation became the sale price of land. This meant that the value of land for death duties now exceeded the capitalized value of the income from the land, offering ‘a strong inducement for heirs to sell land . . . in order to pay the duties’.28 In 1920, the Times described how England is changing hands . . . For the most part the sacrifices are made in silence . . . The sons are perhaps lying in far-away graves; the daughters secretly mourning someone dearer than a brother, have taken up some definite work away from home, seeking thus to still their aching hearts, and the old people, knowing there is no son or near relative left to keep up the old traditions, or so

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crippled by necessary taxation that they know the boy will never be able to carry on when they are gone, take the irrevocable step.29

In 1921, in Buckinghamshire, Stowe was sold by Lady Kinloss after her son and heir, Richard Morgan-Grenville, was killed in the war. The Times concluded ‘the fate of Stowe is the fate of half the great places’.30 The aristocracy had perished in numbers not seen since the days when the English nobility engaged in the Wars of the Roses or the British and Irish nobility in the Civil Wars. Country Life diligently recorded their sacrifice, county by county, in England and Wales, until the war shifted away from the efforts of heroic individuals towards a war of food production in 1916. In 1915, the roll of peers and their sons ‘who have given their services, and in some cases their lives, to the country’ was already ‘a long one’.31 By 1917, the list published in the Scotsman was longer still: The third year of the war has added considerably to the list of bearers of hereditary honours and of their heirs, who have fallen . . . At the close of the second year of the war we recorded the deaths for the two years of the following peers:  Earls  – Annesley, De La Warr, Kitchener, Longford, Roberts, Seafield. Viscount  – Hawarden. Barons  – Brabourne. Congleton, De Freyne, Kesteven (extinct), Newborough, Petre, Vernon. To these now [in  1917] fall to be added: Earls – Feversham, Shannon, Suffolk. Barons – Abinger, Gorell, Lucas, Llangattock [extinguished] . . . Peers who have lost their heirs in the war: Duke – Leinster. Marquesses  – Bath, Lincolnshire, Northampton, Tweeddale. Earls  – Aylesford, Castle Stewart, Erne, Haddington, Loudoun, Powis, Ranfurley, St Aldwyn, Shrewsbury, Stanhope, Wemyss and March, Westmeath, Yarborough. Viscounts – Bridport, Clifden, Goschen, Hardinge, Hood, Molesworth, Monck, Templetown, Valentia. Barons  – Aberdare, Ashcombe, Ashtown, Auckland, Balfour of Burleigh, Chelmsford, de Blaquiere [two heirs], Congleton, De Ramsey, Derwent, Desborough [two heirs], Dunleath, Glenconner, Hamilton of Dalzell, Hardinge of Penshurst, Hillingdon, Killanin, Kinnaird, Knaresborough, Leconfield, Macdonald, Manners, O’Neill, Penrhyn, Playfair, Redesdale, Ribblesdale, St Davids [two heirs], St Levan, Stamfordham, Stratheden and Campbell [two heirs], Waleran, Walpole . . . [and] Willingdon.32

Over the four years of the war, of the peers and their sons under the age of 50 who had served, almost one in five was killed. While the years 1914, 1915 and 1916 exacted the heaviest toll of aristocrats leading by example, the years 1917 and 1918 still exacted ‘a steady and inexorable toll [of] . . . six peers and sixtyfive peers’ sons’.33 Of these twenty-four were aged 25 or less, resulting in the ‘boy

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Dukes and Earls’ spoken of by Frederick Gregg and the ‘boy’ in the Times, as titles passed from grandfathers to grandsons. The existence of grandsons or distant cousins ensured that out of the 558 titles linked to estates of at least 3,000 acres, only about 3 were extinguished by the Great War; among these titles was Baron Desborough (cr. 1905) following the deaths of both Julian and Billy Grenfell.34 If a titled aristocracy survived the Great War did it remain a landowning aristocracy too? Highlighting the patterns of inheritance for the estates and titles belonging to Lords Alington, Aylesford, Barnard, Bath, Clifden, Feversham, Leconfield, Lincolnshire (Carrington), Northampton, Powis, Redesdale, Wemyss and Yarborough, Madeleine Beard concluded that theirs was a ‘story of aristocratic continuity in the countryside’.35 Back in 1922, Masterman described ‘the outraged cry of the owners of large historic estates, proclaiming that with the burden of income-tax and super tax, and the fall in the value of securities, they would be compelled to relinquish the gigantic castles and houses which had been the pride of the countryside for hundreds of years’.36 In 1917, the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer had reported: ‘The incidence of these taxes, together with the imposition of the 5s. income tax, has meant that many landowners now find it impossible to live in their ancestral homes . . . a total burden of nearly 10s. in the pound on their estates . . . is the primary cause of the dispersal of much landed property.’37 The post-1917 land market was, therefore, massively inflated by comparison with the Edwardian land market due to the relative lack of activity while hostilities were still in progress, the loss of heirs and because ‘there was a substantial increase in taxation of current income in the budgets of 1919 and 1920’.38 For the first time, according to Alun Howkins, talk of the break-up of the great estates had some foundation in reality.39 Or did it? Lord Pembroke’s decision to sell the outlying portions of the Wilton estate in 1918 can be seen as a continuation of the pre-war trend towards the contraction of the core estate rather than its dispersal.40 Likewise, while the Willoughbys, Lords Middleton, sold their Nottinghamshire estates, blaming death duties, the sale ‘enabled them to consolidate their property in Warwickshire’.41 The disposal of outlying portions of a core estate and/or country houses and estates subsidiary to the core, in a different county, helped families raise additional capital, helped them forestall the relinquishment of the house they thought of as their home and helped to solve another fiscal conundrum. Throughout the war their farms had been deliberately under-rented; if they now decided to raise their rents, any increment would be liable to income tax and super-tax. Alternatively, farms ‘could be sold at prices based on their current annual value, not on their existing rents, so that

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the seller capitalised this difference and took his share of increased land values as an untaxed profit’.42 Especially, if ‘large estate holders [had] . . . spent large sums of money in improvements without any corresponding increase in rent’.43 Land was, in consequence, ‘rapidly changing owners’ with Country Life highlighting the estates ‘going into the hands of those who have been able to increase their riches in the midst of international strife’.44 But the real ‘watershed in the history of landownership and rural life’45 was the transfer of land from the landlords to the farmers. As Lord Ernle observed, the war ‘added to the difficulties of landowners’ and except for ‘the favourable opportunity of sale which it afforded, they were the class which was most crippled’,46 resulting in an increased number of occupying owners; buoyed by the Corn Production Act. Tenants were though ‘given little real choice if they were offered first refusal’.47 In 1920, the Duke of Leeds, blaming high taxes, offered his tenants in Yorkshire the ‘opportunity of acquiring your holdings on terms to be arranged, and if this cannot be done the estate will have to be submitted to auction’.48 The Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer reported that in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, and England more generally: ‘Many landlords have offered the farms to sitting tenants . . . before submitting the whole of the estate to public auction.’49 Country Life too highlighted this trend of arranging ‘private bargains . . . beforehand. This was the case with Sudbourne Hall estate, Suffolk’.50 The Estates Gazette described this trend as a ‘revolution in landowning’.51 In 2007, Thompson, referencing the work of S.  G. Sturmey, concluded that ‘roughly one quarter of the cultivated areas [of England and Wales] changed from being tenanted land to land owned by the farmers’52 between 1914 and 1927. Beckett and Turner concur with the ‘contemporary perception that a great deal of land came on to the market in the immediate aftermath of the war’, but this perception ‘does not support the view of a revolution in landownership in the wake of the war’.53 It is easy to see how this perception developed: ‘When estates such as Stowe, Stoke Rochford, and Wollaton came into the market, there were grounds for wondering whether traditional landed society was being fatally undermined.’54 The heavily indebted Lord Londesborough returned to the market in 1918 ‘to sell parts of his Willerby estate which had not attracted buyer in 1912’.55 The interruption, deferral, postponement or suspension of sales, due to the Great War, is suggestive of a contiguity between the pre- and post-war periods, but, again, this cannot be looked upon as the delayed liquidation of the landed interest given Thompson’s concession that English landed society had in fact experienced ‘something far short of the collapse or catastrophe which has been over dramatized by many commentators’.56 The situation after the war

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is perhaps analogous to the point made by David Spring concerning the sale of aristocratic acres between 1909 and 1914, in that it did not warrant the melodramatic phrase ‘the break-up of the great estates’ because, landowners as a body, ‘were not yet prepared for so drastic a dénouement’.57 After the Great War, as Thompson states, ‘the people selling remained attached to the land’;58 indeed, great estates ‘did not vanish any more than dukes and earls disappeared’.59 Nor did their mansions, despite Harris’ assertion that the ‘years before the First World War were an Indian summer, and few realized that within eight year’s country houses would come tumbling down’.60 By disposing of peripheral property, Heather Clemenson concluded that ‘a number of large estates were able to enter the inter-war decades cleared of indebtedness, more compact and in a healthier financial position than in the pre-war years’.61 Although few were perhaps in the position enjoyed by the Dukes of Devonshire, who, by selling land both before and after the Great War, cleared their debts, increased their investments, and thereby maintained ‘a style of life that was landed in its mode of expenditure, but increasingly plutocratic in its sources of income’.62 More generally, as Masterman recognized, by 1922, the landed aristocracy by selling ‘one or two of many of the estates which they possess’ were able to retain ‘the central historic house and its surroundings’.63 This was a change that: ‘No one could claim . . . is in any degree undesirable’ even on a ‘consolidated estate, where you could walk twenty or thirty miles without leaving the land of one owner, there can be no harm done in lopping off a considerable proportion, hitherto inadequately managed’,64 but ‘the central core of such an estate will probably survive’.65 Yet, as Sir Howard Frank, Britain’s leading estate agent, recognized in 1915, the war was having a profound impact upon English landed society, ‘it must be remembered that some time must elapse before country house life can again be in full swing. Hunting has suffered a rude check; the rearing of game has been discouraged . . . Many owners will be obliged to let down their gardens, while stables will be practically closed’.66 In the same year, D. H. Lawrence wrote to Lady Cynthia Asquith, ‘when I drive across this country, with autumn falling and rustling to pieces, I am so sad . . . So much beauty and pathos of . . . things passing away . . . under the weight of many exhausted lovely yellow leaves, that drift over the lawn’.67 Lady Horner, whose son Edward was killed in 1917, wrote to her widowed daughter Katherine, ‘all that is left of our beloveds [is] the vision of a grave in France’.68 By 1917, Lord Ribblesdale was ‘writing a memoir of his son. It is not the first case, during the war, of a parent finding himself with another family task in hand just when he had come to regard himself as the

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veteran spectator of the little world of his creating’.69 By 1918, these little worlds were subject to the state and the dictates of the Defence of the Realm Act.70 The tragedy of English landed society in the Great War was that in fulfilling their military function ‘their property had perished in battle, no less than their children’.71 Landowners, after the Great War, were therefore confronted by a profound question: What was the continued purpose of being a landowner? But what of the land question? The coming of the war had ‘left the story of political conflict in 1914 without a dénouement’.72 The plough-up campaign in 1917–1918, appeared to have delivered upon Lloyd George’s Land Campaign of 1912–1914 by producing an unprecedented level of ‘interference with their property rights . . . in marked contrast to the position of unquestioned authority occupied by most estate owners in the pre-war countryside’.73 ‘Now-a-days’, according to Rider Haggard in 1918, ‘the ownership of land is nothing but one constant worry and expense, especially if it be burdened [with debt] and repairs are needed’ while the landlord, who, ‘is loaded with abuse, pelted with ‘Orders’ and hunted by perpetual demands for money . . . is threatened continually with all sorts of vague but oppressive legislation’.74 Walter Long, Lord Lansdowne and Viscount Chaplin were ‘bitterly – but ineffectually – opposed to this government dictation to landowners of what they could do with their land’ and ‘vainly opposed Lord Lee’s vigorous ploughing programme in Cabinet’.75 In practice, as Lord Ernle recognized, ‘the efficacy of state control was tried under such special conditions as [to] render the experiment comparatively valueless’.76 Regardless, was the ‘the end of the war . . . likely to see, a resumption of the pre-war political assault on the hereditary landed aristocracy’?77 In 1917, as the land market began to pick up and Christopher Turnor decided to sell the Panton Hall estate in Lincolnshire, the auctioneer explained that he ‘was only falling into line with other large landowners, who were carrying out the dictates of our legislators, who considered it undesirable for the benefit of the community that large estates should be in the hands of one person’.78 In the same year, the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer concluded that the growing incidence of estates being put up for sale ‘throughout the country [was] . . . a direct effect of the land legislation of the last Liberal Government’.79 In 1919, Lord Northampton observed, ‘landowning on a large scale is now generally felt to be a monopoly and is consequently unpopular’.80 Yet, in reality, Lloyd George, whose ‘vitriolic rhetoric at the time of the 1909 Budget and the 1913–1914 Land Campaign had thoroughly scared the landowners’ was ‘no longer breathing fire and brimstone and his land campaign immediately after 1918 was confined to advocating the provision of small-holdings for ex-servicemen’.81 In 1916, a Small

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Holdings Colonies Bill was introduced, but the combined opposition of the Board of Agriculture and farmers82 was an ‘effective obstacle to the realization of any utopian [or Edwardian] ideals’83 of land reform and the revival of ‘England and Englishness’.84 In effect, the land reform campaign faded away, and the changes to the pattern of ownership so feared before 1914 took place quietly. They witnessed a major transfer not within the landed community but from the landowning aristocracy to the tenant farmers. The revolution took place without anyone really noticing, and certainly not the press for whom tenant farmers made nothing like the headlines of a duke, an earl, a viscount, or even a maharajah.85

Landowners, who had supported land reform, such as the Marquess of Lincolnshire (formerly Lord Carrington), who had supported the break-up of the great estates, still intended to stay substantial landowners,86 although as  Christopher Turnor suggested ‘no landlord should hold a larger private estate than he could live upon and supervise’.87 Country Life, echoing both Turnor and Charles Bathurst, agreed that landlords now had to focus on estate management:  ‘In the immediate future . . . there will not be many people in this country able to treat an estate as a luxury owned chiefly for the shooting, fishing, hunting . . . Land owning will have to be treated as a business and, to put it plainly, the country can have little use for an owner who refuses to do this.’88 In these circumstances, the purpose of being a landowner was to focus on farming. Hunting and shooting, those amenities that had so preoccupied the Edwardian landowner, were now minor considerations. This precluded any revival of the great shooting weekends of  the Edwardian era and broke the connection between landownership, fox hunting and martial masculinity. Particularly, as the heaviest losses had been among the owners ‘of a few thousand acres, or the gentlemen farmers, working perhaps a few hundreds. Theirs was a life of the open air, of sport in riding and hunting and shooting . . . No class was more intensely patriotic . . . [equal to] the patriotism of the Prussian Junker . . . involving as it did [a] willingness to sacrifice pleasure and even life itself for the sake of an impersonal ideal’.89 To the Edwardians, as Krishan Kumar states, ‘the essential England was rural’.90 This was the ideal that inspired the aristocratic warrior-aesthetes, and English landed society in general, to defend England, home and beauty. As Alan Judd and David Crane suggest:  ‘If there was any one man among the “gilded youth” of 1914 who seemed to embody the high ideals and aspirations of Rupert Brooke’s poetry it was Captain the Hon. Julian Grenfell D.S.O.’91 He was to

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‘others who are young . . . the perfection of themselves . . . and it is when their youth rises most, to its utmost fierceness and tenderness, that they come near to him, who was made of those things’.92 By their patriotic example and selfsacrifice these young aristocratic officers had sought to defend England, home and beauty but, having defended the realm, they could still perhaps ‘consider the future with equanimity, safe in the possession [of their land] . . . and secure in devoting all their energies to the intelligent management of their estates, to the advantage of the State and the community’.93 As Lawrence James suggests, ‘peers in khaki added lustre to the Lords. For the rest of the nobility . . . military service [was] . . . an opportunity for displaying their continued usefulness to the nation’.94 Writing in Country Life, in 1915, Sir Howard Frank continued: ‘No class of the community has served with more self-sacrifice or distinction in the war than the landowners, and the power of the political agitator to depreciate their influence in the affairs of the nation has, for our time at any rate, disappeared.’95 They had had a ‘good war’.96 Having defended the realm, landowners now had to fulfil the other function of landownership highlighted by Lloyd George in Limehouse in 1909, to look after the broken in their villages and their neighbourhoods. The memory of paternalism among labouring families was a bitter one given the coercion by the squire of husbands and sons to go to war before ‘things began to go wrong and casualties mounted’.97 It was incumbent, in these circumstances, on the wife of the squire to visit labouring families in their cottages to dispense charity and to distribute parcels, money and gifts at Christmas ‘much along pre-war lines’.98 When the Duke of Sutherland decided to sell his secondary estate in Shropshire, in 1917, he stipulated ‘that all the cottagers on the estate tenanted by men on active service or their descendants, shall be reserved from the sale, and [those] . . . occupied by pensioners and others will only be sold subject to the occupants having a lease for the rest of their lives’.99 Heirs coming home to a great house and an estate and labourers coming home to their cottages on these estates were now ‘men who had fought side by side in the trenches [and] were not likely to go home and fight each other with the old sectional or political bitterness . . . [or] fall back into the old class antagonisms when the war is over’.100 The experience of fighting the trenches, shared by the landowner and the labourer, was shared by the farmers’ sons who served in the Yeomanry, yet it fell to the landowner to lead, to embody a tradition of martial masculinity and fulfil the military functions of a landed aristocracy. They did so, at great loss, to defend an Edwardian ideal which was ultimately superseded by the Defence of the Realm Act, leaving only a memory of the victory that ‘might have been . . . chivalric,

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whole and unstained’101. Still, like ‘old Sir Harry at the Hall’ they had done their bit and lost most heavily of all, as is, I suppose, appropriate. His eldest son, a man not far short of fifty, a comfortable civilian . . . with a growing family, went out on a General’s Staff . . . A shell killed the General and knocked out his staff. Sir Harry’s son . . . lost a leg, and one arm is permanently maimed. What remains of him came home the other day . . .102

Notes Introduction 1 M. J., ‘What Kent Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 4 December 1915, 733, 733–737. 2 ‘Topical Notes: Local and General’, The Bucks Herald, 5 June 1915, 7. 3 Noel Whiteside, ‘The British Population at War’, in Britain and the First World War, ed. John Turner (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 101, 85–116. 4 Keith Simpson, ‘The Officers’, in A Nation in Arms. A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War, ed. Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military, 2014), 65. 5 Christine Berberich, The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth Century Literature: Englishness and Nostalgia (Aldershot: Routledge, 2007), 54. See also J. M. Winter, The Great War and the British People (London: Macmillan, 1985), 92. 6 Charles F. G. Masterman, England after War: A Study (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 30. 7 John Keegan, The First World War (London: Hutchinson, 1998), 8. 8 H. Rider Haggard, ‘Corn Production Bill’, The Times, 13 June 1917, 9. 9 Haggard, ‘Corn Production Bill’, 9. 10 ‘Mr Lloyd George on His Task’, The Times, 15 November 1918, 13. 11 Keith Grieves, ‘Commemorating the Fallen in Surrey’s Open Spaces After the Great War’, in The Great War: Localities and Regional Identities, ed. Nick Mansfield and Craig Horner (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 93, 77–95. 12 ‘Task’, 13. 13 ‘Task’, 13. See Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 227. 14 H. Rider Haggard, Rural England: Being an Account of Agriculture and Social Researches Carried out in the Years 1901 and 1902, vol. II (London: Longmans and Co, 1902), 575. 15 Paul Readman, Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity, and the Politics of Land, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 39. 16 Paul Readman, ‘The Edwardian Land Question’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185.

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17 Susanna Wade Martins, ‘Smallholdings in Norfolk, 1890–1950: A Social and Farming Experiment’, Agricultural History Review 54, no. II (2006): 309. See also J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural Landownership and Estate Management’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part II, ed. E. J. T. Collins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 699. 18 Brian Short, Land and Society in Edwardian Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 29. 19 Short, Land and Society in Edwardian Britain, 23. 20 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 137. 21 J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 474–475. 22 Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 227. 23 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 137. 24 Hugh Cecil, ‘Foreword’ in The Aristocracy and the Great War, ed. Gerald Gliddon (Norwich: Gliddon, 2002), xi. 25 David Cannadine quoted in George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 71. 26 Reginald Pound, The Lost Generation (London: Constable, 1964), 78. 27 Jeanne Mackenzie, The Children of the Souls. A Tragedy of the First World War (London: Chatto and Windus, 1986), 142, 262. See also Angela Lambert, Unquiet Souls: The Indian Summer of the British Aristocracy (London: Macmillan, 1984), 147–149 and Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 82. 28 David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane. Militarism, Modernity and Machines (London: Penguin, 2013), 128–129. 29 Mandler, Fall and Rise, 128–129. See also, David Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy. Grandeur and Decline in Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 62–63; David Cannadine, ‘After the Horse: Nobility and Mobility in Modern Britain’ in Land and Society in Britain, 1700–1914. Essays in Honour of F. M. L. Thompson, ed. Negley Harte and Roland Quinault (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 219–224; Alun Howkins, ‘Social, Cultural and Domestic Life: 1. A Class Apart. The Aristocracy and Gentry’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part II, ed. E. J. T. Collins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1365, 1354–1424. 30 Caroline E. Playne, The Pre-War Mind in Britain. A Historical Review (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), 317. 31 Playne, Pre-War Mind, 319. See also Mark Bostridge, The Fateful Year: England 1914 (London: Penguin, 2014), 345. 32 Playne, Pre-War Mind, 329–330, 326–327.

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33 Playne, Pre-War Mind, 329, 336. 34 Playne, Pre-War Mind, 329. 35 Paul Readman, ‘The Liberal Party and Patriotism in Early Twentieth Century Britain’, Twentieth Century British History 12, no. 3 (2001), 293, 291–292, 269–302. See also Caroline Dakers, Clouds: The Biography of a House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 179. 36 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 82. 37 Caroline Dakers, The Countryside at War, 1914–1918 (London: Constable, 1987), 13, 11–12. 38 Grieves, ‘Open Spaces’, 78–80. 39 Alun Howkins, quoted in Grieves, ‘Open Spaces’, 80. 40 Grieves, ‘Open Spaces’, 84. 41 Mark Girouard, The Return to Camelot. Chivalry and the English Gentleman (London: Constable, 1981), 287 and Alan Judd and David Crane, First World War Poets (London: National Gallery Publications, 2014), 29. 42 John Stallworthy, Anthem for Doomed Youth. Twelve Soldier Poets of the First World War (London: Constable, 2002), 25. 43 Mackenzie, Children, 181. 44 Stallworthy, Anthem, 26–27. 45 Madeleine Beard, English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1989), 2. 46 Cecil, ‘Foreword’, ix. 47 Edgerton, England, 81. 48 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 73. 49 Beckett, Aristocracy, 467. 50 Frederick James Gregg, ‘The British Aristocracy and the War: The Doubtful Future of the House of Lords’, Vanity Fair, March 1916, http://www.oldmagazinearticles. com/WW1_British_Aristocracy-Nobility_during_World_War_One#. Wcg7DNFryUk. 51 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 81. 52 Masterman, England after War. A Study, 27–32. 53 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 84. 54 Gregg, ‘British Aristocracy’. 55 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 83. 56 F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1963), 327. 57 Martin Pugh, State and Society. British Political and Social History (London: Edward Arnold, 1994), 157, 156. See also Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 83. 58 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 83. 59 Mandler, Fall and Rise, 128.

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60 G. R. Searle, The Liberal Party. Triumph and Disintegration, 1886–1929 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 40. 61 ‘Task’, 13. 62 John Sheail, ‘Land Improvement and Reclamation: The Experiences of the First World War in England and Wales’, Agricultural History Review 24, no. II (1976), 111. 63 Richard van Emden and Steve Humphries, All Quiet on the Home Front. An Oral History of Life in Britain During the First World War (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military, 2017), 206 and Sheail, ‘Land Improvement and Reclamation’, 112. See also Beard, Landed Society, 39. 64 ‘Agricultural Committee Work’, Country Life, March 24 1917, 270. 65 Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 179. 66 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 87. 67 Grieves, ‘Open Spaces’, 84. 68 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 84. 69 ‘Food Production (Agriculture)’, HC Deb. Hansard (28 March 1917), 403–404. 70 Beard, Landed Society, 39. 71 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 456. 72 The Country Gentleman’s Estate Book (Letchworth: Country Gentleman’s Association, 1917), 1.

1 Landownership and the Territorials 1 John Beckett and Michael Turner, ‘Land Reform and the English Land Market, 1880–1925’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 223, 219–236. See also John Grigg, Lloyd George: The People’s Champion, 1902–1911 (London: Harper Collins, 1978), 177, 179–181. 2 Frank Owen, Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George His Life and Times (London: Hutchinson, 1954), 183. 3 Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 366. 4 Michael Blewett, The Peers, the Parties and the People: The General Elections of 1910 (London: Macmillan, 1972), 76. 5 Offer, Property and Politics, 369, 364. 6 Ibid., 376–377. 7 Ibid., 378. 8 Ibid., 381 and 373.

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9 Ibid., 364. 10 Owen, Tempestuous Journey, 204. 11 G. D. Philips, The Diehards. Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England (London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 1, 163, 173. 12 Andrew Adonis, Making Aristocracy Work. The Peerage and the Political System in Britain, 1884–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 272. 13 Adonis, Making Aristocracy Work, 273. 14 Clive Aslet, The Last Country Houses (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 57. 15 Offer, Property and Politics, 378. 16 Madeleine Beard, English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1989), 12 and David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 110. 17 John Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System: English Landownership 1650–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 662. 18 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘The Land Market in the Nineteenth Century’, Oxford Economic Papers 9 (1957), 306, 285–308. 19 John Beckett and Michael Turner, ‘End of the Old Order? F. M. L. Thompson, the Land Question, and the Burden of Ownership in England, c. 1880–c.1925’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 279, 269–288, and Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 224. 20 F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1963), 322 and J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 85. 21 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 224–225; Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 286; Thompson, English Landed Society, 322. 22 Thompson, English Landed Society, 325 and Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 224. 23 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 286. 24 Thompson, English Landed Society, 326. In 1988, Beckett saw the war as a postponement; see Beckett, Aristocracy, 85. 25 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘The Land Market, 1880–1925: A Reappraisal Reappraised’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 292. 26 Thompson, English Landed Society, 314. 27 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 224. 28 See E. J. T. Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change: C. The Recovery, 1897–1914’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. 7, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 208–209, 208–223. 29 E. J. T. Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change. B: The Great Depression, 1875– 1896’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. 7, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 179, 138–207. 30 Habakkuk, Estates System, 658–659.

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31 Aslet, Country Houses, 57. 32 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 225. 33 Aslet, Country Houses, 57. To avoid death duties, see Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 132. 34 Collins, ‘B: The Great Depression’, 145. 35 Heather A. Clemenson, English Country Houses and Landed Estates (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 111, 110. 36 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 225. 37 H. Rider Haggard, Rural England: Being an Account of Agriculture and Social Researches Carried out in the Years 1901 and 1902, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, 1902), 145. 38 Aslet, Country Houses, 4. 39 Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 128. 40 Haggard, Rural England, 2, 151, 145. The Turnor family ‘spanned the divide between the aristocracy and the gentry’, Mark Rothery, ‘The Wealth of the English Landed Gentry, 1870–1935’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 253, 251–268. 41 ‘Country Homes and Gardens Old and New: Stoke Rochford, Grantham, the Seat of Mr. E. Turnor’, Country Life, 11 September 1901, 592. 42 Roy Strong, Country Life, 1897–1997. The English Arcadia (London: Country Life Books, 1996), 21. 43 Strong, Arcadia, 39, 36. See also F. M. L. Thompson, Gentrification and the Enterprise Culture: Britain 1780–1980 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 62. 44 Aslet, Country Houses, 4. See also John Harris, ‘Gone to Ground’, in Roy Strong, Marcus Binney and John Harris, The Destruction of the Country House, 1875–1975 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), 15–16 and Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 304. 45 Keith Grieves, ‘ “Lowther’s Lambs”: Rural Paternalism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History 4, no. 1 (1993), 60, 61, 55–75. 46 Alun Howkins, quoted in Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 61–62. Similarly, among this new pseudo-gentry was Lord Milner who owned a house in the countryside with perhaps 150–200 acres, David Spring, ‘Willoughby de Broke and Walter Long: English Landed Society and Political Extremism, 1912–1914’ in, Land and Society in Britain, 170–1914: Essays in Honour of F. M. L. Thompson ed., Negley Harte and Roland Quinault (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 185–186. 47 Girouard, English Country House, 304. 48 Jill Franklin, The Gentleman’s Country House and Its Plan, 1835–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 38.

Notes 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

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Franklin, Gentleman’s Country House, 38. Aslet, Country Houses, 2. Habakkuk, Estates System, 633. Girouard, English Country House, 306. Aslet, Country Houses, 4. Michael Hall, The Victorian Country House: From the Archives of Country Life (London: Aurum, 2009), 137. Haggard, Rural England, 2: 543. Strong, Arcadia, 39. Thompson, Gentrification, 62. Girouard, English Country House, 302. Aslet, Country Houses, 4. Rothery, ‘English Landed Gentry’, 252. Mandler, Fall and Rise, 129. Ibid., 217, 129. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (London: Metheun, 1908), 29. Girouard, English Country House, 298. Mandler, Fall and Rise, 128. Arthur Ponsonby, The Decline of Aristocracy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 16. Equally, it could be argued, the ‘Diehards’ or ‘Ditchers’ had ‘helped to preserve the influence of a landed aristocracy in British society and politics’, see Gregory D. Phillips, The Diehards: Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979), 158. Charles F. G. Masterman, England after War. A Study (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 30. Harris, ‘Gone to Ground’, 16. Gerald Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War (Norwich: Gliddon, 2002), 220. Nikolaus Pevsner and John Harris, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (London: Penguin, 1989), 350 and Tim Knox, Grimsthorpe Castle (London: National Trust, 1996), 17. ‘Denton Manor on Fire’, Grantham Journal, 20 January 1906, 8. Ibid., 8. Ibid. Ibid. Girouard, English Country House, 300. Beard, Landed Society, 3. ‘Harlaxton: Visit of the Guardsmen’, Grantham Journal, 4 March 1911, 4. Peter Dennis, The Territorial Army, 1906–1940 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1987), 10, 5.

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80 Ian F. W. Beckett, Britain’s Part-Time Soldiers. The Amateur Military Tradition, 1558–1945 (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military, 2011), 213 and Dennis, Territorial Army, 14. 81 ‘Mr Haldane’s Scheme’, Lancashire Evening Post, 5 March 1907, 2. 82 E. H. H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism. The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), 92. 83 Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 57. 84 ‘The King and the Territorial Army, October 26, 1907, by Our Military Correspondent’, The Times, 28 October 1907, 10. See also Phillips, Diehards, 94. 85 ‘Court Circular’, The Times, 28 October 1907, 10. At the quarterly meeting of the Lincolnshire Territorial Forces Association in 1910, Lord Lucas, the Undersecretary of State for War, was pressed by Lord Heneage, Lord Brownlow, Lord Kesteven, Sir John Thorold Bt. and Sir Charles Welby Bt. to account for the War Office’s failure to respond to Lord Brownlow’s and Sir John’s offer to erect a rifle range, ‘The New Grantham Rifle Range’, Grantham Journal, 2 April 1910, 4. 86 ‘Imposing Ceremony at Buckingham Palace’, Bradford Daily Telegraph, 26 October 1907, 6. 87 Richard Holmes, Soldiers. Army Lives and Loyalties from Redcoats to Dusty Warriors (London: Harper Press, 2011), 108. Lincolnshire: The Earl Brownlow; Nottinghamshire: The Duke of Portland; Leicestershire: The Duke of Rutland; Northamptonshire: The Earl Spencer; Huntingdonshire: The Earl of Sandwich; Norfolk: The Viscount Coke, ‘Presidents of the Local Associations’, Stamford Mercury 17 January 1908, 4. Although at least 13 Lords Lieutenants were members of the National Service League, Beckett, Part-Time Soldiers, p. 221. 88 Dennis, Territorial Army, 14–15. 89 ‘The Territorial Force’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligence, 9 November 1907, 8. 90 ‘The Territorial Army Scheme’, Wiltshire Times and Trowbridge Advertiser, 2 November 1907, 8. 91 ‘Lincolnshire Territorial Force Association’, Stamford Mercury, 17 April 1908, 8 and ‘Lincolnshire County Scheme’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1908, 5. 92 ‘Lincolnshire Imperial Yeomanry’, Grantham Journal, 1 February 1908, 8. 93 ‘Great Territorials’ Night’, Lincolnshire Echo, 13 November 1913, 2. 94 Country Life reported, in 1915, that the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Berkshire Regiment ‘has sent out over three thousand five hundred men and eighty-five officers to the 1st and 2nd Battalions during the last year’ M. J., ‘What Berkshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 4 September 1915, 337, 337–339. 95 Holmes, Soldiers, 108. See also Dennis, Territorial Army, 13–14. 96 John Gooch, ‘Haldane and the National Army’, in Politicians and Defence. Studies in the Formulation of British Defence Policy, 1845–1970, ed. Ian Beckett and John Gooch (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), 73. See also John

Notes

97

98 99 100 101

102

103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

131

Sutherland and Margaret Webb, All the Business of War – The British Army Exercise of 1913: The British Expeditionary Force and the Great War (Towcester: Towcester and District Local History Society, 2013), 5, 9. K. W. Mitchinson, Defending Albion. Britain’s Home Army, 1908–1919 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 63, 60 –62 and Ian Beckett, ‘The Territorial Force’, in A Nation in Arms. A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War, ed. Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military, 2014), 132–133, 128–163. Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 57. E. H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 71. Beard, Landed Society, 4. See also ‘The Lincolnshires at Burghley Park’, Stamford Mercury, 12 June 1908, 6. ‘4th Battalion News’, The Green Tiger, 1913, 126–127. http://www. royalleicestershireregiment.org.uk/archive/journals/green-tiger-1910– 1918/1913/231305. ‘5th Battalion News’, The Green Tiger, 1913, 130. http://www. royalleicestershireregiment.org.uk/archive/journals/green-tiger-1910–1918 /1913/231263. Ibid., 130. Ibid., 131. Ibid. ‘4th Battalion News’, 129. Ibid., 129. See also Catherine Bailey, The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (London: Viking, 2012), 248. ‘Leicestershire Territorials. Inspected by the King’, Leicester Chronicle, 26 September 1914, 7. Bailey, Secret Rooms, 211–113. M. J., ‘What Lincolnshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 6 November 1915, 623, 623–625. N.B. The 46th (North Midland) Division. Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 68 and K. W. Mitchinson, England’s Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 234. See also John Milne, Footprints of the 1/4th Leicestershire Regiment (Leicester: Edgar Backus, 1935), 54–57.

2 Mobilizing the Estate Worker 1 Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 24.

132

Notes

2 Jerry Murland, Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Churchyard Cemetery (Barnsley : Pen & Sword Military, 2010), 13. 3 Murland, Aristocrats Go to War, 13. 4 Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters in Country-House Society, 1830–1918 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1991), 194–195. See also Horn, Rural Life, 40. 5 Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Class After the First World War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2015), 43. 6 Margot Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith, ed. Mark Bonham Carter (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962), 31. 7 Gerald Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War (Norwich: Gliddon, 2002), 32. See also Horn, Country House, 20. 8 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 33, 320. 9 Horn, Ladies, 196. 10 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 129. Horn, Ladies, 194. 11 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 129. 12 Ibid., 131. 13 Angela Lambert, Unquiet Souls: The Indian Summer of the British Aristocracy (London: Macmillan, 1984), 149. While neither were major landowners, Raymond Asquith (killed in 1916, Edward Horner’s brother-in-law) and Patrick ShawStewart (killed in 1917) were members too and were thus posthumously recruited into the ‘lost’ generation along with John Kipling, Vere Harmsworth and Rupert Brooke. See David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 82. 14 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 80. 15 Horn, Country House, 21. 16 Asquith, The Autobiography of Margot Asquith, 312. 17 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, p. 83. 18 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London: Allen Lane, 1998), 202. Sir John French commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France from 1914 to 1916. 19 M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, II: Wiltshire and Dorsetshire’, Country Life, 17 July 1915, 82, 81–82. 20 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 405. 21 M. J., ‘Wiltshire and Dorsetshire II’, 82. 22 M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, IV, Yorkshire: The North Riding’, Country Life, 7 August 1915, 190, 189–190. 23 Ibid., 190. 24 M. J., ‘What Yorkshire Has Done for the War, II: The West Riding’, Country Life, 14 August 1915, 222, 221–222. Lord Harewood, the ‘head of the powerful family of Lascelles’ and president of the association, had two sons in uniform: The eldest, Lord Lascelles, in the Yorkshire Hussars, his second son, the Hon. Edward Lascelles, in the Rifle Brigade. M. J., ‘West Riding’’, 222.

Notes

133

25 M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, I: Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire’, Country Life, 3 July 1915, 6, 5–7. 26 M. J., ‘What Lincolnshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 6 November 1915, 623, 623–625. A fortnight later, G. E. E. Welby of the South Wales Borderers, Lieutenant Welby’s cousin, was killed. 27 Horn, Ladies, 197. 28 M. J., ‘What Worcestershire Has Done for the War’, Country Life, 3 October 1915, 467, 465–467. 29 M. J., ‘What Staffordshire Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 13 November 1915, 645, 645–647. 30 George Bigwood, ‘What Shropshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 18 March 1916, 374, 374–376. 31 M. J., ‘Lincolnshire II’, 623. See also M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, III: Lancashire’, Country Life, 31 July 1915, 154, 152–154. In Cheshire, ‘landowners who in earlier years had done some military training returned to their old regiments when the call for volunteers was made . . . Some have been killed; many have been wounded’, G. B., ‘What Cheshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 5 February (1916), 172, 172–173. 32 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 220. 33 Ibid., 221. 34 M. J., ‘Lincolnshire II’, 623. 35 M. J., ‘What Hertfordshire Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 4 November 1916, 554, 553–554. 36 Charles F.G. Masterman, England After War. A Study (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 28. 37 Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 259. See also Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 83–84. 38 M. J., ‘Wiltshire and Dorsetshire II’, 82. 39 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 81. 40 Caroline E. Playne, The Pre-War Mind in Britain. A Historical Review (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1928), 17. See also Ford Maddox Brown, Parade’s End (London: Penguin, 2002). 41 George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 72. See Chapter 7. 42 Horn, Ladies, 210. 43 Howkins, Reshaping, 261. See also Horn, Ladies, 210, 214. 44 ‘Ministry of Munitions Bill’, HL Deb. Hansard (9 June 1915), 25–44. 45 M. J., ‘What Notts and Derby Have Done for the War, Nottinghamshire: I’, Country Life, 11 September 1915, 369, 369–370. 46 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 84. 47 ‘Village War Food Societies’, Country Life, 14 August 1915, 218. 48 Horn, Country House, 31. See also Robb, British Culture, 104.

134

Notes

49 Horn, Rural Life, 29. 50 Howkins, Reshaping, 259. 51 Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), 28. 52 Caroline Carr-Whitworth, ‘Captains and Cowmen: Brodsworth Hall’s Community During the Great War’, in The Country House and the Great War: Irish and British Experiences, ed. Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 62. 53 Alfred Ollivant, ‘The Village in War’, Country Life, 22 September 1917, 58. 54 Jeanne Mackenzie, The Children of the Souls. A Tragedy of the First World War (London: Chatto and Windus, 1986), 148–149. 55 W. A. Armstrong, ‘Kentish Rural Society During the First World War’, in Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920: Essays for Gordon Mingay, ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambleton Press, 1991), 112, 109–132. 56 David Niven, David Niven, The Moon’s a Balloon (London, 1973) (London: Penguin, 1973), 14. Edward Horner had gone to war with his sister Cicely’s two best hunters and a body servant. These were, as Raymond Asquith informed Lady Diana Manners, ‘confiscated for the use of the regiment’, Mackenzie, Children, 145. 57 Keith Grieves, ‘ “Lowther’s Lambs”: Rural Paternalism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History 4, no. 1 (1993), 69, 55–75. 58 ‘Liverpool’s Patriotic Offer’, Liverpool Daily Post, 24 December 1914, 6. 59 M. J., ‘Notts and Derby’, 369. 60 Ibid., 369. 61 Ibid. 62 Horn, Ladies, 18, 202. 63 Ibid., 202. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 202 and Horn, Rural Life, 30. 66 ‘Duke of Rutland and His Employees. Great Landowner’s Patriotic Offer’, Grantham Journal, 29 August 1914, 4. 67 ‘Duke of Rutland’, 4. 68 Catherine Bailey, The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (London: Viking, 2012), 250. 69 Bailey, Rooms, 232. 70 Ibid., 257. 71 Ibid., 233. In 1914, the Marquess had turned down the opportunity to transfer from the Leicesters to one of the Guards regiments, believing his duty ‘lay with his country regiment: He felt obliged to serve alongside men who came from the estates that he would one day inherit’, Ibid., 245, see however, 212–214. 72 Ibid., 345.

Notes 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87

88 89

90

135

Howkins, Death, 29. Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 72. Horn, Ladies, 30. ‘Enthusiastic Recruiting Meeting at Bourne’, Grantham Journal, 5 September 1914, 6. See also ‘Lord Ancaster and His Employees. Inducement for Recruiting’, Grantham Journal, 5 September 1914, 6. Interestingly, the wording of a circular issued by the Earl is the same as that in the memorandum issued by the Duke of Rutland, suggesting a coordinated approach. In addition, any man prepared to enlist was given a £5 bonus, Horn, Rural Life, 30. Horn, Country House, 18–19 and Rural Life, 28. Caroline Dakers, Clouds: The Biography of a House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 179. Dakers, Clouds, 179. ‘Enthusiastic Recruiting’, 6. Caroline Dakers, The Countryside at War, 1914–1918 (London: Constable, 1987), 17. Catherine Bailey, Black Diamonds: The Rise and Fall of an English Dynasty (London: Penguin, 2008), 153. M. J., ‘Wiltshire and Dorsetshire II’, 81. ‘England as an Armed Camp. The Christmas of 1914’, Country Life, 5 December 1914, 759, 757–760. See also Gliddon, Aristocracy, 249. Keith Grieves, ‘Commemorating the Fallen in Surrey’s Open Spaces After the Great War’ in The Great War: Localities and Regional Identities, ed. Nick Mansfield and Craig Horner (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 82 , 77–95. M. J., ‘Lincolnshire II’, 623. ‘Grantham and the War. New Camp at Belton. Lord Brownlow’s Generosity’, Grantham Journal, 29 August 1914, 4. In 1915, Belton Park became the home of the new Machine Gun Corps. Bernard Darwin, ‘A Day with the Recruits in Belton Camp’, Country Life, 26 September 1914, 411, 411–414. Darwin, ‘Recruits in Belton Camp’, 411–413. In addition to the Regiments identified in the Grantham Journal, Darwin lists the Dublin Fusiliers, the Dorsets and the Royal Engineers. Lambert, Unquiet Souls, 205.

3 Mobilizing the Farmworker 1 ‘Ministry of Munitions Bill’, HL Deb Hansard (9 June 1915), 35.

136

Notes

2 John R. Fisher, ‘Agrarian Politics’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 324. 3 Fisher, ‘Agrarian’, 324. 4 G. R. Searle, The Liberal Party. Triumph and Disintegration, 1886–1929 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 41. 5 Paul Readman, ‘The Liberal Party and Patriotism in Early Twentieth Century Britain’, Twentieth Century British History 12, no. 3 (2001), 291. See also Paul Readman, ‘The Edwardian Land Question’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750– 1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 182, 181–200 and Andrew Adonis, ‘Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism: The Politics, Finances and Estates of the Third Lord Carrington’, Historical Journal 31, no. 4 (December 1988), 888–889, 893. 6 Readman, ‘Edwardian Land Question’, 185. 7 Susanna Wade Martins, ‘Smallholdings in Norfolk, 1890–1950: A Social and Farming Experiment’, Agricultural History Review 54, no. II (2006), 309. 8 Adonis, ‘Carrington’, 893. 9 See Readman, ‘Edwardian Land Question’, 186–187. 10 Paul Readman, Land and Nation in England: Patriotism, National Identity, and the Politics of Land, 1880–1914 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008), 38. 11 Readman, Land and Nation in England, 173. 12 Ibid., 173–174. 13 Adonis, ‘Carrington’, 897. See also Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 225. 14 Fisher, ‘Agrarian’, 325. 15 Adonis, ‘Carrington’, 885. 16 ‘Agricultural Wages’, HL Deb Hansard (21 April 1914), 942–996. 17 Alun Howkins and Nicola Verdon, ‘The State and the Farm Worker: The Evolution of the Minimum Wage in Agriculture in England and Wales, 1909–1924’, Agricultural History Review, Vol. 57, Part II (2009) 57, no. II (2009), 260. See also Readman, ‘Edwardian Land Question’, 188–189. In counties across England, the agricultural labourers’ weekly wage was under 20s., see Bethanie Afton and Michael Turner, ‘Wages’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2003. 18 Bentley B. Gilbert, ‘David Lloyd George. The Reform of British Landholding and the Budget of 1914’, Historical Journal 21, no. 1 (March 1978), 123. 19 Howkins and Verdon, ‘Farm Worker’, 260. 20 Fisher, ‘Agrarian’, 355. 21 ‘Agricultural Wages’. 22 For further discussion of the overall importance of the Land Campaign see Fisher ‘Agrarian’, 354 and Readman, Land and Nation, 38.

Notes

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23 ‘Agricultural Wages’. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. In 1915, the Marquess of Lansdowne, referring to the National Register, noted that of the 990,000 people between the ages of 15 and 65 employed in agriculture, 585,000 men were not of military age, ‘Agriculture and the Army’, HL Deb. Hansard (24 November 1915), 447–484. 26 ‘Agricultural Wages’. See also Peter Dewey, ‘Farm Labour’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 846 and Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 48. 27 Dewey, ‘Farm Labour’, 846 and Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 48. 28 ‘Agricultural Wages’. See also Readman, Land and Nation, 186–187. 29 ‘Child Labour – Agricultural Districts’, HC Deb. Hansard, 25 February 1915, 402–484. 30 Dewey, ‘Farm Labour’, 847. 31 Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 48. 32 Ibid., 48–49. 33 Alun Howkins, ‘Types of Rural Communities’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1322. 34 Howkins, ‘Rural Communities’, 1322. 35 Readman, ‘Edwardian Land Question’, 183. 36 Fisher, ‘Agrarian’, 354. 37 Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 28 and Adonis, ‘Carrington’, 888. 38 Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 71. 39 Ibid. 40 Alan Simmonds, Britain and World War One (London: Routledge, 2012), 199. See also Howkins, Reshaping, 258. 41 Simmonds, Britain, 199. 42 Howkins, ‘Rural Communities’, 258. 43 Keith Grieves, ‘ “Lowther’s Lambs”: Rural Paternalism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History 4, no. 1 (1993), 55, 68, 55–75 and Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England: A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), 28. 44 Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 55. 45 Howkins, Reshaping, 248–249. 46 Alun Howkins, Poor Labouring Men: Rural Radicalism in Norfolk, 1870–1923 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 13.

138

Notes

47 M. J., ‘What Kent Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 4 December 1915, 733, 733–737. 48 G. B., ‘What Shropshire Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 11 March 1916, 346, 346–347. 49 Ibid., 346. 50 ‘Bottesford Recruiting Meeting’, Grantham Journal, 19 September 1914, 8. His son was killed in action in 1915. 51 K. W. Mitchinson, England’s Last Hope: The Territorial Force, 1908–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 210, 236. In total, 318 Territorial Battalions undertook foreign service, compared with 404 Battalions of the New Armies. See Peter Simkins, ‘Kitchener and the Expansion of the Army’ in Politicians and Defence. Studies in the Formulation of British Defence Policy, 1845–1970, ed. Ian Beckett and John Gooch (Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1981), 98–99. 52 Grieves, ‘Lambs’, 69, 62. 53 Ibid., 55. 54 Keith Grieves, The Politics of Manpower, 1914–1918 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), 10. 55 Nicholas Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900–1930 (London: Ashgate, 2001), 87. See also Bonnie J. White, ‘Volunteerism and Early Recruitment Efforts in Devonshire, August 1914–December 1915’, Historical Journal 52, no. 3 (September 2009), 660. 56 See Nicholas Mansfield, ‘Volunteers and Recruiting’, in Norfolk and Suffolk in the Great War, ed. Gerald Gliddon (Norwich: Gliddon, 1988), 22. In the East Riding of Yorkshire, for example, ‘the organisation of the Territorial Association, of which Lord Nunburnholme is a member . . . has answered fully to the calls made upon it’, M. J., ‘What Yorkshire Has Done for the War, III: The East Riding’, Country Life, 21 August 1915, 255, 255–256. 57 Simmonds, Britain, 199. 58 M. J., ‘What Notts and Derby Have Done for the War, Derbyshire’, Country Life, 25 September 1915, 433, 433–436. 59 Mitchinson, Last Hope, 234. Lord Nunburnholme, the Earl of Derby, Lord Harris and the Earl of Harewood were all involved in their respective County Associations and active recruiters for the New Armies. 60 M. J., ‘What Staffordshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 20 November 1915, 675, 673–676. 61 Ibid., 675. 62 Ibid. 63 ‘The Territorial Force’, HL Deb. Hansard (1 July 1915), 182–199. 64 M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, I: Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire’, Country Life, 3 July 1915, 6, 5–7. See also the ‘magnificent

Notes

65 66 67

68 69 70

71

72 73

74 75

76 77 78 79 80 81

139

record’ of villages in Berkshire, M. J., ‘What Berkshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 4 September 1915, 337, 337–339. M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, III: Lancashire’, Country Life, 24 July 1915, 113, 113–115. Ibid., 113. John Stevenson, British Society, 1914–1945 (London: Penguin, 1990), 63 and Peter Simkins, Kitchener’s Army. The Raising of the New Armies, 1914–1916 (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military, 2007), 150–151. Simmonds, Britain, 199. Siegfried Sassoon, Picture Show (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1920). ‘The Territorial Force’. This figure consisted of the Reservists and Territorials called up for active service or further training; the men who enlisted once the harvest was gathered in; and those who left agriculture to work on the army camps and aerodromes springing up across rural England. See Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 71. Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 71. See also Simmonds, Britain, 209, Horn, Rural Life, 74, Nicholas Mansfield, ‘Land and Labour’, in Norfolk and Suffolk in the Great War, ed. Gerald Gliddon (Norwich: Gliddon, 1988), 76 and Bonnie White, ‘Feeding the War Effort: Agricultural Experience in First World War Devon, 1914–1917’, Agricultural History Review, 58, no. 1 (2009), 95, 95–112. F. E. Green quoted in Mansfield, English Farmworkers, 112. Clive Hughes, ‘The New Armies’, in A Nation in Arms. A Social Study of the British Army in the First World War, ed. Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (Barnsley : Pen and Sword Military 2014), 102, 100–125. ‘Military Recruiting and Agriculture’, HL Deb. Hansard, 12 April 1916, 675–697. ‘Military Recruiting and Agriculture’. Lord Selborne estimated: ‘Out of a million men . . . employed on the land before the war, more than a quarter had joined the colours’ see ‘Agriculture and the War’, Country Life, 27 May 1916, 641. His successor, Rowland Prothero (Lord Ernle), estimated that by the Spring of 1917, ‘of the rural population permanently employed on the land . . . 250,000 had been recruited for the Army’, Hilary Crowe, ‘ “Murmurs of Discontent”: The Upland Response to the Plough Campaign, 1916–1918’, in The Farmer in England, 1650– 1980, ed. Richard W. Hoyle (London: Routledge, 2013), 271. ‘Agriculture and the Army’. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Military Recruiting and Agriculture’ and Ibid. ‘Agriculture and the Army’. Ibid. Under the Derby Scheme ‘starred men’ could ‘attest’ their readiness to serve but they immediately passed into the Reserve and returned to work, Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 269.

140

Notes

82 ‘Military Recruiting and Agriculture’. 83 Horn, Rural Life, 77. 84 ‘Agricultural Furlough’, Country Life, 5 August 1916, 152. See also Horn, Rural Life, 95. Regarding the ‘supply of soldier labour during the hay and corn harvests . . . it is hoped that the military authorities will free as many soldiers possible . . . especially men who are accustomed to agricultural work’, ‘Agriculture and the War’, 641. 85 ‘Agriculture in Parliament. From a Parliamentary Correspondent’, Country Life, 25 November 1916, 624, 623–624. 86 ‘Foreign Labour in England’, Country Life, 22 September 1917, 266. See also the views of the Wiltshire landowner, Walter Long, in Grieves, Manpower, 14. 87 ‘Foreign Labour’, 266. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Horn, Rural Life, 100. The author’s great uncle, Charles Forster, was a farm labourer. He enlisted in the Norfolk Regiment in 1896; served in South Africa; was discharged in 1912; re-enlisted in 1914; served in the 11th (Home Service) Battalion, Norfolk Regiment; and in 1917 was posted to No. 429 Agricultural Company. 91 ‘The War and West Suffolk Agriculture’, Bury Free Press, 30 June 1917, 7. 92 Horn, Rural Life, 100. 93 See Simmonds, Britain, 209 and Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 271. This was half the number originally being called up by the War Office in early 1917. In the autumn of 1916, the county tribunals had refused to give exemptions to 60,000 men working in the agricultural industry. See also Alan Armstrong, Farmworkers in England and Wales. A Social and Economic History, 1770–1980 (London: Batsford, 1988), 160 and Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 99. 94 ‘Food Production’, HC Deb. Hansard (8 February 1917), 109–233. 95 L. Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy During the First World War (London: Routledge, 2016), 200–201. 96 Horn, Rural Life, 78. 97 ‘Food Production’. 98 G. E. Mingay, Land and Society in England, 1750–1980 (London: Longman, 1994), 220. 99 Dewey, ‘Farm Labour’, 111 and Horn, Rural Life, 74. 100 Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 271. 101 Armstrong, Farmworkers, 157. 102 Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 271. 103 ‘Kesteven Agriculturalists’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 12 February 1917, 2. The actual scale of the labour shortage is discussed in more detail in White, ‘Feeding the War Effort’, 96; Peter Dewey, ‘Government Provision of Farm Labour in

Notes

104 105 106 107 108 109 110

141

England and Wales, 1914–1918’, Agricultural History Review 27, no. 2 (1979), 118, 110–121; and Peter Dewey, ‘Production Problems in British Agriculture During the First World War’, in Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920. Essays for Gordon Mingay, ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambleton Press, 1991), 243. Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 271. Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present (London: Heinemann, 1961), 407. Armstrong, Farmworkers, 160 and Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 271. P. E. Dewey, ‘Military Recruiting and the British Labour Force During the First World War’, Historical Journal, 27, no. 1 (March 1984), 206, 199–223. Howkins, Poor Labouring Men, 115, 117. Howkins, Reshaping, 268. Ibid., 267.

4 Landlords and Food Security 1 Alun Howkins, Poor Labouring Men: Rural Radicalism in Norfolk, 1870–1923 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), 121. 2 Peter Dewey, ‘Production Problems in British Agriculture During the First World War’, in Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920: Essays for Gordon Mingay, ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambleton Press, 1991), 241. 3 ‘Soldiers of the Land’, Country Life, 17 November 1917, 461. The overall success of this policy is debated in P. E. Dewey, ‘Food Production and Policy in the United Kingdom, 1914–1918’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 30 (1980), 73–76, 71–89. See also J. M. Bourne, Britain and the Great War, 1914–1918 (London: Edward Arnold, 1994), 194–195 and L. Margaret Barnett, British Food Policy During the First World War (London: Routledge, 2016), 204–205. 4 ‘Agricultural Peers Wail About the Meat Prices’, Daily Gazette for Middlesborough, 2 August 1917, 4. 5 E. H. Whetham, ‘The Agriculture Act, 1920 and Its Repeal – the “Great Betrayal” ’, Agricultural History Review 22, no. 1 (1974), 36, 36–49; Alan Armstrong, Farmworkers in England and Wales. A Social and Economic History, 1770–1980, 157; and Alan Simmonds, Britain and World War One (London: Routledge, 2012), 204–206. See also ‘A Spokesman of Food Control’, Country Life, 9 February 1918, 122. 6 Andrew Fenton Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 1912–1936. A Study in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 22. 7 Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 26–27. 8 ‘The Board of Agriculture’s Opportunity’, Country Life, 3 February 1917, 104.

142

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9 R. J. Thompson, ‘An Enquiry into the Rent of Agricultural Land’, in Essays in Agrarian History, ed. W. E. Minchinton, vol. II (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1968), 72. 10 H. Rider Haggard, Rural England: Being an Account of Agriculture and Social Researches Carried out in the Years 1901 and 1902, vol. II (London: Longmans and Co, 1902), 419. In the House of Commons, Pretyman fought a prolonged rearguard campaign against Lloyd George’s ‘People’s’ Budget. 11 John R. Fisher, ‘Agrarian Politics’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 324, 321–357. 12 J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural Landownership and Estate Management’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 741, 693–758. 13 Haggard, Rural England, II, 145. 14 Andrew Adonis, ‘Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism: The Politics, Finances and Estates of the Third Lord Carrington’, Historical Journal 31, no. 4 (December 1988), 881. See also 882, 883, 871–897. 15 Adonis, ‘Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism’, 881–882. 16 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘An Anatomy of English Agriculture, 1870–1914’, in Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920: Essays for Gordon Mingay, ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambleton Press, 1991), 212, although there were considerable advantages to owning an estate in the livestock and dairying districts of the north-east, the north-west and the south-west of England, Thompson, ‘Anatomy’, 227. 17 Mark Rothery, ‘The Wealth of the English Landed Gentry, 1870–1935’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007): 267, 251–268. 18 A. D. Hall, A Pilgrimage of British Farming, 1910–1912 (London, 1913), viii–ix. 19 Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 27. 20 Ibid. 21 M. J., ‘What Notts and Derby Have Done for the War, Nottinghamshire: I’, Country Life, 11 September 1915, 369, 369–370. 22 ‘The Duke of Portland and Agriculture: A Visit to Welbeck’, Country Life, 26 June 1915, 893, 893–897. 23 Madeleine Beard, English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1989), 38. 24 Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 22. 25 Peter Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2014), 8. In 1909, it was estimated that only 13 per cent of all holdings, comprising 12 per cent of all farm land, were owner occupied in England and Wales. 26 G. E. Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 801, 799, 759–809.

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27 Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, 802. With the government heeding the opinions of the National Farmers’ Union (est. in 1908. Formerly the Lincolnshire Farmers’ Union, est. 1904), Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, 809. 28 Fisher, ‘Agrarian Politics’, 356. 29 Dewey, British Agriculture, 13. See also Michael Turner, ‘Output and Prices in UK Agriculture, 1867–1914, and the Great Agricultural Depression Reconsidered’, Agricultural History Review 40, no. 1 (1992), 45, 38–51. 30 In the north and west the plough campaign was more controversial where the ‘war left an altered landscape, ploughed-out grasslands and reduced livestock numbers’, Hilary Crowe, ‘ “Murmurs of Discontent”: The Upland Response to the Plough Campaign, 1916–1918’, in The Farmer in England, 1650–1980, ed. Richard W. Hoyle (London: Routledge, 2013), 289, 266–267. See also the spat between the Marquess of Crewe and H. J. Tollemache, ‘Cheshire War Committee’, Chester Chronicle, 23 June 1917, 7. 31 Lord Ernle, ‘The Great Depression and Recovery, 1874–1914’, in British Agriculture, 1875–1914, ed. P. J. Perry (London: Metheun, 1973), 10. 32 Ernle, ‘Great Depression and Recovery’, 10. 33 Dewey, British Agriculture, 13. 34 Ibid. 35 M. E. Turner, J. V. Beckett, and B. Afton, Farm Production in England, 1700–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 155–156. 36 ‘The Task of the Food Producers’, Country Life, 2 February 1918, 105. See also ‘Patriotism and Farming’, Country Life, 17 October 1914, 504. 37 Dewey, British Agriculture, 26, 52; John Sheail, ‘Land Improvement and Reclamation: The Experiences of the First World War in England and Wales’, Agricultural History Review 24, no. 2 (1976), 111, and Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 268. 38 ‘Agriculture and the Army’, HL Deb. Hansard, 24 November 1915, 447–484. See also Peter Dewey, ‘Government Provision of Farm Labour in England and Wales, 1914–1918’, Agricultural History Review 27, no. 2 (1979), 116 –117, 110–121. 39 ‘Agriculture and the Army’, 447–484. 40 Ibid. 41 Bonnie J. White, The Women’s Land Army in First World War Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 85. ‘Village women’ had to overcome similar conventions. See Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850– 1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 264 and Simmonds, Britain, 200–201, 210. 42 The Marchioness of Londonderry, ‘The Land in War Time, III: Women Workers on the Farm’, Country Life, 15 May 1915, 676. Lady Londonderry persuaded the Women’s Legion to form an agricultural branch. In 1917, the Legion limited its agricultural activities to fruit-bottling and horticulture, Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 118–120 and Dewey, British Agriculture, 54.

144

Notes

43 Henry Chaplin, ‘Women in Agriculture’, Country Life, 7 August 1915, 214. 44 Alfred Ollivant, ‘The Village in War’, Country Life, 22 September 1917, 58. 45 ‘Women on the Land in Yorkshire’, Country Life, 24 June 1916, 780. See also Dewey, British Agriculture, 55. 46 ‘Women in Yorkshire’, 780. 47 ‘Women in Yorkshire’, 780–781. See also Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters in Country-House Society, 1830–1918 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1991), 210–213. 48 See Dewey, British Agriculture, 55–56. 49 ‘Women on the Land’, Country Life, 20 May 1916, 609, 612. See also Howkins, Reshaping, 262–263; Dewey, British Agriculture, 52–53; and Horn, Rural Life, 120. In Middlesex, an ‘energetic’ WWAC was chaired by Lady Enfield with Lady Margaret Boscawen as organizing secretary, ‘Enlivening Food Production III, Middlesex’, Country Life, 28 April 1917, 417, 417–418. In terms of training, according to Dewey, the Board of Agriculture’s ‘major training effort was reserved for the Women’s Land Army [est. 1917] . . . the relatively unskilled village woman was ignored’ being organized into gangs for farm work, Peter Dewey, ‘Government Provision of Farm Labour in England and Wales, 1914–1918’, Agricultural History Review 27, no. 2 (1979), 117, 115, 110–121, and Peter Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2014), 55. The Women’s National Land Service Corps had supplied group leaders or forewomen ‘for the organisation of village women’, Horn, Rural Life, 126. A training centre for the WNLSC was established on Lord Rayleigh’s estate in Essex, Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 80. See also Gerard J. DeGroot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), 136. 50 Horn, Rural Life, 120. 51 ‘Women Land Workers’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 27 January 1919, 3. ‘Starred’ men were given a khaki armlet which would, according to Lord Selborne, ‘show that they are not shirkers and slackers’, ‘Agriculture and the Army’, 447–484. 52 Sheail, ‘Land Improvement’, 111. 53 Copper, British Agricultural Policy, 30–31. 54 ‘County Agricultural Executive Committee’, Bucks Herald, 24 February 1917, 3. For details of Regulation 2M see Thomas Hudson Middleton, Food Production in War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 352–356. 55 Armstrong, Farmworkers, 158. 56 Crowe, ‘Murmurs’, 272. 57 Ibid., 270; Sheail, ‘Land Improvement’, 111–112; Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 40; Simmonds, Britain, 206–207 and Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, 799. 58 Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 39. 59 ‘Corn Production Bill’, HL Deb., 16 August 1917, 525–615

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60 Simmonds, Britain, 207. 61 Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 40. In Northumberland, Sir Francis E. Walker Bt., principal agent to the Duke of Northumberland, was chosen as Chairman of the CWAEC, ‘Enlivening Agriculture, VI: Northumberland’, Country Life, 11 August 1917, 125. The Hertfordshire CWAEC included Mr. McCowan, ‘Lord Salisbury’s very capable agent’ and Mr G. J. Turner, Lord Desborough’s factor; his brother was agent to the Duke of Portland, ‘Enlivening Food Production, II: Hertfordshire’, Country Life, 21 April 1917, 393, 393–396. 62 Arthur Lee, ‘Report on the Work of the Food Production Department’, 12 September 1917, 79. National Archive. NA/CAB/24/26/26. http://discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7640531. Arthur Lee lived at Chequers and was, formerly, Chairman of the Buckinghamshire County War Agricultural Executive Committee. He would become Sir Arthur Lee and later Lord Lee, and like Lord Milner, could be considered a member of the pseudo-gentry. See Endnote 46, Chapter One. See also, ‘Appointment for Sir Arthur Lee’, Bucks Herald, 24 February 1917, 3. 63 Simmonds, Britain, 207. 64 ‘A Warning to Mr. Prothero’, Country Life, 20 January 1917, 50. He was also, formerly, Chairman of the Bedfordshire WAC, ‘Enlivening Agriculture, V: Bedfordshire’, Country Life, 14 July 1917, 29, 29–31. 65 ‘Mr Prothero’s Scheme’, Country Life, 30 December 1916, 770. 66 Richard Perren, Agriculture in Depression, 1870–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 34. See also Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present (London: Heinemann, 1961), 406–407. 67 Sheail, ‘Land Improvement’, 110 and Barnett, British Food Policy, 204. 68 Jonathan Brown, Farming in Lincolnshire, 1850–1945 (Lincoln: History of Lincolnshire Committee, 2005), 187. 69 ‘Bucks War Agricultural Committee’, Bucks Herald, 14 July 1917, 5. 70 ‘Agriculture in Buckinghamshire’, Country Life, 5 January 1918, 8. In Westmorland, the influence of the Earl of Lonsdale over one of the District War Agricultural Committees was highlighted by Hillary Crowe, see Hilary Crowe, ‘Profitable Ploughing of the Uplands? The Food Production Campaign in the First World War’, Agricultural History Review, vol. 55, no. 2 (2007), 213–214, 205–228. 71 Tollemache, ‘Cheshire’, 7. 72 Ibid. 73 ‘Agriculture in Kesteven: The Breaking Up of Grass Land’, Grantham Journal, 26 May 1917, 6. 74 ‘Agriculture in Kesteven’, 6. 75 Ibid. The extent of Ancaster’s opposition is discussed further in Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 32.

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76 Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 32. 77 Ibid. 78 ‘Derbyshire Landowners and Increased Cultivation’, Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal, 16 June 1917, 7. 79 ‘Derbyshire Landowners’, 7. 80 Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 32. 81 ‘Appeal to Lancashire Landowners’, Nantwich Guardian, 29 May 1917, 2. 82 Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 99. 83 ‘Food Production: Landowners and Agriculturalists Confer at Northallerton’, Leeds Mercury, 8 November 1917, 4. On the other hand, thousands of compulsory cropping orders were issued to insure farmers against any post-war claims by the landlord for ploughing up established grass which was often prohibited under the terms of their lease, Whetham, ‘Agricultural Act’, 40. 84 ‘Food Production’, 4. 85 ‘Bideford War Agricultural Committee: Speech by Earl Fortescue’, North Devon Journal, 24 May 1917, 8. 86 Caroline Dakers, The Countryside at War, 1914–1918 (London: Constable, 1987), 19. In 1917, at Eaton Park in Cheshire, ‘there were tests of motor tractor and horse ploughing by women which were most successful. Among the spectators were the Marquess of Cholmondeley, Lord Arthur Grosvenor, Lady Ursula Grosvenor, Sir Philip Grey Egerton, and other Cheshire landowners’, see ‘A Duke’s Park to Be Ploughed’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 13 November 1917, 7.

5 Game Preservation and the War 1 Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 369. 2 George Martelli, The Elveden Enterprise: A Story of the Second Agricultural Revolution (London: Faber and Faber, 1952), 51. 3 Nicholas Everitt, ‘Shooting’, in The Victoria County History of the County of Suffolk, ed. William Page (London, 1907), 364. For a discussion of the ‘Euston’ and ‘Elveden’ systems for rearing thousands of pheasants and partridges every season, and the role of Thomas Pearson Gregory of Harlaxton Manor in the development of the former system, see G. T. Teasdale Buckell, The Complete Shot (London: Methuen, 1907); Charles E. A. Alington, Partridge Driving: Some Practical Hints on Increasing and Preserving a Stock of Birds and on Bringing Them Over the Guns, With a Description of the ‘Euston’ System (London: John Murray, 1904); and Aymer Maxwell, Partridges and Partridge Manors (London: Adam &

Notes

4

5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

147

Charles Black, 1911). See also John Martin, ‘British Game Shooting in Transition, 1900–1945’, Agricultural History 85, no. 2 (2011), 209–210, 204–224. Mark Rothery, ‘The Shooting Party: The Associated Cultures of Rural and Urban Elites in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England After 1850, ed. R. W. Hoyle (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2007), 103, 96–118. Offer, Property and Politics, 370. Ibid., 369–370 and Martelli, Elveden, 51. Offer, Property and Politics, 369. John Grigg, Lloyd George: The People’s Champion, 1902–1911 (London: Harper Collins, 1978), 207. Alun Howkins, ‘Social, Cultural and Domestic Life’ in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1373, 1354–1424. Rothery, ‘Shooting Party’, 97. Pamela Horn, High Society: The English Social Elite, 1880–1914 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1992), 134. Kenneth Clark, Another Part of the Wood: A Self-Portrait (London: J. Murray, 1974), 16–17. Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 128. Clark, Wood, 14. Ibid., 4. ‘Agriculture and the New Ministry’, Country Life, 16 December 1916, 728. Martelli, Elveden, 49. Everitt, ‘Shooting’, 364. Martin, ‘British Game’, 208. Horn, High Society, 138. Ibid. and Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 271. Everitt, ‘Shooting’, 365. This was a trend noted by Haggard, with estates on the Brecklands fetching a good price ‘not on account of their agricultural value but because it was splendid game country’. H. Rider Haggard, Rural England: Being an Account of Agriculture and Social Researches Carried Out in the Years 1901 and 1902, vol. II (London: Longmans and Co, 1902), 383–384. See also Jamie Camplin, The Rise of the Plutocrats: Wealth and Power in Edwardian England (London: Constable, 1978), 222 and Gordon E. Cherry and John Sheail, ‘The Lowlands’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1674, 1658–1694.

148

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23 Haggard, Rural England, II: 419. 24 John Beckett and Michael Turner, ‘End of the Old Order? F. M. L. Thompson, the Land Question, and the Burden of Ownership in England, c. 1880–c.1925’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 288, 269–288. 25 Isabel Colegate, ‘The Shooting Party Reconsidered’, The Threepenny Review, no. 94 (Summer, 2003), 11. 26 Colegate, ‘Reconsidered’, 11. 27 Keith Simpson quoted in Alun Howkins, The Death of Rural England. A Social History of the Countryside since 1900 (London: Routledge, 2003), 29–30, moreover, both Siegfried Sassoon’s The Complete Memoirs of George Sherston and Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War ‘function within a rhetoric of the rural’, Howkins, Death of Rural England, 30. 28 Everitt, ‘Shooting’, 367. 29 Martelli, Elveden, 50. 30 Clark, Wood, 16–17. 31 Frederic Corrance, quoted in Everitt, ‘Shooting’, 367. In 1907, when Edward VII joined a shooting party on Lord Rendlesham’s estate in Suffolk, 2,250 partridges were killed in four days of shooting, G. E. C. (George E. Cockayne), The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, vol. X (London: St Catherine Press, 1910), 768. 32 H. B. Macpherson, ‘The Management of Shooting Estates in Times of War’, Country Life, 2 January 1915, 8. 33 Martin, ‘British Game’, 208 and Offer, Property and Politics, 371. 34 A. H., ‘Gamekeepers and the War’, Country Life, 15 January 1916, 94. 35 Martin, ‘British Game’, 210. 36 ‘Editorial: The Economy of Land’, Country Life, 1 May 1915, 574. 37 ‘Shooting Notes: The Feeding of Pheasants in War Time’, Country Life, 14 November 1914, 10. 38 ‘Feeding Pheasants’, 10. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 ‘Shooting Notes: Economy in Pheasant Feeding’, Country Life, 16 October 1915, 6–8. 42 Thompson, F. M. L. ‘Bathurst, Charles, First Viscount Bledisloe (1867–1958)’. In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, n.p. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/30642. 43 ‘Feeding of Game’, HC Deb. Hansard, 18 December 1916, 1107. 44 Martin, ‘British Game’, 211. 45 M. Torin, ‘Pheasants’ Rations’, Country Life, 3 March 1917, 199. 46 ‘Feeding Pheasants with Corn’, Hull Daily Mail, 5 May 1917, 4. 47 ‘Shooting Notes: Pheasants and Foxes’, Country Life, 12 September 1914, 8.

Notes

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48 ‘Shooting Notes: What to Do with the Pheasants’, Country Life, 7 November 1914, 10. 49 ‘Lady Wernher’s Offers. Game for the Sick and Wounded’, Luton Times and Advertiser, 4 September 1914, 5. 50 ‘What to Do’, 10. 51 ‘Shooting Notes: How the Partridges Are Being Shot’, Country Life, 7 November 1914, 10. 52 ‘Shooting Notes: How the War Affects Shooting Prospects’, Country Life, 30 January 1915, 8. 53 ‘Partridges’, 10. 54 Guy C. Pollock, ‘The Old Coverts. Some Ethics of Sport in War Time’, The Globe, 28 November 1914, 7. 55 Macpherson, ‘Shooting Estates’, 8. Comparatively little game, therefore, ‘found its way to the market, where its price has been lower than usual’. In 1914: ‘At four shillings a brace they [pheasants] compare favourably in value with a couple of fowls’, ‘Shooting Notes: Pheasants for the Table’, Country Life, 12 December 1914, 8. 56 ‘Shooting Notes: The Increase in the Partridge Stock’, Country Life, 30 October 1915, 4. 57 ‘Partridge Stock’, 4. 58 ‘The Shortage of Meat’, HL Deb. Hansard, 27 February 1918, 125–165. 59 ‘Patriotic Farming’, Coventry Herald, 13 August 1915, 2. 60 Martin, ‘British Game’, 211. 61 ‘Game’, HC Deb. Hansard, 19 May 1915, 2328. 62 ‘Game Preserving’, HC Deb. Hansard, 27 June 1916, 725. 63 Caroline Carr-Whitworth, ‘Captains and Cowmen: Brodsworth Hall’s Community During the Great War’, in The Country House and the Great War: Irish and British Experiences, ed. Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 70. 64 Rothery, ‘Shooting Party’, 103, 114. 65 Gordon E. Cherry and John Sheail, ‘The Dynamics of Change’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1584, 1581–1617. 66 Cherry and Sheail, ‘Lowlands’, 1660. 67 George Arthur Johnston, The Agricultural Holdings Act, 1906. With an Introduction Thereto, and Comments Thereon (London: Effingham Wilson, 1908), 25. 68 Martin, ‘British Game’, 209. 69 Alan Simmonds, Britain and World War One (London: Routledge, 2012), 201. 70 ‘Destruction by Game’, HC Deb. Hansard, 13 February 1917, 418–419. See also E. H. S., ‘Shooting Notes: Emergency Legislation and Game Shooting’, Country Life, 1 September 1917, 6.

150 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

Notes Charles Kent, ‘The Passing of the Pheasant’, Country Life, 3 March 1917, 199. P., ‘Land’s New Attraction’, Country Life, 15 September 1917, 245. ‘Damage by Pheasants’, HC Deb. Hansard, 26 November 1917, 1667-8W. ‘Game (Shooting)’, HC Deb. Hansard, 23 October 1918, 797W. Written answer of Sir Richard Winfrey, Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture. ‘Agriculture in Kesteven’, Grantham Journal, 26 May 1917, 6. ‘The Letters of Eve: The Passing of the Game Laws, Tenants Allowed to Shoot’, Tatler, 14 March 1917, 4. Torin, ‘Pheasants’ Rations’, 199. ‘Shooting Game (Cartridges)’, HC Deb. Hansard, 9 July 1917, 1579–1580 and ‘Shot Gun Ammunition’, HC Deb. Hansard, 9 July 1917, 1589. ‘Shot Gun’, 1589. ‘Shooting Game (Cartridges)’, 1579–1580. ‘Game Shooting (Ammunition)’, HC Deb. Hansard, 12 July 1917, 2091–2092. ‘Game Shooting (Ammunition)’, 2091–2092. ‘Shot Gun’, 1589. ‘Editorial: A Word for the Landowner’, Country Life, 3 March 1917, 194. See also ‘Destruction of Pheasants’, HC Deb. Hansard, 15 February 1917, 786–787. ‘A Word’, 194. Ibid. Hugh S. Gladstone, ‘Shooting After the War’, Country Life, 7 December 1918, 517. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1963), 328. Macpherson, ‘Shooting Estates’, 8. Ibid. ‘On Short Leave from the Front’, Country Life, 16 January 1915, 69. ‘Short Leave’, 69. Ibid., 70. Ibid., 70–71.

6 Fox Hunting and the War 1 M. J., ‘What Shropshire Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 11 March 1916, 346, 346–347. 2 Nicholas Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting and the Yeomanry: County Identity and Military Culture’, in Our Hunting Fathers: Field Sports in England, ed. R. W. Hoyle (Lancaster: Carnegie, 2007), 241, 241–256. 3 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 250.

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4 David I. A. Steel, A Lincolnshire Village. The Parish of Corby Glen in Its Historical Context (London: Longman, 1979), 197. 5 Steel, A Lincolnshire Village, 197. Troopers received £5 for themselves and £5 for their horse. 6 Nicholas Mansfield, ‘Volunteers and Recruiting’, in Norfolk and Suffolk in the Great War, ed. Gerald Gliddon (Norwich: Gliddon Books, 1988), 24. 7 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 246, 244. 8 William H. Ogilvie, ‘The Future of Foxhunting’, Country Life, 7 December (1918), 516, 515–517 and Nicholas Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900–1930 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 85. 9 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 250. 10 Gerald Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War (Norwich: Gliddon, 2002), 42. See also Richard Verdin, The Cheshire (Earl of Chester’s) Yeomanry, 1898–1967: The Last Regiment to Fight on Horses (Chester: Cheshire Yeomanry Association, 1971), 33. 11 G. B., ‘What Cheshire Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 29 January 1916, 154, 153–155. 12 G. B., ‘Cheshire: I’, 154–155. 13 See Edward Bujak, Reckless Fellows. The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015). 14 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 252. 15 George Bigwood, ‘What Shropshire Has Done for the War: III’, Country Life, 25 March 1916, 403, 402–404. 16 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 250. 17 Ibid. In 1913, Siegfried Sassoon’s cousin Sybil married Lord Rocksavage, and together with Philip Sassoon, they became part of the ‘Coterie’. Lady Diana Manners described Lord Rocksavage as the most beautiful of all young men of his day: ‘I think he is Apollo – anyhow some god,’ Peter Stansky, Sassoon: The Worlds of Philip and Sybil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 34. 18 Christine Berberich, The Image of the English Gentleman in Twentieth-Century Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 66. 19 G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, Country Life, 3 October 1914, 463, 462–463. 20 G. B., ‘Shropshire, I’, 346. 21 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 253. 22 ‘Editorial: Hunting is Going On!’, Country Life, 21 September 1918, 236, 236–237. 23 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 251. 24 G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, 463. 25 George E. Collins, George E. Collins, Farming and Fox-Hunting (London: Samson Low, 1935), 125–126.

152

Notes

26 Collins, Farming and Fox-Hunting, 126. 27 Ibid. Gliddon, Aristocracy, 48, 221. See also Lt. Col. F.H.D.C. Whitmore,The 10th (P.W.O) Royal Hussars and the Essex Yeomanry During the European War, 1914– 1918 (Colchester: Benham and Co, 1920), 6–7 and Gliddon, Aristocracy, 290, 292, 346–347. 28 Gliddon, Aristocracy, 207–208. 29 Ibid. 30 Elizabeth O’Kiely, Gentleman Air Ace. The Duncan Bell-Irving Story (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 1992), 63. 31 Joshua Levine, Fighter Heroes of WWI. The Extraordinary Story of the Pioneering Airmen of the Great War (London: Collins, 2009), 186. 32 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 252 and John Brereton, Chain Mail. The History of the Duke of Lancaster’s Own Yeomanry (Chippenham: Picton, 1994), 74. See also M. J., ‘What Kent Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 4 December 1915, 733, 733–737. 33 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 251 and Local Patriotism, 104. 34 Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 251. 35 G. E. Mingay, Land and Society in England, 1750–1980 (London: Longman, 1994), 220 and Mansfield, Local Patriotism, 113. 36 ‘The Territorial Force’, HL Deb. Hansard (1 July 1915), 182–199. See also Alan Armstrong, Farmworkers in England and Wales. A Social and Economic History, 1770–1980 (London: Batsford, 1988), 170. 37 ‘Military Recruiting and Agriculture’, HL Deb. Hansard, 12 April 1916, 675–697. See also Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 253 and Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 78, 83. 38 ‘Military Recruiting’, 675–697 and F., ‘Buckinghamshire and the Great War’, Country Life, 10 July 1915, 70. 39 M. J., ‘What the Country Gentleman Has Done for the War, IV, Yorkshire: The North Riding’, Country Life, 7 August 1915, 190, 189–190. 40 Christabel S. Orwin and Edith H. Whetham, Christabel S. Orwin and Edith H. Whetham, History of British Agriculture, 1846–1914 (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1971), 385–386. 41 G., ‘War and Wire. An Appeal to Farmers’, Country Life, 27 February 1915, 271, 270–271. 42 J. V. Beckett, The Aristocracy in England, 1660–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 371. 43 Beckett, Aristocracy in England, 271–272. 44 G., ‘War and Wire’, 271. 45 Ibid. See also David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 362.

Notes

153

46 Paul Brassley, ‘Pastoral Farming Systems’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. Volume VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 469, 465–471. 47 E. J. T. Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change. B: The Great Depression, 1875– 1896’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. Volume VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 145–146, 138–207. 48 Alun Howkins, ‘Social, Cultural and Domestic Life: 1. A Class Apart. The Aristocracy and Gentry’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. Vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1371, 1354–1424. 49 A subject to be explored in a future work. 50 Alan Simmonds, Britain and World War One (London: Routledge, 2012), 209. The plough campaign would have adversely affected the availability of hay. 51 G., ‘War and Wire’, 270. 52 Paul Readman, ‘The Edwardian Land Question’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 181, 181–200. 53 Sir William Beach Thomas, Hunting England. A Survey of the Sport, and of Its Chief Grounds (London: B. T. Batsford, 1936), vii. 54 Howkins, ‘Social, Cultural and Domestic’, 1366. 55 Ibid. 56 G., ‘War and Wire’, 271. 57 G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, 463. 58 G., ‘War and Wire’, 271. 59 G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, 463. 60 X., ‘Sportsmen and the War’, Country Life, 15 August 1914, 246. 61 Catherine Bailey, The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (London: Viking, 2012), 251. 62 G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, 463. See also Horn, Rural Life, 41. 63 Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 260. 64 X., ‘Hunting Notes: Carry On’, Country Life, 17 October 1914, 530. 65 X., ‘Hunting Notes: Carry On’, 530. 66 G., ‘War and Wire’, 270. 67 Ibid. 68 Ogilvie, ‘Future’, 516. 69 Ibid. 70 ‘Hunting is Going On!’, 237. See also Gordon E. Cherry and John Sheail, ‘The Lowlands’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol.

154

71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100

Notes VII, 1850–1914, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1664, 1658–1694. X., ‘Hunting in Khaki in the York and Ainsty’, Country Life, 21 November 1914, 669, 668–669. See also Caroline Dakers, The Countryside at War, 1914–1918 (London: Constable, 1987), 31. X., ‘Hunting in Khaki’, Country Life, 9 January (1915), 60. ‘Hunt Servants’, HC Deb. Hansard, 14 December 1916, 890–891. Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 253. X., ‘Lord Lonsdale and the Cottesmore Hunt’, 24 July 1915, 135. X., ‘Carry On’, 530. X., ‘Hunting and the War’, Country Life, 29 August 1914, 309. ‘Editorial: Lord Torrington’, Country Life, 5 September 1914, 315. ‘Torrington’, 315. G., ‘Cub Hunting and War’, 463. Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 207. Whetham, Agrarian History of England and Wales, 73. ‘Remounts (Fox-Hunting)’, HC Deb. Hansard, 6 January 1916, 1085–1086. Cherry and Sheail, ‘Lowlands’, 1662. Re: Country, ‘Gloucestershire is perfect hunting country, with mainly pastoral farming and a damp climate to encourage scents. It is home to well-established packs like the Old Berkeley Hunt and the Duke of Beaufort’s pack. The latter defined its own country – south Gloucestershire and North Wiltshire – “Beaufortshire” ’, Mansfield, ‘Foxhunting’, 247. ‘Foxes’, HC Deb. Hansard, 16 September 1915, 152–153. ‘Destruction of Foxes’, HC Deb. Hansard, 26 July 1915, 1946–1947. ‘Foxes’, 16 September 1915, 152–153. ‘Hunt Servants’, 890–891. Horn, Rural Life, 42. ‘Hunt Servants’, 890–891. Horn, Rural Life, 42 and ‘Fox-Hunting’, HC Deb. Hansard, 15 February 1917, 815. F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1963), 328. Bujak, Reckless Fellows, 127. ‘Hunting’, HC Deb. Hansard, 31 January 1918, 1758–1759. ‘Foxes’, HC Deb. Hansard, 30 January 1918, 1549. ‘Foxes’, 1549. ‘National Food Supply’, HC Deb. Hansard, 22 May 1916, 1831–1952. ‘Hunting is Going On!’, 236–237. Ibid., 236. G. D. Phillips, The Diehards. Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1979), 22.

Notes 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

155

Phillips, Diehards, 22. Ogilvie, ‘Future’, 517. Gliddon, Aristocracy, 209. Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Class After the First World War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2015), 57. Ogilvie, ‘Future’, 517. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Siegfried Sassoon: The Making of a War Poet. A Biography, 1886–1918 (London: Duckworth, 1998), 135. Michael Thorpe, Siegfried Sassoon. A Critical Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 78. Thorpe, Siegfried Sassoon, 81–82, 83, 87 and Berberich, Image, 67. Keith Grieves, ‘ “Lowther’s Lambs”: Rural Paternalism and Voluntary Recruitment in the First World War’, Rural History 4, no. 1 (1993), 58. Avner Offer, Property and Politics, 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 371. Offer, Property and Politics, 371. ‘Hunting’, 1758–1759. ‘Torrington’, 315. C. F. G. Masterman quoted in Edward Bujak, ‘A Winged Aristocracy: Air Power and the Country House Elite’, in The Country House and the Great War. Irish and British Experiences, ed. Terence Dooley and Christopher Ridgeway (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2016), 39, 29–39.

7 Landowners and the War 1 ‘Defence of the Realm (Acquisition of Land) Bill’, HC Deb. Hansard, 31 December 1916, 1697–1708. 2 Peter Mandler, The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 129, 217. 3 Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters in Country-House Society, 1830–1918 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1991), 199. 4 ‘The Care of Wounded Soldiers: Hospitals in Country Houses. First Article’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 23 December 1916, 7. 5 M. J., ‘What Surrey Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life’, Country Life, 8 January 1916, 60, 57–60. 6 ‘Hospitals in Country Houses. First Article’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 7. According to Pamela Horn, the Earl’s daughter, Lady Boyne, was commandant, Horn, Ladies, 199. 7 Victoria Leatham, Burghley: The Life of a Great House (London: Herbert Press, 1992), 109.

156

Notes

8 Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Class After the First World War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2015), 22–23. 9 Horn, Country House Society, 22. 10 ‘A Country House Hospital: At Lord Normanton’s Beautiful Home, Somerley’, The Bystander, 25 August 1915, 34. 11 ‘Lord Clinton’, Daily Mirror, 13 November 1917, 4. 12 ‘The Letters of Eve: The Passing of the Game Law’s, Tenants Allowed to Shoot’, Tatler, 14 March 1917, 4. 13 ‘Editorial’, Luton News and Bedfordshire Advertiser, 21 June 1917, 4. 14 ‘Editorial’, 4. 15 ‘Earl of Derby’, Tamworth Herald, 30 December 1916, 4. 16 ‘Earl Plough’s up His Park’, Lincolnshire Echo, 23 December 1916, 3. 17 ‘Potatoes in a Park’, Western Gazette, 29 December 1916, 7. 18 ‘Earl Plough’s Up His Park’, 3. 19 ‘A Duke’s Park to Be Ploughed’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 13 November 1917, 7. 20 ‘Ploughing Park Land’, Western Times, 16 November 1917, 2. 21 ‘Knightshayes Court’, Western Times, 14 December 1917, 3. 22 ‘A Deer Park for the Plough’, Berkshire Evening Post, 30 December 1917, 4. 23 ‘Earl’s Park for Food Production’, Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 3 January 1917, 3. 24 ‘Deer Park’, 4. 25 ‘Earl of Craven’, Coventry Evening Telegraph, 2 November 1917, 2. 26 ‘The Herd of Deer at Duncombe Park’, Beverley and East Riding Recorder, 28 October 1916, 8. 27 ‘Lord Gerard’, Manchester Evening News, 8 August 1917, 2. 28 ‘The Care of Deer’, Bury Free Press, 20 May 1916, 6. 29 ‘Care of Deer’, 6. 30 ‘War Notes’, Kent and Sussex Courier, 8 February 1918, 5. 31 ‘Thinning Out Deer in English Parks’, Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 19 January 1918, 16. 32 ‘Thinning Out’, 16. Deer remained private property. In 1916, two soldiers were fined 40s. each for killing deer in Knowsley Park without a licence, ‘Lord Derby did not press the charge’, ‘Two Soldiers’, Portsmouth Evening News, 5 July 1916, 3. 33 ‘Ploughing Park Land’, 2. 34 ‘Ploughing Devon Parks’, Western Times, 24 August 1917, 2. 35 ‘Castle Hill Deer Park and Food Production’, Western Times, 19 January 1917, 6. 36 ‘Ploughing Up Park Land’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 1917, 2. 37 E. J. T. Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change. C. The Recovery, 1897–1914’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII,

Notes

38

39

40

41 42 43

44

45 46 47

48 49 50 51

157

1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 217–219, 208– 223, and E. J. T. Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change. B: The Great Depression, 1875–1896’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 178, 138–207. Roy Brigden, ‘Farm Buildings’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 497, 497–504. Landlords could claim a tax allowance for the cost of repairs, but while £0.5 million was set aside in the 1909 Budget, only £68,000 had been claimed by 1912, Collins, ‘Rural and Agricultural Change. B’, 176. Paul Brassley, ‘Land Drainage’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. Volume VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 519, 514–521. J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural Landownership and Estate Management’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 742, 693–758. Edith H. Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. VIII, 1914– 1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 54. ‘To Foster Agricultural Industry. Mr Prothero Explains National Measure’, Birmingham Daily Post, 25 April 1917, 8. G. E. Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914, Part 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 802, 759–809. Peter Dewey, ‘British Farming Profits and Government Agricultural Policy During the First World War’, Economic History Review, no. 3, 37 (August, 1984), 382–383, 373–390. See also W. A. Armstrong, ‘Kentish Rural Society During the First World War’ in Land, Labour and Agriculture, 1700–1920: Essays for Gordon Mingay, ed. B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambledon, 1991), 129. ‘Foster Agricultural Industry’, 8. Andrew Fenton Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 1912–1936. A Study in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 31. ‘The Tied Cottage Again’, Country Life, 15 June 1918, 542, Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 198 and Mingay, ‘The Farmer’, 802. ‘Tied Cottage’, 542. Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 31. ‘A Word for the Landowner’, Country Life, 3 March (1917), 194. ‘A Word for the Landowner’, (1917), 194.

158

Notes

52 ‘Landlords and Rents’, Sussex Agricultural Express, 9 February 1917, 2 and ‘Agriculture’, Cheshire Observer, 10 February 1917, 3. 53 See however Charles F. G. Masterman, England after War. A Study (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 36. 54 ‘Ploughing up Parks’, Liverpool Echo, 13 January 1917, 4. 55 ‘Rufford Landowner Criticised’, Wigan Observer and District Advertiser, 14 August 1917, 3. 56 ‘Rufford Farmers to Quit’, Preston Herald, 18 August 1917, 8. 57 ‘Rufford Estate: The Notice to Four Farmers to Quit’, Lancashire Evening Post, 28 August 1917, 4. 58 ‘Rufford Estate’, 4. 59 Ibid. 60 ‘Notices to Quit: The Case of the Rufford Tenants’, Lancashire Evening Post, 2 December 1918, 3. 61 ‘Notices to Quit’, 3. 62 Ibid. 63 ‘Ploughing Devon Parks’, 2. 64 Ibid. 65 ‘War Agricultural Committee: The Ploughing Up Park Land’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 8 December 1917, 2. 66 ‘Parks to Be Ploughed’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 3 December 1917, 2. 67 ‘West Suffolk War Committee and the Food Supply’, Suffolk and Essex Free Press, 14 November 1917, 2. 68 ‘Landowner’s Offer of Part of Park’, Nantwich Guardian, 9 March 1917, 6. 69 ‘War Agriculture’, Derby Daily Telegraph, 17 January 1918, 2. 70 ‘Landowners and Their Obligations’, Derby Daily Telegraph, 19 January 1918, 2. 71 ‘Blinkhorn’s Picture House’, Banbury Guardian, 29 March 1917, 8. See also ‘Parks at Blenheim and Nuneham Ploughed Up’, Banbury Guardian, 17 May 1917, 8. 72 Bernard Darwin, ‘A Day With the Recruits in Belton Camp’, Country Life, 26 September 1914, 411. 73 ‘Huddersfield Recruit and the Optimism at Belton Park’, Sheffield Daily Examiner, 18 September 1914, 2. He had concluded his letter: ‘The idea seems to be here that we shall have three to six months training, and then be shipped off to Germany to act as a kind of military police. Everybody here thinks the war will be over before we are ready’. 74 ‘The South Staffords: Sketch of the 7th Battalion. Life at Belton’, Grantham Journal, 6 February 1915, 3. 75 ‘Manchesters Arrive’, Grantham Journal, 1 May 1915, 3. See also ‘Belton Park Camp News’, Grantham Journal, 19 June 1915, 3 and ‘Grantham Camp’, Liverpool Echo, 28 August 1915, 3.

Notes

159

76 ‘Heavy Rain at Belton Park’, Nottingham Evening Post, 10 June 1914, 5. 77 ‘Battling With Mud at Belton Park’, Grantham Journal, 19 December 1914, 3. 78 Edward Bujak, Reckless Fellows. The Gentlemen of the Royal Flying Corps (London: I. B. Tauris, 2015), 50. 79 ‘Land for Aerodromes’, Dundee Courier, 22 December 1917, 3. 80 ‘Duke of Marlborough’, Edinburgh Evening News, 23 March 1918, 4. See also Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 29. 81 ‘Breaking up Grass Lands’, HL Deb. Hansard, 21 March 1918, 581–608. 82 ‘Breaking up Grass Lands’, 581–608. 83 ‘Clause 2. (Power of Director-General of National Service to Withdraw Exemptions), HC Deb. Hansard, 21 January 1918, 701–708 and Horn, Rural Life, 75. 84 ‘Minutes of a Meeting of the War Cabinet’, 21 September 1917, 5, National Archive, NA/CAB/23/4/11 http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/ D7651962. 85 ‘War Cabinet 21/09/1917’, 5. 86 Arthur Lee, ‘Report on the Work of the Food Production Department’, 12 September 1917, National Archive, NA/CAB/24/26/26, http://discovery. nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D7640531. 87 ‘Civilian Flying’, The Times, 25 April 1919, 10. See also ‘Synopsis of British Air Effort During the War, 1914–1918’, Air Power Review, Spring (2013), 196. 88 Cavalry of the Air. By ‘Flight Commander’ (London: E. J. Burrows, 1918), 124–125. 89 David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane. Militarism, Modernity and Machines (London: Penguin, 2013), 81. 90 Masterman, After War, 31. 91 F. D. Tredrey, Pioneer Pilot: The Great Smith Barry Who Taught the World How to Fly (London: Peter Davies, 1976), 99. 92 Denis Richards, Portal of Hungerford: The Life of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Viscount Portal of Hungerford (London: Heinemann, 1977), 71–72. 93 Parti Patter: Being Serious and Smiling Chatter About a Number of Globe Trotters Awaiting Word to Race for Home, ed. 2nd Lieutenant Howard Wallace (Grantham: Palmer and Son, 1919), 14. The Duke of Northumberland’s park at Alnwick Castle became a military convalescent camp. See ‘A Great Landowner: Death of the Duke of Northumberland’, Nottingham Evening Post, 15 May 1918, 3. 94 Wallace, Parti Patter, 21. 95 Ibid., 7. 96 Wallace, Parti Patter, 23. See also ‘Hospitals in Country Houses: Ninth Article’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 6 February 1917, 4.

160

Notes

Conclusion 1 Mark Rothery, ‘The Wealth of the English Landed Gentry, 1870–1935’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 265, 251–268. 2 B. A. Holderness, ‘Investment, Accumulation and Agricultural Credit’ in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 872, 863–929. 3 J. V. Beckett, ‘Agricultural Landownership and Estate Management’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, ed. E. J. T. Collins, vol. VII, 1850–1914: Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 693, 693–758. 4 F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1963), 332. 5 John Beckett and Michael Turner, ‘Land Reform and the English Land Market, 1880–1925’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 226–227, 219–233. 6 Charles F. G. Masterman, England after War. A Study (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), 32–33. See also Pamela Horn, Rural Life in England in the First World War (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984), 198 and P., ‘Land’s New Attraction’, Country Life, 15 September 1917, 245. 7 George Robb, British Culture and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 88. 8 Horn, Rural Life, 198 and Pamela Horn, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Class After the First World War (Stroud: Amberley Publishing, 2015), 34. 9 David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 97, 93. 10 Noel Whiteside, ‘The British Population at War’ in Britain and the First World War, ed. John Turner (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 93, 85–116. 11 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘Epilogue; The Strange Death of the English Land Question’, in The English Land Question, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 261, 257–268. 12 ‘Landowners’ Difficult Position: Facts to Be Remembered’, Leamington Spa Courier, 30 August 1918, 3. 13 Peter Dewey, ‘British Farming Profits and Government Agricultural Policy in the First World War’, Economic History Review, no. 3, 37 (August, 1984), 383, 373–390. 14 ‘Rent As-Under’, The Sketch, 7 February 1917, 8. 15 ‘Lord Devonport Takes Absolute Control of Land: Food Control’, Daily Record, 13 January 1917, 3. 16 Alan Simmonds, Britain and World War One (London: Routledge, 2012), 113, 204. See also ‘Saving Food: Success of the Voluntary Campaign’, Liverpool Daily Post,

Notes

17 18

19 20

21 22

23

24 25

26

27 28

29 30

161

18 May 1917, 7. Lord Devonport’s reply to Lord Calthorpe’s call for compulsory rationing. Simmonds, Britain, 215, 213. ‘The Letters of Eve: The Passing of the Game Law’s, Tenants Allowed to Shoot’, Tatler, 14 March 1917, 4. See also Pamela Horn, Ladies of the Manor: Wives and Daughters in Country-House Society, 1830–1918 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1991), 215 and Horn, Country House, 32. Horn, Country House, 33. Thompson, English Landed Society, 328, 325. The son and heir of Sir John Shiffner (d. 1914) of Coombe Place, was killed at the front in 1918, a month after his nineteenth birthday, Horn, Ladies, 216. Caroline Dakers, Clouds: The Biography of a House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 191, 196. Dakers, Clouds 196. John Bennett-Stanford noted, ‘poor Percy was killed . . . and his cousin in the Devon Regiment, to who he left the property, was also killed.’ John Bennett-Stanford, ‘Wiltshire and the War’, Country Life, 14 August 1915, 248. Dakers, Clouds, 196. In 1916, Frederick Charles France-Hayhurst of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers was killed having succeeded his father about 18 months earlier. He was succeeded by his younger brother, W. H. France-Hayhurst, of the Yorkshire Dragoons. G. B., ‘What Cheshire Has Done for the War: II’, Country Life, 5 February 1916, 172. Robert Dymond, The Death Duties: Comprising Estate, Legacy and Succession Duties (London: Solicitors’ Law Stationery Society, 1934), 647. ‘The Duke of Sutherland to Sell His Shropshire Seat: Effect of the Burden of Taxation’, The Scotsman, 20 January 1917, 10. See also Thompson, English Landed Society, 329. The Duke had hoped to find a buyer for the whole estate but ended up selling the mansion and the farms separately, at auction; 1,150 acres were acquired by the Board of Agriculture for a farm colony for ex-soldier and sailors, see ‘Sale of the Lilleshall Estate’, Staffordshire Advertiser, 28 July 1917, 2. John Beckett and Michael Turner, ‘End of the Old Order? F. M. L. Thompson, the Land Question, and the Burden of Ownership in England, c. 1880-c.1925’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 287, 269–288. Thompson, English Landed Society, 330, 335. Death duties of 40 per cent were imposed on estates valued at over £2 million. S. G. Sturmey, ‘Owner-Farming in England and Wales, 1900–1950’, in Essays in Agrarian History, Vol. II, ed. W. E. Minchinton (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1968), 293, 293–294, 283–306. Thompson, English Landed Society, 331. See also Horn, Rural Life, 199. Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 287.

162

Notes

31 M. J., ‘What Kent Has Done for the War: I’, Country Life, 4 December 1915, 736, 734–737. 32 ‘Hereditary Titles and the War’, The Scotsman, 7 August 1917, 6. 33 Horn, Ladies, 197. See also Horn, Country House, 9 and Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 83. 34 Horn, Ladies, 197 and Country House, 10. 35 Beard, Landed Society, 26, 26–28. 36 Masterman, After War, 34. 37 ‘Large Estates’, 10. 38 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 287. 39 Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History, 1850–1925 (London: Harper Collins, 1991), 225. 40 Thompson, English Landed Society, 329 and Horn, Country House, 34. 41 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 287. 42 Thompson, English Landed Society, 334–335. 43 ‘Position of the Landowners: Reasons for Estate Dispersals’, Lincolnshire Echo, 23 August 1918, 2. 44 ‘The Provision of Farm Cottages’, Country Life, 28 September 1918, 250. In Archibald Marshall’s wartime novel Rank and Riches published in 1915, Armitage Brown, a millionaire-businessmen, acquired the country estate of a decayed aristocratic family, Robb, British Culture, 88. 45 Peter Dewey, British Agriculture in the First World War (London: Routledge, 2014), 242. In contrast, to before war when tenants had ‘had no wish to see the traditional pattern of ownership changed’, John Grigg, Lloyd George. From Peace to War, 1912– 1916 (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2011), 102. 46 Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present (London: Heinemann, 1961), 408. 47 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 280. 48 Beard, Landed Society, 39. 49 ‘Large Estates’, 10. 50 P., ‘Land’s New Attraction’, 245. 51 Thompson, English Landed Society, 330, 329 and Horn, Country House, 34. 52 F. M. L. Thompson, ‘The Land Market, 1880–1925: A Reappraisal Reappraised’, Agricultural History Review 55, no. 2 (2007), 291, 289–300 and Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 270. 53 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 287 and ‘Land Reform’, 226. 54 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 226. 55 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 286–287. See also Thompson, ‘Epilogue’, 262. 56 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 270 and Thompson, English Landed Society, 326. 57 David Spring, ‘Land and Politics in Edwardian England’, Agricultural History, no. 1, 58 (1984), 29, 17–42.

Notes

163

58 Beckett and Turner, ‘Old Order’, 288, 278. 59 Thompson, ‘Epilogue’, 263. 60 John Harris, The Architect and the British Country House, 1620–1920 (Washington: AIA Press, 1985), 73. 61 Horn, Rural Life, 200. 62 David Cannadine, ‘The Landowner as Millionaire: The Finances of the Dukes of Devonshire, c.1800-c.1926’, Agricultural History Review 25, no. 2 (1977), 90, 77–91. 63 Masterman, After War, 37. 64 Ibid., 37–38. 65 Ibid., 38. 66 Sir Howard Frank, ‘The Land in War Time: II’, Country Life, 1 May 1915, 583. In 1917, Lord Derby obtained a temporary exemption for his head gardener at Knowsley, the only A1 man left on the estate, where ‘only nine men over age, four boys and seven girls were now employed, as against thirty-three males and three females before the war’, ‘Lord Derby’s Gardener’, Diss Express, 6 July 1917, 3. 67 Beard, Landed Society, 24–25. 68 Horn, Ladies, 197. 69 ‘Lord Ribblesdale’, Lichfield Mercury, 5 January 1917, 8. 70 By 1919, under Regulation 2M of the Defence of the Realm Act, the Board of Agriculture had ‘taken possession and are still in possession’, of 52,180 acres, of which 31,198 acres were being farmed on behalf of the Board by War Agricultural Executive Committees with the remainder being let to tenants, ‘Requisitioned Land (State Farming)’, HC Deb. Hansard, 4 August 1919, 8–9. 71 Masterman, After War, 34. 72 David Spring, ‘Willoughby de Broke and Walter Long: English Landed Society and Political Extremism, 1912–1914’, in Land and Society in Britain, 1700–1914: Essays in Honour of F. M. L. Thompson, ed. Negley Harte and Roland Quinault (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), 187, 172–190. 73 Horn, Rural Life, 198–199. See the example of the Earl of Aylesford in Madeleine Beard, English Landed Society in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1989), 39. 74 Horn, Rural Life, 199. 75 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 455, 69. 76 Ernle, English Farming, 408. 77 Thompson, ‘Reappraised’, 298. 78 ‘Big Lincolnshire Estate’, Hull Daily Mail, 18 August 1917, 3. 79 ‘Large Estates Broken Up: More Purchases by Cultivators’, Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 16 August 1917, 10. 80 Cannadine, Decline and Fall, 70. 81 Thompson, ‘Reappraised’, 299.

164

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82 The National Farmers Union, for example, had ‘become something not unlike a pillar of a virtual corporate state’, Thompson, ‘Reappraised’, 289 and ‘Epilogue’, 263. 83 Andrew Fenton Cooper, British Agricultural Policy, 1912–1936. A Study in Conservative Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 26. 84 Howkins, Reshaping, 227. 85 Beckett and Turner, ‘Land Reform’, 232–233. 86 Andrew Adonis, ‘Aristocracy, Agriculture and Liberalism: The Politics, Finances and Estates of the Third Lord Carrington’, Historical Journal 31, no. 4 (December 1988), 887. 87 ‘Big Lincolnshire Estate’, 3. 88 ‘How to Solve the Rural Housing Problem’, Country Life, 21 September 1918, 226. 89 Masterman, After War, 36–37. 90 Paul Readman, ‘The Edwardian Land Question’, in The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950, ed. Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 181, 181–197. 91 Alan Judd and David Crane, First World War Poets (London: National Portrait Gallery Publications, 2014), 29. 92 Judd and Crane, Poets, 30. 93 Sir Howard Frank, ‘The Land in War Time: II’, Country Life, 1 May 1915, 584. 94 Lawrence James, Aristocrats: Power, Grace and Decadence (London: Abacus, 2010), 365. 95 Frank, ‘Land’, 584. 96 Ian Packer, Lloyd George, Liberalism and the Land. The Land Issue and Party Politics in England, 1906–1914 (Woodbridge, Boydel and Brewer, 2001), 181. 97 Howkins, Reshaping, 258. 98 Horn, Ladies, 199–200. 99 ‘Duke of Sutherland’, 10. Evidence of a similar commitment can be found in Norfolk, see Phyllis E. Bujak, ‘A Commitment Given by the Local Squire in Times of Conflict, 1914–1918’, unpublished memoirs held by the author. 100 Frederick James Gregg, ‘The British Aristocracy and the War: The Doubtful Future of the House of Lords’, Vanity Fair, March 1916, http://www.oldmagazinearticles. com/WW1_British_Aristocracy-Nobility_during_World_War_One#. Wcg7DNFryUk. 101 C. E. Montague, Disenchantment (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968), 129. 102 Alfred Ollivant, ‘The Village in War’, Country Life, 22 September 1917, 58.

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Index Acland, Francis Dyke 74–5, 89, 92 Adcock, A St. J. 8 Adonis, Andrew 14, 57 aerodromes 12, 20, 91, 106–10, 107 aesthetic frame, of a country 7 Agar (nee Byng), Amy Frederica Alice (Countess of Normanton) 96–7 Agar, Sidney James (Earl of Normanton) 96–7 Agar-Robartes, Thomas (Viscount Clifden) 116 agents 11, 34–5, 36, 62, 64–5, 102, 104 Agricultural Consultative Committee 55 see also County War Agricultural Executive Committees agricultural depression, effect on ownership 15–16 Agricultural Executive Committee 77 see also County War Agricultural Committees (CWACs) Agricultural Holdings Acts 58, 75 agricultural landlords 11, 13–14, 16, 58, 63–4, 68, 101 see also landowners, landownerships Agricultural Wages Board 43 agriculture 3 see also farming industry ; farms compulsory cultivation 66, 146 n.83 Edwardian agriculture 4, 16 Ainsty 88–9 Alexandra, Princess of Wales’ Own (Yorkshire Regiment) 39 Amesbury Abbey estate 113 Amory, Sir Ian 98 ancestral (hereditary) acres 1, 4–5, 12, 15, 19, 53 Antrobus, Sir Edmund 113 army, democratization of 10 Aslet, Clive 14, 17 Asquith, Cynthia 28, 29, 118 Asquith, Margot 27, 29 Asquith, Raymond 132 n.13

Association to Promote the Employment of Women in Agriculture 60 auxiliary hospital 95–7 Barrington (nee Birch), Charlotte Mary (Viscountess Barrington) r30 Bart, Sir Harry Verney 74 Bathurst, Charles 55, 72, 76, 77, 120 Bayeux-Armentières sector, hunting in 84 Beard, Madeleine 116 Beckett, John V. 4–5, 13, 111, 117 Bedfordshire Advertiser 97 Belloc, Hilaire 6, 37 Belton Park 26, 39–40, 104–6, 105 Belvoir Hunt 87, 91, 92 Berberich, Christine 2 Beresford-Peirse, Sir Henry 66 Berkeley, Charles (Lord Fitzhardinge) 98 Berkeley, Randal Thomas Mowbray (Earl of Berkeley) 98 Berkshire 69 Beverley and East Riding Recorder 98 Bigwood, George 82, 83 Billerey, Fernand 19 Blenheim park 97, 104, 113 Blicking Hall park 38 Blow, Detmar 19 Blunt, Wilfred 31 Board of Agriculture 15, 50, 51, 55, 63, 65, 74, 75, 76, 97, 100 Bootle-Wilbraham, Edward William (Earl of Lathom) 97, 102 Border Regiment 39 Brassey, Paul 100, 108–9 Breese, Eloise 19 Breese, Eloise (Countess of Ancaster) 35, 61 British farming 56, 59 see also agriculture British Junkers 6 Brodsworth Hall estate 33, 75 Brooke, Rupert 6, 29, 120 Brooke, Sir Richard 104

184

Index

Brownlow Cust, Adelbert (Earl Brownlow) 26, 39, 99, 105–6 Brudenell-Bruce, George (Marquess of Ailesbury) 111 Buchan, John 18, 29 Buckinghamshire 29, 48 WEC 63 Bucks Herald 2 Byng, George Master (Viscount Torrington) 34, 89–90 Cannadine, David 29 Canwick estates 75 Cavendish, Victor (Duke of Devonshire) 104, 118 Cavendish-Bentinck, F.W. 35 Cavendish-Bentinck, Lord Henry 35 Cavendish-Bentinck, William John (Duke of Portland) 32, 35, 67 Cecil, Hugh 5 Chaplin, Henry (Viscount Chaplin) 60, 64, 74, 90–1, 119 Charteris, Cynthia see Asquith, Cynthia Charteris, Ego [Hugo] (Lord Elcho) 28, 29 Charteris, Hugo Richard (Earl of Wemyss) 35, 116 Charteris (nee Wyndham), Mary Constance (Countess of Wemyss) 35 Charteris, Yvo 28, 29 Cheshire 81–2, 104 Cheshire Yeomanry 37 Chesterfield WAC 103 Chesterton, G.K. 6, 37 Cholmeley, Sir Montague 30 CII and CIII recruits, in agricultural companies 51 Clare, Sir Harcourt 102 Clark, Kenneth 68 Clemenson, Heather 118 Clouds estate 114 Coke, Thomas William (Earl of Leicester) 53 Colegate, Isabel 69–70 Collins, E.J.T. 16 Collins, George E. 83, 84 Commissioners of the Inland Revenue 4 Compton, Lord Douglas James 79 Compton, Lord Spencer Douglas 79

Compton, William Bingham (Marquess of Northampton) 79, 116, 119 constitutional crisis of 1909–1911 13–15 Coombe Park 98 Corby Glen 81 Corn Production Act of 1917 43, 55–6, 86, 100–1, 102, 117 cottages shortage of 44 ‘tied’ 13–14, 44–6 country houses 6, 14, 17–20, 26, 32, 111, 118 conversion into hospitals 38, 95–6 entertainment 32, 67, 69 reluctance to abandon 33 sale of 116 self-immolation 19–20 shooting parties 67 sports versus agriculture in 18 Country Life 1–2, 11, 26, 30, 31, 32–3, 34, 38–9, 48, 49, 51, 55, 58, 60, 62, 68, 70, 71–2, 73, 74, 76, 77, 78, 82–3, 85, 87–8, 89, 93, 95, 102, 115, 117, 120, 121 countryside 1, 4, 41–2, 47, 51–2, 116 as domain of warfare and agriculture 12 farmers and their sons 85 fox hunting in 93 gamekeepers 71 military activities in 39 and national strength 41–2 platoons training in 8, 12, 20–1, 31, 32, 37–8 survival of sports 71, 85–6 women living in 60 County Agricultural Committees 11 County Agricultural Executive Committees 11 County Associations 22, 23, 24, 47 ‘Second Line’ Battalion 48 County Councils 11, 42, 59 County Gentleman’s Association 12 County Life 16–17, 56, 101 County Territorial Force Association 23–4 County Wage Boards 43 County War Agricultural Committees (CWACs) 59, 61, 62, 104 Survey Subcommittee 103

Index County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs) 51–2, 53, 62, 64, 65, 66, 76, 77, 100, 103 Court, William Hubert Roylance 82 Coventry Herald 74 Crane, David 120 Craven, William (Earl of Craven) 98 Crawley, Eustace 29 Crosby Hall 34–5 cultural leadership 18 Cumberland 37 Dakers, Carole 38 Darwin, Bernard 39, 104 Dawnay, Hugh 29 Dead Yesterday 6 Death Duties (Killed in War) Act of 1914 Section II 114 deer as food source 98–9 parks 97–100 Defence of the Realm Act 76, 78, 112, 119, 121 Regulation 2F 72 Regulation 2M 11, 62, 163 n.70 Defence of the Realm (Acquisition of Land) Act of 1916 11–12, 95, 106 democratization of army 10 Denison, William Francis (Earl of Londesborough) 117 Denton Manor 19–20, 21, 25 Departmental Committee of Production of Food in England and Wales 55 Derby Daily Telegraph 104 Destruction of Pheasants Order 77, 78 Devon 99 Ditchers 14 Dorset 69 draconian powers 58, 62 Duckworth, Lady Margaret 36 Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment 39, 104 Duncombe, Charles William Reginald (Earl of Feversham) 85, 98, 116 Duncombe Park 85, 98 Eastwell Park 98 East Yorkshire Regiment 39 Eaton Park 98

185

Edgerton, David 5, 7 Edwardian land market 76 Edwardian landowners see also landowners estate agricultural management 57 shifting focus to military functions 57–8 Edwardian officer corps 2 Edwardian society 3–4, 15 Edward VII, King 22, 23 Elizabethan prodigy house 114 Elveden estate 67, 68, 70 England 3, 65, 66, 111, 120 defending home and beauty 7, 8, 12, 37, 39, 66, 76, 83, 86, 90, 94, 120–1 farmworkers joining armed services 49 hunting in 83–4 landowners’ patriotism 74 patriotism in 6–7 plough-up campaigns 63 rent of agricultural land 56 rural revolution 4 England After the War 9 estates see also specific estates agricultural management of 56–7 renting of cottages 45 sale of 15, 16, 116–18, 119–20 Estates Gazette 4, 117 estate workers mobilization of 33–4 obligations to go to war 34–8 Everitt, Nicholas 67, 69 Expeditionary Force 24 ex-Regulars 47 farmers 13–14, 63–5 guaranteed prices for 102 home services 85–6 sons of 85, 121 farming industry 76, 120 see also agriculture farms building of 99–100 sale of 116–18 farmworkers 44–5 enlistment of 45–6 ‘starring’ system 50–1, 139 n.81 unskillful 46, 49–50 volunteering in armed factions 81

186 Farrer, Thomas Cecil (Lord Farrer) 7 fatalism 5–6 Fermor-Hesketh, Sir Thomas 102–3 Field, The 93 Finance Act of 1910 4, 15 Finch, Charles Wightwick (Earl of Aylesford) 116 Fisher, J.R. 56, 58–9 Fitzalan-Howard, Henry (Duke of Norfolk) 23, 24, 101 Fitzherbert-Brockholes, W. 65 Fitzmaurice, Henry (Marquess of Lansdowne) 38, 44, 50, 64, 119, 137 n.25 Fitzwilliam, H.W. 101 Flanders 3, 7, 11, 106 Foljambe, F.J.S. 101 Food Production Campaign 43, 52 Food Production Department (FPD) 11, 52–3, 55, 62, 63, 64, 76, 97, 109 ‘For England, Home and Beauty’ 7 Form 4, 14 Forster, Charles 140 n.90 Fortescue, Hugh William (Earl Fortescue) 66, 98, 99–100 fox hunting 81 see also hunting; shooting behind the lines 84–5 countryside 92–3 Edwardian sportsmen 93–4 and Englishness 86–7 suppression by Board of Agriculture 91–2 survival during the war 85–6 France 10, 38, 46–7, 66, 84, 87, 90 France-Hayhurst, Frederick Charles 161 n.23 Frank, Sir Howard 118, 121 Freeman-Mitford, Algernon (Lord Redesdale) 15, 116 French, Sir John 29, 93–4 Fuller-Acland-Hood, Alexander (Lord St Audries) 51, 85 Game Act of 1831 75 gamekeepers 70–1, 75, 78–80 Gascoyne-Cecil, James (Marquess of Salisbury) 43–4, 78 gentlemen-rankers 41 George V (King) 26 Gerard, Frederic John (Lord Gerard) 98

Index German P.O.W. 51 Germany, U-Boat campaign 55 Gibbs, Joseph 86 Girouard, Mark 17, 56 Gladstone, Hugh 78 Gloucestershire 34, 98 Gloucestershire Cotswolds 86 Gloucestershire Yeomanry 84 ‘golden lads’ 5 Gordon-Lennox, Charles (Duke of Richmond) 78 Gorhambury 79 Goschen, Bunt 28 Grahame, Kenneth 18 Grantham Journal 19–20 Green, F.E. 49 Gregg, Frederick 8, 9–10, 116 Grenfell (nee Fane), Ethel Anne Priscilla (Lady Desborough) 2, 7, 27, 28 Grenfell, Gerald (‘Billy’) 2, 7, 8, 27–8, 116 Grenfell, Julian 2, 6, 7, 8, 27, 28, 116, 120–1 Grenfell, William (Lord Desborough) 2, 7, 28, 116 Grieves, Keith 46 Grimsthorpe Castle 19 Grosvenor, Hugh (Duke of Westminster) 23, 98 Grosvenor, Lord Hugh 84 Ground Game Act of 1880 75 Guinness, Edward (Viscount Iveagh) 67 Haggard, Henry Rider 3, 16, 56, 57, 69, 119, 147 n.22 Haldane, R.B. 21–4 Hall, A.D. 16, 55, 56–7, 100 Hamilton, Mary 6 Hampshire 69 Hardwick Park 103, 104 hare hunting 75, 84 Harlaxton aerodrome 108, 110 Harlaxton Manor 20, 106, 107 Harlaxton Park 25, 106, 107 Harris, James Edward (Earl of Malmesbury) 14, 42 Harris, John 19, 118 Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, Gilbert (Earl of Ancaster) 19, 36, 37–8, 64 Hedgers 14, 18–19

Index ‘Hegelian army’ 21 Henderson, Sir David 109 Heneage, Edward (Lord Heneage) 23 Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, Charles (Lord Clinton) 97, 101 Herbert (nee Wombwell), Almina (Countess of Carnarvon) 96 Herbert, Auberon Thomas (Lord Lucas) 43–4, 130 n.85 Herbert, George Charles (Earl of Powis) 46–7, 101, 116 Herbert, Percy (Viscount Clive) 46 Herbert, Reginald (Earl of Pembroke) 23, 111, 116 hereditary landowners 1, 4–5, 119 Hertfordshire 31, 69 Hervey, Frederick William (Marquess of Bristol) 51–2, 68 Hervey, Lady Augusta 68 Highclere Castle 96 Hohenzollern Redoubt 26 Holderness, B.A. 111 Holmes, Richard 23 Horner, Edward 29, 134 n.56 Horner, Lady Frances 118 horses 34, 38, 61, 84–5, 89–94 Howkins, Alun 7, 31, 68, 86, 116 hunting 32, 118, 120 see also shooting and barbed wire 88 behind the lines 84–5 and Englishness 83–4, 86–7 by farmers 85–6, 92–3 fox hunting see fox hunting hunt servants 89 khaki hunts 88–9 as national service 89–90 as national sport 94 as a sport 86 and supply of horses to army 90–2 survival during the war 85–6 as training for soldiers 87 Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 99 income tax 111, 116 ‘Indian Summer’ 18, 19, 28, 56, 118 Into Battle (poem) 8 James, Lawrence 121 Judd, Alan 120

187

Kearley, Hudson (Viscount Devonport) 72, 112 Keegan, John 3 Kent 34, 69, 99 Kent, Charles 76 Keppel, Sonia 32 Kerr, Lord Walter 64–5 Kerr, Robert Schomberg (Marquess of Lothian) 38–9 Kesteven Agricultural Executive Committee 77 WAC 64 King’s Shropshire Light Infantry 81 Kitchener, Herbert (Lord Kitchener) 24, 26, 47, 84 Knightley, Sir Charles 16, 57 Knightshayes Court 98 Knowsley Park 97 Kumar, Krishan 120 Labour Exchange 51 Lancashire 34, 48, 49, 65 plough-up campaign 65 Lancashire Fusiliers 39 Lancashire War Agricultural Executive Committee 103 Land Campaign of 1912–1914 4, 5, 12, 13–14, 41, 42–3, 119 Land Enquiry Committee 4, 75 landowners, landownerships 11, 15, 63–5, 95–110, 119 aristocracy 4–5, 23, 97 fox hunting see fox hunting housing farmworkers 45–6 ‘professional pessimism’ 16 rent restrictions 100–2 sale of properties 111 ‘Second Line’ Battalion 48 and state-controlled agriculture 58 and stewardship 4 support to land reform campaign 120 tenantry 64 lands access to 13, 42 compulsory purchase 42 compulsory transfer of 11–12 monopoly 12 nationalization of 4, 11, 13 rapid change of ownerships 117 reform campaign 41–2, 120

188

Index

sale of 15–16, 116–18 valuation of 4, 13, 114 Lane-Fox, G.R. 101 Lascelles, Edward 132 Lascelles, Henry (Earl of Harewood) 23, 95–6, 132 n.24 Lathom House 97 Lawrence, D.H. 118 Leatham, Lady Victoria 96 Lee, Arthur 62, 64, 145 n.62 Leeds Intelligencer 95, 116, 117, 119 Legge, William (Earl of Dartmouth) 49, 85 Leicester Chronicle 26 Leicestershire 47, 69, 86 Leicestershire Regiment 25 Leicestershire Yeomanry 84 Levy-Lawson, Edward (Lord Burnham) 67 Liberal land campaign see Land Campaign of 1912–1914 Liberal Land Enquiry 42 Liberal Party 14, 41 Lincolns 105 Lincolnshire 24, 30, 37, 39, 81 Lincolnshire Regiment 39, 106 Lincolnshire Yeomanry 81 Lister, Charles 29 Lister, Thomas (Lord Ribblesdale) 118–19 livestock 16, 52, 57, 59, 68, 86, 100, 111 Lloyd George, David 3, 4, 5, 20, 52, 55, 57, 67, 71, 94, 101, 106, 111, 112, 121 on English landed society 11 Land Campaign 4, 5, 12, 13–14, 41, 42–3, 119 mobilization of agriculture 11 ‘People’s Budget’ 12, 19 London 1, 66 Long, Walter 64, 119 Lord Lieutenants 21–3, 65 Lords, position of 9–10 Lowther, Claude 17 Lowther, Hugh Cecil (Earl of Lonsdale) 37, 87, 89, 145 n.70 Lumley, Aldred Frederick (Earl of Scarbrough) 23, 29 Lumley, Richard 29 Luton News 97 Lydney Park estate 72 Mackenzie, Jeanne 5 Macpherson, H.B. 70, 73–4, 79

Major Peake 60 Manchester Regiment 39 Mandler, Peter 5, 26, 57, 68 Manners, Henry (Duke of Rutland; Marquess of Granby) 20, 26, 35–6, 47, 48, 87 Manners, John 29 Manners, Lady Diana 28, 31, 32, 110 Manners, Marjorie 36 Mansfield, Nicholas 81 mansions, offered for hospital use 95–6 Montagu-Douglas-Scott, John Charles (Duke of Buccleuch) 101 martial spirit 10 Masterman, C.F.G. 2, 8–9, 19, 111, 116, 118 Master of Foxhounds 85 Mayer, A.J. 8 Medieval chivalry 5 Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man 82, 94 Memorial Tablet (poem) 49 Messrs Rudd and Son 20 Military Services Act of 1916 24, 53, 85 Milner, Alfred (Lord Milner) 55, 56, 59, 62, 128 n.46 Ministry of Food 75, 76 Ministry of Food Control 55, 112 Ministry of Land 4, 42 Ministry of Munitions 77–8 mobilization of workers 33–4 modernity 5 Montgomeryshire Yeomanry 38 Moon’s a Balloon, The 34 Morgan-Grenville, Mary (Lady Kinloss) 115 Morgan-Grenville, Richard 115 munitions 32 Murray, Alexander (Viscount Elibank) 9 National Agricultural Labourers Union 43 National Farmers Union 164 n.82 nationalization of land 4, 11, 13 National Registration Act 50 Nevill, William (Marquess of Abergavenny) 36 Nevinson, H.W. 6 New Army 39, 48, 49, 104 Niven, David 34 Norfolk 69, 100 Norfolk Yeomanry 81

Index North America grain harvest 55, 59 Northamptonshire 69, 86 Northants Yeomanry 84 Northumberland Fusiliers 39 Nottinghamshire 24, 69 Offer, Avner 13, 14, 94 Ollivant, Alfred 34, 60 Orwell Park 69 Osborne, George Godolphin (Duke of Leeds) 117 Oxfordshire 48

189

plough-up campaigns 52, 62–3, 65, 101, 119, 143 n.30 plutocracy 17 Pollock, Guy C. 73 Ponsonby, Arthur 18 Portuguese labourers 51 Post Office Savings Bank account 36 Pound, Reginald 5 Pretyman, Ernest 56, 57–8, 69 Prothero, Rowland (Lord Ernle) 44, 52, 55, 58, 62–3, 76–7, 100–1, 117, 119 pseudo-ruralism 17 Quarterly Review 16

Paget, Guy 93 Palmer, Robert 7 Palmer, William (Earl of Selbourne) 14, 50, 59–60 ‘Pals’ principle 47, 49, 105 Panton Hall estate 119 parks 97–103 see also specific parks war offices 38 Parliament Act 4, 14 Parliamentary Recruitment Committee 33 partridges 56, 69, 70–1, 73–4, 75, 77, 79, 80, 113 paternalism 45, 48, 53, 121 patriotism 11, 41, 45–6, 57–8, 64, 72, 74, 94, 95, 97, 112, 121 of young aristocrats 6–7 Pearson-Gregory, Philip 20–1 Pearson-Gregory, Thomas 20, 110 Pelham, Charles Alfred (Earl of Yarborough) 116 Pelham, Charles Sackville (Lord Worsley) 19, 30–1, 83–4 Pelham, Jocelyn (Earl of Chichester) 17 Percy, Henry George (Duke of Northumberland) 101, 159 n.93 Percy, Robert 46 Peto, Sir Basil 77–8 pheasants 67, 68, 70, 71–80, 113 Philipps, Colwyn 7 Philipps, John (Lord St Davids) 32, 41, 46 Picardy 3, 11 pilot training programme 12, 106 see also aerodromes Pirrie, William (Lord Pirrie) 72 Playne, Caroline 5

rationing 112–13 recruitment 24, 27, 34, 37–8, 81 balance in 48–9 dual recruiting system 48 of estate and farm workers 1, 34, 39–40, 42, 50, 59 and landowners 53 paternalist mode of 47 in rural districts 50, 51 ‘starring’ system 50–1, 139 n.81 voluntary recruiting 46–7, 60–1 rent restrictions 4, 34, 44–5, 100, 101, 112 Reserve Battalions 41, 48 Reservists 47 Richards, G.C. Smyth 99–100 Rifle Brigade 27 Robinson, Frederick (Marquess of Ripon) 67, 68 Rothery, Mark 57 Rothschild, Nathaniel (Lord Rothschild) 37 Royal Berkshire Regiment 33 Royal Flying Corps 12, 84, 106, 109–10 training aerodromes 12, 106 Rufford Park 102 rural elite 49 rural revolution 4 Russell, Herbrand Arthur (Duke of Bedford) 14–15, 36, 37, 101 Sassoon, Siegfried 6, 49, 82, 83, 86, 94 Savernake estate 111 Scotsman 115 self-sacrifices 1, 2, 5, 33, 41, 112, 121

190

Index

‘Service’ Battalions of the Prince of Wales’ Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) 39 Settled Lands Acts 111 Shaw-Stewart, Patrick 132 n.13 Sheffield Daily Examiner 104 Shepard, E.H. 18 Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment) 39 shooting 32, 67, 68, 120 see also hunting cartridges availability 77–8 and food supply 73–4 game conservation 75–6 gamekeepers 70–1, 78–9 rearing of game birds 71–6 styles 70 supplying local hospitals with game birds 73–4 tenantry 75–6 shooting parties 67–8, 69–70, 73 Shropshire 69, 81 Shropshire Yeomanry 81 Sibthorp family 75 Simmonds, Alan 75–6 Sketch 112 smallholdings 41–2, 119–20 Smallholdings and Allotments Acts 4, 41–2, 43 Small Holdings Colonies Bill 120 Somerset WEC 63 South Down Hunt 86 South Staffordshire Regiment 39 Spencer-Churchill, Charles (Duke of Marlborough) 50, 59, 104, 108, 114, 1113 sports see also hunting; shooting ethics, in war time 73 game conservation 75–6 rearing of game 71–6 rights 67 tenantry 69, 76 Spring, David 118 Staff of the North Midland Division 36 Staffordshire 30, 103 Stallworthy, John 8 Stanhope, Charles (Earl of Harrington) 82 Stanley, Edward (Earl of Derby) 49, 52, 97, 102, 105, 163 n.66 Stanley, Venetia 32 Stanway 35 state-controlled agriculture 58

Stoke Rochford estate 117 Stowe estate 115, 117 Street, A.G. 86, 92–3 strikes, over wages 42 Strutt, Edward 55 Sturmey, S.G. 117 Sturt, Humphrey Napier (Lord Alington) 116 Sudbourne 70 Sudbourne Hall estate 68, 117 Suffolk 69, 103 super-tax 13, 112, 116 Surrey 69 Sussex 24, 36, 46, 69 Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, George (Duke of Sutherland) 114, 121 Tapper, Stephen 74 Tatler, The 77, 113 taxation 13, 16, 41, 111–12, 114, 116 Tennant, Edward Wyndham 7, 29 Tennyson, Lionel 27 territorial and titled classes, impact of losses 10 Territorial Battalions (Territorial Force) 21–6, 24–6, 38, 104, 138 n.51, 139 n.70 farmworkers in 46–7 overseas service 24 Thellusson, Charles 75 Thomas, David Alfred (Lord Rhondda) 74, 112 Thomas, Edward 6 Thompson, F.M.L. 10, 15, 17, 91, 117–18 Thompson, Michael 111 Thompson, R.J. 56 Thorney estate 15 Thorold, Sir John 64 Thorpe, Michael 94 Thynne, Thomas (Marquess of Bath) 116 Times, The 22, 102, 112, 113, 114–15, 116 Toad Hall 18 To John (The Hon. John Manners) (poem) 28 Torin, M. 72, 77 Tory Party 14, 42 Trollope, John Henry (Lord Kesteven) 23–4 Turner, Michael 13, 111, 117

Index Turnor, Christopher 52, 55, 64, 119, 120 Turnor, Edmund 16, 57 unionism 42–3 Vane, Christopher (Lord Barnard) 116 Vane-Tempest-Stewart (nee Chaplin), Edith (Marchioness of Londonderry) 60, 143 n.42 Verney, Richard Greville (Lord Willoughby de Broke) 87 Vernon, George 29 victory, achieved through sacrifices 10–11 see also self-sacrifices villages see also country houses; countryside open and closed 46 village women 60–1 patriotism 61 voluntary recruitment campaign 46–7, 60–1 wages 42, 53 low wages 43–4 Wales 65 farmworkers joining armed services 49 plough-up campaigns 63 rent of agricultural land 56 Walker, Sir Francis E. 145 n.61 War Office 50 Wars of the Roses 29 Warwickshire Yeomanry 87 Watson, William 6 Welbeck Abbey 29, 32, 58 Welby, R. W.G. 30 Welby, Sir Charles 19–20, 25, 30, 47, 48, 64, 110 Wentworth House 38 Wernher, Lady 72–3 Westmoreland 37 West Suffolk 51–2, 99 Whetham, E.H. 62 Whitcliffe Park 98 Whitehall 62, 63, 64

191

Who’s Who 31 Willoughbys, Lords Middleton 114, 116 Wilson, Hubert M. 82 Wilton estate 111, 116 Wind in the Willows 18 Winfrey, Sir Richard 78 Witley Park estate 72 Woburn Abbey 96 Wodehouse, John (Earl of Kimberley) 55 Wollaton Hall 114, 117 Women’s Legion 143 n.42 Women’s War Agricultural Committees (WWACs) 61 Worcestershire 30 Wyndham, Charles (Lord Leconfield) 36, 101, 116 Wyndham, George 37, 38, 114 Wyndham, George Heremon 29 Wyndham, Mary 28 Wyndham, Percy 29, 113–14 Wynn-Carrington, Charles (Marquess of Lincolnshire, formerly Earl Carrington) 4, 41, 42, 45, 57, 63, 85, 116, 120 Xenophon 81 Yeomanry regiments 24, 27, 38, 82, 84–5, 104 York 88–9 York and Lancaster Regiment 39 Yorkshire 33, 69, 95 plough-up campaigns 65 Yorkshire Post 95, 116, 117, 119 young aristocrats 1, 5, 20, 29, 121 blood sports 8 deaths of 28–30 marksmanship 79–80 military training of 20–1 patriotism of 6–7, 11 re-enlistment of 41 shooting 70–1 teetotal 32–3