the consolidation of noble power in europe

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Contents

List of Maps vi

List of Tables vii

Preface viii

Notes on Contributors ix

Glossary of Technical Terms xi

1 The Consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c.16001800 1H.M. Scott and Christopher Storrs

2 The British Nobility, 16601800 61John Cannon

3 The Dutch Nobility in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 94J.L. Price

4 The French Nobility, 16101715 127Roger Mettam

5 The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century 156Julian Swann

6 The Nobility in Spain, 16001800 191I.A.A. Thompson

7 Nobility and Aristocracy in Ancien Rgime Portugal(Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries) 256Nuno Gonalo Monteiro

8 The Italian Nobilities in the Seventeenth andEighteenth Centuries 286Claudio Donati

Guides to Further Reading 322

Index 336

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1The Consolidation of Noble Power inEurope, c.16001800

H.M. Scott and Christopher StorrsUniversities of St Andrews and Dundee

I

The widespread revival of interest in Europes nobilities, already a strikingfeature of historical writing when the first edition of this collection waspublished in 1995, has continued and even gathered pace over the pastdecade. Since the mid-1970s, scholars have rediscovered nobility as a histor-ical phenomenon. This is true for all periods and formost countries. Medievalhistorians, most notably Georges Duby, Lopold Genicot and Karl-FerdinandWerner, have done much to clarify the origins, characteristics and evolutionof the lite which emerged in Europe during the centuries after c.1000, whilescholars such as Arno Meyer, Heinz Reif and David Cannadine have chartedthe enduring importance of the aristocracy in the nineteenth and eventwentieth centuries.1 A stream of monographs, general studies and editedcollections have appeared;2 special issues of journals have been devoted tothe nobility;3 while an increasing number of academic conferences thosebarometers of scholarly fashion have examined the lite.4 The revivalcomes after a generation during which other social groups, in particularthe peasantry and the middle class, secured the lions share of attention,being thought to be more worthy of study than a nobility assumed to be inlong-term decline. This rediscovery has been accompanied by a widespreadrecognition of the lites central importance in all areas of human history:social relations, political and religious life, central and local government,intellectual activity, cultural patronage, even economic enterprise. Thoughthis renaissance has been apparent from the Ancient World to the twentiethcentury, it has been especially evident in the study of the early modernperiod. It is unnecessary to be an apologist for the ancien rgime, far less tobe eager for its return, to recognise the crucial and wide-ranging importanceof Europes nobilities during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.This shift undoubtedly owes something to the carousel of historical

fashion: many topics experience periods of neglect followed by bouts of

1


2 The Consolidation of Noble Power in Europe, c.16001800

intensive interest and study. But the current revival has far more funda-mental causes. One major stimulus has been the re-evaluation of abso-lutism, with the recognition that traditional institutions and the lites whodominated them continued to play an important role in government untilthe very end of the early modern period.5 In many ways, however, the ques-tion is not why the nobility is once again in fashion, but why it was so seri-ously neglected, and for so long. Here the nobilitys apparent eclipse duringthe twentieth century and even, to some extent, during the nineteenthas well, has exerted an important influence on subsequent historiography.Historians tend to study success, even if this preference can be subconscious.By that yardstick, the relative neglect of the nobility may be comprehensiblefor later modern history, but it is much less so for earlier centuries. It isdifficult to escape the conclusion that Europes lite has suffered from anestablished tendency to conceptualise the continents entire history in termsof economic progress and the accompanying and irresistible advance of themiddle class to social, economic and political power. The nobility has alltoo often seemed an anachronism in an industrial and democratic society,a reminder of a world that has been lost, and this long contributed to itsneglect by modern scholars.The subject itself presents certain other problems. All historians depend,

to a very great extent, on the fortuitous survival of sources and especiallywritten records. Here the situation regarding Europes lite is contradictory.On the one hand, far more records are likely to be available than for subor-dinate social groups, above all the peasantry. At the same time, however, thenobility poses source problems all of its own. The papers of many familiessimply do not survive, or where they do either remain inaccessible or havenot been adequately catalogued or are in fragmentary form.6 This is usuallydue to chance, but sometimes to the dispersal and even deliberate destruc-tion of records. It is especially the case in France, where the Revolution of1789, with the destruction of seigneurial archives and the noble emigrationwhich followed, caused particular problems. In Spain both the PeninsularWar and the later Civil War destroyed or dispersed valuable source materialfor the study of the Spanish lite. Similar difficulties were created by theupheavals in Russia during and after 1917. Such problems over sources havebeen exacerbated by subsequent political developments, which have oftencontributed to the subjects neglect. One particularly obvious example is theway that the nobility could not be studied directly in the USSR for more than80 years after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917:7 as throughout CommunistEastern Europe for four decades after 1945, until the disintegration of theSoviet bloc in 1989. Though this situation is changing, it has been an espe-cial barrier to our knowledge of the East European nobilities, to which thesecond volume of this collection is largely devoted. Here Western scholars,who have not been subject to the same political and ideological pressures,have been in the forefront of research.


H.M. Scott and Christopher Storrs 3

In another sense, however, there is also the very opposite problem: toomany studies of the nobility, but of the wrong type.8 Traditionally, therehave been two principal ways of writing about the European lite. Familyhistories have been the most numerous. The nineteenth and early twentiethcenturies were the heyday of works of family pride, with the publicationof significant numbers of books inspired and frequently actually written bya descendant. Understandably such works celebrated the achievements ofthe House in general and glorified individual ancestors.9 They were oftenprincipally and even entirely genealogical in nature. Though they have tobe used with caution, they should certainly not be neglected, and they havecontinued to be produced, though in smaller numbers, until the presentday.10 The later nineteenth and twentieth centuries also saw some significantpolitical and institutional studies of the nobility.11 For the early modernperiod, these tended to focus on relations between the emerging modernState and the traditional social lite, who often appeared in the guise ofinevitable victims of an irreversible historical process. These books sufferedfrom perspectives which were blinkered and incomplete, rather than entirelyflawed, and they too contributed to a developing understanding of thenobility.The modern scholarly study of the European nobility, however, goes back

no more than 50 or 60 years, and it has flourished during the past threedecades.12 Among continental scholars, one key text was Otto BrunnersLand und Herrschaft, the first edition of which was published in 1938.13 Itbecame influential after the Second World War, despite its odious politicalassociations due to the authors Nazi sympathies, and did much to establishthe approach of the following generation of continental scholars. Brunnerswork has remained influential until the present day, and certainly repaysre-reading. A veritable explosion of research and publication during the lastgeneration has securely established the study of Europes nobilities.The subject has been and continues to be approached in a plurality of ways,

partly due to differences in national historical traditions and to the relativeavailability of sources in different countries. But certain broad problems andperspectives can be identified. One fundamental difficulty is that in mostcontinental countries, the size of the early modern lite makes detailed andreasonably comprehensive studies of entire national nobilities very difficultand probably impossible, except within relatively narrow geographical orsocial boundaries. Even if a reliable and extensive documentary base couldbe found, such studies are only feasible for relatively small lites, such asthose of Venice, the Southern Netherlands, early modern Scotland or theeighteenth-century British peerage.14

The past generation has seen certain broad types of detailed study estab-lish themselves, though the distinctions between these are often blurred andthe amount of overlap can be considerable. The first builds on the tradi-tional concern with the fortunes of an individual family to produce schol-arly studies of the trajectory of one noble House, often over an extended



period of time. Outstanding examples of this genre are Ignacio AtienzaHernandezs study of the changing fortunes of the Castilian House of Osunaacross four centuries; Grete Klingensteins examination of the rise at theHabsburg Court of the Moravian ministerial family of Kaunitz; Pierre Hurtu-bises survey of the Salviati and their changing fortunes at the Papal court;Tommaso Astaritas monograph on the Caracciolo di Brienza in SpanishNaples; and Caroline Castigliones sophisticated exploration of the ruralcontext of the Roman aristocratic family of Barberini.15 These and similarworks are broadly socio-economic in focus, paying considerable and occa-sionally overwhelming attention to the landed power base, but also findingspace for some examination of leading members of the family. The partic-ular merit of this approach is that it recognises that the crucial unit of theearly modern lite and thus for its historian also is the noble family,House or lineage, which inspired the actions of individuals and providedthe framework within which these took place.Linked to this approach, though far less numerous, have been biograph-

ical studies of one especially prominent nobleman. Notable examples areThomas Winkelbauers political biography of Gundaker Liechtenstein, animportant seventeenth-century Habsburg aristocrat and high official, andRohan Butlers panoramic study of the youth and emergence of the duc deChoiseul, who rose to be Frances leading minister from 1758 until 1770.16

Such studies, admirable in themselves, have tended to be more concernedwith the individuals life than with his role within the lite. They depend onthe survival of adequate documentation and for this reason havemostly beenof members of the aristocracy. Occasionally, however, the fortuitous survivalof sources has enabled a member of the lesser nobility to be examined indetail. The classic example here is Otto Brunners remarkable evocation ofthe life and ethos of a member of the Ritterstand (knights or lesser nobility)of Lower Austria, Wolf Helmhard von Hohberg (16121688).17 In this case,Hohbergs authorship of the so-called Georgica Curiosa enabled Brunner toreconstruct the social and cultural world of a nobility in the twilight of itsdays. The case of Helmhard von Hohberg, however, is quite exceptional,and his world can only be reconstructed so minutely because of the uniquenature of the available sources.18

Studies of particular families are now less common, however, than mono-graphs devoted to regional nobilities or to prominent groups within a partic-ular lite. In each case, the size of the nobility selected for investigation issuch that, given adequate sources and an extended period of research time,a reasonably comprehensive investigation can be undertaken. French histor-ians have been in the forefront of this approach. This is both because ofthe prevailing fashion for the regional monograph during the generationafter the Second World War, under the influence of the Annales school ofhistorians, and because the large-scale French doctorat dtat, only recentlysuperseded, provided the space and time essential. The first such study,



and the model for those that followed, was Jean Meyers remarkable thesis,published in 1966 and devoted to the nobility of eighteenth-century Brit-tany. Other examples of this genre are Jean Nicolass study of the Savoyardlite, Jean-Marie Constants work on Beauce, Calixte Hudemann-Simonsthesis on eighteenth-century Luxembourg (then part of the Austrian Nether-lands) and, most recently, Michel Nassiets detailed exploration of Brittanysnumerous and impoverished lesser nobility.19 These and other similar worksdevote particular attention to the internal composition and demographicevolution of the lite and to its social position and economic activities. Thisapproach has not been entirely the preserve of French historians. Heinz Reifsimpressive and large-scale study of the nobility of Westphalia at the endof the early modern period, Eila Hassenpflug-Elzholzs statistically orientedanalysis of the eighteenth-century Bohemian nobility and Petr Matas large-scale study of the Bohemian nobility all adopt a broadly similar approach.20

On a more modest canvas, Dutch and American scholars have also producedsocio-economic studies of regional or local lites.21

A broadly similar method has been that of focussing upon an especiallyimportant group within the nobility. Once again, the manageable size ofthe group studied and the availability of source material are importantconsiderations. An outstanding example of this genre is Jean-Pierre Labatutssocial study of the aristocratic lite of seventeenth-century France, the ducset pairs.22 Three American scholars of early modern Russia have adoptedthis perspective: Robert O. Crummey and Marshall T. Poe in their excel-lent monographs on the seventeenth-century boyar aristocracy, and BrendaMeehan-Waters in her examination of the generalitet, the members of thefirst four divisions in Peter the Greats Table of Ranks.23

The final approach, which has become especially prominent during thepast generation, has been to study the lites distinctive ethos and to explorechanges in the concept of nobility during the early modern period. Thismakes considerable use of contemporary literary evidence, and views thenobility through a socio-cultural lens. It also employs certain anthropolo-gical categories, above all the concern with identifying value-systems. Theforemost exponent of this approach is the French scholar Arlette Jouanna,and this perspective has also been adopted by Italian and North Americanhistorians.24 These divisions are no more than broad categories and certainlyare not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the best research is usually informed bya plurality of approaches: as, for example, in Maria-Antonietta Viscegliasremarkable studies of the traditional nobility of the Kingdom of Naples.25

The advances in our knowledge and understanding of the individual nobil-ities of early modern Europe during this past generation have been verystriking. Yet surprisingly little of this scholarship is accessible to an English-speaking readership, while the undoubted excellence of the detailed studiescannot hide the absence of accessible surveys of national Europes lites ata crucial point in their evolution. The present collection aims to fill this



gap and to present an up-to-date picture of the European nobilities duringthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By integrating the increasinglyplentiful specialist research into the studies of particular lites, it seeks tocarry forward the subject. The last generation has established certain broadapproaches to the study of the nobility, and these are followed in the indi-vidual essays.Certain limitations can be indicated at the outset. One has already been

referred to in passing. It is that sources for the middle and especially upperranks of the nobility are always likely to be more abundant and our know-ledge of these groups far more detailed and exact than of the numericallyfar more abundant though usually less important lesser nobility, whichare difficult to study in any detail. Britain is here something of an excep-tion, as John Cannon makes clear: this is due primarily to the small size ofthe English peerage (Volume I, Chapter 2). The essays on the continentalnobilities are more detailed on the aristocracy and the higher nobility, forwhom the surviving evidence is always more abundant. A second limita-tion arises from the unequal state of development in the study of particularnational nobilities. In certain countries, the scholarly study of the lite isstill in its infancy. Finally, considerations of space mean that certain topicscan only be dealt with in outline or have been neglected altogether. Theprincipal lacunae both the result of an editorial decision in the nationalsurveys which follow are the nobilitys role in and links with the variousEuropean Churches, and its cultural activities, especially its role as artisticpatrons.26

One established theme has been the manifold problems which the earlymodern nobility faced. Some historians have spoken of a seventeenth-century crisis of the lite, while others have detected a long-term decline inthe face of the twin threats of the Leviathan State and the rising middle classwhich was a preparation for its subsequent eclipse. The nobilitys problemsat this time have been viewed as the consequence of three interlocking devel-opments. The first was economic, with a short-term and sometimes acuteperiod of difficulties for the finances of many families during the down-turn in the European economy which characterised the seventeenth centuryand, in the longer perspective, a shift in the balance of wealth away froman increasingly indebted lite and towards the rising middle class, withinan economy which was increasingly commercialised. Secondly, the nobilityhas been seen as losing its traditional authority, politically to the central-ising State which was coming into existence at this time, socially to othergroups in the community. Finally and linked to these two developments,the nobility has been viewed as having undergone a severe crisis of identity,as the moral basis of nobility itself was challenged and its traditional rolesundermined. The lite is believed to have suffered a collective loss of self-confidence and purpose which was compounded by its own failure to equipitself with the education which was essential if it was to retain power in achanging world.



The essays in this collection provide very limited support for such a pess-imistic diagnosis. Individual families and even whole sectors of the nobilityclearly experienced real economic difficulties, particularly during the firsthalf of the seventeenth century, but the lite as a whole surmounted theseproblems and prospered during the decades of renewed economic expansionwhich followed (see Section IV). The military and administrative changesat this time did not destroy the nobilitys role in warfare and government;on the contrary, in important respects it consolidated and even extendedit (see Section V). The ideological challenge was very real and would ulti-mately prove to be the most serious. Yet until the Enlightenment began toquestion the whole basis of privilege and the inequalities which sustainedit, and instead to champion notions of merit and service as the founda-tions of an elite, the idea of nobility itself rarely came under direct attackexcept, of course, during the mid-seventeenth-century English Revolution.The House of Lords had been abolished in 1649 and was restored at theRestoration of 1660 (Volume I, Chapter 2). This was quite exceptional, atleast until the French Revolution. Though in the longer perspective thedoctrine of natural rights and the political changes to which this contributedwould eventually undermine the nobility, these developments had madenext-to-no progress before 1800. The essays which follow make clear thatthe most appropriate descriptions of the lites fortunes during these twocenturies are not crisis and decline, but consolidation and transforma-tion. Whatever political, social and economic difficulties the nobility hadfaced in the decades after 1600, by the later eighteenth century they wereeverywhere not only firmly entrenched but probably in a more powerfulposition. The means by which noble power was consolidated, perpetuatedand defended provide the dominant themes in the essays which follow.

II

The concept of nobility was based upon, and found its justification in, thecelebrated, though idealised and somewhat theoretical, division of medi-eval society into three orders or Estates. Since the central Middle Ages thenobilitys raison dtre the justification for its privileged position in stateand society had been that it was the fighting class (defensores or bellatores).Whereas the First Estate, the clergy, prayed and the Third Estate worked(to provide for the other two in their more essential tasks) the SecondEstate provided protection and military muscle. In some languages the verywords for nobility, or parts of it, derived from this military function: forexample, cavalieri (Italian), chevalerie (French) and riddarskapet (Swedish).The European nobility thus consisted originally of the men on horseback,the mounted knights who had formed the backbone of medieval armies. Inreturn for this military service the nobles had been rewarded by lands andby certain political and social privileges, and slowly evolved into a separate



group within society: a noble order had come into existence in France by theend of the twelfth century and throughout much of Europe by the end of thefourteenth century. Increasingly, this Second Estate came to be regulated bythe ruler, who sought to establish distinct legal criteria for entry to it. Thisled, during the early modern period, to an increasing emphasis being placedupon lineage, which was linked to an expansion of genealogical research.The search for homogeneity actually led to greater differentiation withinthe nobility, and contributed to the stratification evident at the time.27 Theorigins of the nobility were primarily, though not exclusively, military, andwere accompanied by a distinctive lifestyle.These notions remained alive in the early modern period. A good defin-

ition of what is meant to live nobly was provided by the Dutch observer,Wouter van Gouthoeven, in 1620. Nobles, he declared, had to livefrom their own income from lands, tithes and manors, and [refrain] frommercantile activities, and in particular shopkeeping; but practicing war andserving in the Princes court, or in some honourable office, and owing thecountry and other two [orders] protection with their weapons against theviolence or attack of enemies, provided that they have commission fromhigh authority.28

Noble status was acquired primarily by birth. Though this status was essen-tial, however, it was not sufficient; it had to be defended and upheld bythe maintenance of a lifestyle that was self-evidently noble. The nobilitywas further distinguished by being the only social group entitled to usetitles, such as count, or duke, or prince. The importance of these desig-nations would increase during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,as will be seen. Yet the essays in this collection make clear that, even in1800, only a minority and sometimes a very small minority of theSecond Estate possessed titles. In every continental country most membersof the nobility were untitled, and distinguished only in nomenclature bythe right to employ the operative participle: de in French, von andzu in German. These and similar designations were the marks of simplenobility.Another important badge of noble status was the ownership or occu-

pation of landed estates. Yet though land and nobility often went handin hand and new or aspiring noblemen were always keen to secure suchproperty, the connection was far from exclusive. The nobility was alwaysan important and sometimes a dominant landowner, but the king andthe Church were also likely to control substantial estates. More import-antly, many members of the lesser nobility all across Europe owned nolanded property, though this in itself was not a barrier to the mainten-ance of their noble status. The attractions of a landed estate and thesocial and economic power that this conferred were, however, consid-erable and their possession everywhere the aim of the nobility as awhole.



The problems of terminology have aroused extended and sometimesheated debates, though these have so far been inconclusive. In particular,whether the nobility can be accurately described as a class remains to beproved, especially in view of the assumptions which now surround that termabout the economic determination of social status. In the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries the nobility was a distinct group within society distin-guished primarily by the social and legal privileges which it enjoyed andby its position as an important and often dominant landowner. Terms suchas order or Estate seem much more satisfactory than class to describethis lite. The early modern nobility, moreover, was distinguished from thevarious lites that have existed at different periods of human history and indifferent countries and continents by the hereditary nature of its positionand power. Noble status and wealth were transmitted across the generationsby inheritance and did not depend upon external political and economiccircumstances. These might change, but at least until the very end of theeighteenth century such alterations exerted little influence upon the posi-tion of the European nobility as an lite.Nobility was essentially a status that was hereditary and conferred

important privileges which were both juridical and social in nature.29 Theseprivileges attached both to a noblemans person and to his property. Theywere unequally distributed throughout the nobility as a group. All noblemenand noblewomen possessed significant privileges; this was what distin-guished them from the rest of society, who enjoyed rather fewer and, forthe lower strata, none at all. But within the nobility the more powerfulindividuals possessed additional privileges. These were often honorific innature, such as the monopoly of certain titles or the right to be addressedin a particular way, and they marked out a hierarchy within the lite itself.These privileges varied significantly in incidence and importance from onecountry to another and between regions of the same country, as the nationalessays make clear. The principal exception was Russia, where the nobilityonly secured the legal rights which their counterparts elsewhere had longenjoyed in 1785 through Catherine IIs celebrated Charter to the Nobility(Volume II, Chapter 10). Until that date the Russian elite unique of allEuropes nobilities remained liable to corporal punishment, at least intheory.30

Noble privileges were many and varied. One important category guaran-teed the nobilitys right to participate in and, in practice, to dominate polit-ical life. Where national or provincial representative assemblies or Estatessurvived and continued to meet, they were almost everywhere dominatedduring this period by noblemen who either attended in person or chosea deputy as a representative. Indeed, in eighteenth-century Hungary themagnates alone could attend the Diet (Volume II, Chapter 8). Where theRoman Catholic Church continued to be represented, either as an Estatein its own right or as part of a unicameral assembly, this enhanced noble



influence since the lite also provided the overwhelming majority of high-ranking churchmen. In most European countries, certain public offices werereserved for the nobility, either legally or in practice, while the lite enjoyedpreferential access to many other posts in government. Less formally, rulersall across Europe continued to consult the nobility both as individuals and asa group, and this practice survived down to 1800 and far beyond. Noblemenwere long seen as the natural counsellors of kings and a source of authoritywithin society at large.In Roman Catholic countries the nobility both in practice and, some-

times, formally enjoyed privileged access to the higher echelons ofthe Church, which they completely dominated. This was certainly so ineighteenth-century France, where nobles provided almost all the bishopsand most heads of monasteries (Volume I, Chapter 5). In Portugal themost important dioceses were controlled by the court aristocracy alongwith one or two royal bastards (Volume I, Chapter 7). In many Germancathedral chapters places were formally reserved for members of thelite, while in Poland most bishoprics and prelacies could only be occu-pied by nobles.31 The Catholic Church in Hungary similarly came underthe control of the magnates during the eighteenth century (Volume II,Chapter 8).The second category of privileges were juridical in nature. Here there was

considerable variation from country to country. In general terms, however,the nobility was not subject to the same legal system and courts as the unpriv-ileged groups within society. A nobleman accused of a crime would often beable to claim special legal treatment. He would be tried in a separate courtand, upon conviction, might be subject to a different range of punishments.If convicted of murder, or another capital offence, he could claim decapit-ation (usually by a sword) rather than hanging, which was the fate metedout to common criminals. A nobleman also enjoyed important privileges incivil law and often could not, for example, be successfully sued by his cred-itors an important privilege for an lite that, during the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries, was increasingly indebted. Finally, until a surprisinglylate date the nobility itself continued to administer much of the law in itsown locality.32 The growth of State-administered justice, and the codifica-tion of law which accompanied this, was an important development duringthe early modern period and especially the eighteenth century. But thoughthis pushed back the realm of private jurisdictions, it certainly did not domore than limit its scope. Until 1800 and beyond, noblemen continued tohold their own courts, now increasingly staffed by their own lawyers, andto administer justice as they had long done. This was one dimension of awider lordship which they exercised over their tenants and neighbours andwhich conferred considerable social prestige as well as bringing importantincome from the profits of justice.



A third group of privileges were essentially fiscal in nature. The mostimportant, and also the most celebrated, was the nobilitys supposed exemp-tion from direct taxation, on the grounds that it served personally inwarfare, rather than supporting it indirectly through paying taxes as theremainder of the population were expected to do. This has been a fertilesource of misunderstanding and exaggeration, largely because of the successof the French nobility in defending its exemption from the taille person-nelle (the principal direct tax in large areas of France) and the supposedrole of this privilege in bringing about the Revolution of 1789. In fact,the fiscal position of the European nobilities was much more complex andgenerally less favourable to the lite than the French case might suggest.It also varied significantly between countries, and even within individualstates, as the individual essays make clear. The lite clearly did not enjoya generalised exemption from direct taxation, while much depended onthe nature of the fiscal system. One crucial difference was between taxa-tion of land and taxes levied on the person. A nobleman was much morelikely to pay the former. Exemption from direct taxation was importantand, where it existed, a significant privilege, but it was far from universal.During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, moreover, some of thenobilitys fiscal exemptions were undermined by hard-pressed States. Nobleswere liable to pay taxes in Savoy-Piedmont after 1731 and in Luxembourg(then part of the Austrian Netherlands) after 1771, while the eighteenth-century French monarchy made some inroads into the lites fiscal exemp-tions through levies such as the dixime and the capitation.33 Yet in France,as elsewhere, the nobility remained grossly undertaxed.34 By the closingdecades of the eighteenth century, even where they survived, such exemp-tions were as much a social privilege and badge of status as a real financialadvantage.The final group of privileges were social in nature. These were both a

matter of law and of custom, and collectively they marked out the lite asa distinct and dominant group within the community. A nobleman wasoften the only member of society who was legally entitled to bear arms, inrecognition of the lites military origins and continuing role as the fightingclass. The carrying of a sword remained a badge of nobility and was widelyprized during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. It distinguished anobleman from the common people; significantly, impoverished membersof the nobility of Poland-Lithuania carried wooden-swords, even thoughthey were too poor to be able to acquire the real thing.35 The nobility alonewere entitled to wear certain kinds of clothes, a privilege that was some-times guaranteed by sumptuary legislation. Noblemen could display theircoats of arms, for example over the portals of their residences or on theircarriages, and their servants were entitled to be clothed in distinctive liveries.They had the right to be addressed in particular ways: one of the mostcelebrated was the rise of the don in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century



Spain. They alone could acquire titles, such as baron or count or duke inthe German-speaking lands, which were introduced or became more wide-spread throughout Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The nobility had a privileged position in any religious or secular ceremonyor procession in which they took part. In church, for example, they wouldnormally have their own pew and even private box or gallery, located prom-inently next to the pulpit and below the altar in order to underline their placeat the top of the social hierarchy. Where as often happened more thanone noble family attended the same church, fierce and prolonged disputesover precedence were common.36

The importance of such pre-eminence within a society in which visualimpressions were all-important is obvious enough. At the local level, thenobles had a further series of privileges which were an important source ofrevenue and which largely proceeded from their dominant position as land-lords and seigneurs. In certain countries, theoretically, they alone possessedthe right to own land, but this privilege was being eroded during theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when a small number of commonerspurchased estates. Noblemen, however, secured important privileges fromtheir pre-eminent position as landowners. They could compel their tenantsto use their mill, or oven, or wine-press, and to pay for the privilege. Localnoblemen often possessed a monopoly over local hunting and fishing rightsand over the natural resources of the estate, such as minerals. They alsopossessed important rights over their tenants, who could be unable to moveor to marry without the lords permission. These were part of the wider lord-ship which the nobility had traditionally exercised over society at large andcontinued to enjoy.These privileges varied in incidence and importance from one country to

another, and between regions of the same country. They belonged both tothe nobility as an Estate and as individuals. The individual nobleman ornoblewoman, however, was everywhere subordinate to the demands of thewider family or House. This is one of the dominant emphases of recentscholarship, and it is crucial to any understanding of the early modernnobility. During the later modern period and especially the twentiethcentury, possessive individualism has come to the fore in all areas of humanactivity. By this is meant the pursuit of personal ambition and advance-ment, often at the expense of family cohesion and group solidarity, arisingout of the assumed centrality of economic factors in life. The situation inthe early modern period was quite different, especially among the lite forwhom the individual was always a representative of a wider grouping andwhere his or her interests were expected to take second place to thoseof relatives and of family and to advance the position, wealth and influenceof the wider group or House. Each House was a gigantic dynastic enterprisestretching across the generations. It was defined, at the end of the eighteenthcentury, by Edmund Burke as a partnership not only between those who



are living, [but] those who are dead, and those who are yet to be born.37

The over-riding goal was always the advancement of the lineage and theincrease of its fame and fortune whether by an advantageous marriage, asuccessful military or political career, or simply the skilful management ofthe family estates. A younger son might be deprived of any share in an inher-itance, a daughter packed off to a comfortable seclusion in a nunnery, eachprevented from marrying because family strategy dictated such a course ofaction. The rise in the real value of dowries during the early modern periodincreased the number of children prevented frommarrying. In Venice, whererestricted marriage was widespread among the nobility, 64 per cent of sonswere unmarried by the eighteenth century; two hundred years earlier thefigure had been 18 per cent. In early eighteenth-century France 42 percent of the sisters of the ducs et pairs remained unmarried.38 Success andfailure would determine the trajectory of the family within the nobility.The ultimate disaster, of course, was extinction; the name and arms ofthe House ceasing to exist through a failure of heirs and especially of itsmale children.This was a greater threat than might at first be realised. Since except in

Britain all legitimate children of a nobleman and noblewoman were noble,the transmission of status and property should have been relatively secure.Usually, however, nobility descended primarily in the direct male line. This,together with the familiar demographic uncertainties of the early modernperiod, made succession a much less certain business. The pitfalls are graph-ically demonstrated by the case of a Dutch nobleman, Johan Wolfert vanBrederode (15991655). Brederode married twice and fathered no less thantwenty-one children: twelve by his first wife, Anna Johanna, countess ofNassau-Siegen; and nine by his second bride, Louise Christina, countess ofSolms-Braunfels. Such fecundity, it might be thought, would have ensuredthe survival of the House of Brederode. In fact, the outcome was verydifferent. Seven of his twelve children by his first wife died in infancy, theremaining five were all daughters. His second marriage produced nine chil-dren: two did not survive infancy; four died around the age of twenty; andonly three survived. Two of these were daughters, leaving a solitary son,Wolfert, to perpetuate the line. But Wolfert died childless in 1679 and tookone of Hollands leading noble families to the grave with him.39

The extinction of the House of Brederode underlines both the fragility ofthe links between one noble generation and the next, and the importance ofextinction as a threat to the entire Second Estate. Thoughmost of the nobilityshould have enjoyed better nutrition than the common people and with itan improved chance of procreation and survival, the hazard of childbirth andthe threat of disease were ever-present in the early modern period and didnot respect social hierarchies. Biological failure, that is to say the extinctionof an entire family or House, was a permanent and ubiquitous problem forthe Second Estate. Rates of biological failure varied both from one country



to another and within national nobilities, but it was an ever-present threatwhich often became a reality. In England, of 63 peerage families in 1559,only 22 remained a century later, while in the duchy of Savoy, the rateof extinction may have been as high as 37 per cent over the period 17021787.40 Figures like these could be produced from all over Europe.41 It was anespecial problem for nobilities starved of new entrants: for example, the liteof the Dutch Republic after 1579, of Venice for much of the early modernperiod and of Denmark before 1660 in each case, a sharp numerical declineis visible (Volume I, Chapters 3 and 8; Volume II, Chapter 3). But all nobleHouses lived under the permanent threat of extinction, and for many itbecame a reality.Such biological failure was not, of course, new; the typical noble family of

later medieval France had seldom survived longer than three or four genera-tions in the direct male line.42 It was not entirely the outcome of biologicalchance, though that clearly had much to do with it. Extinction also resultedfrom a number of demographic variables: the frequency and age of marriage,and the rates of fertility and child and adult mortality. Conscious choice alsoplayed a part. Many families, especially among the higher nobility, adoptedstrategies to overcome the economic difficulties which they faced during thelater sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (see Section IV). These couldactually increase the chances of extinction, though their purpose and inmost cases their effect was the reverse. But the widespread adoption by thehigher nobility throughout much of southern and parts of central Europeof entail and primogeniture restricted the family patrimony to one malerelative, usually the eldest son.43 This could be accompanied by a strategyof restricted marriage, by which younger sons and all the daughters mightbe prevented from leading an independent life and especially stopped frommarrying. In this way primogeniture, by concentrating all the familys futureprospects on the small number of males who did marry, heightened theimportance of the fertility of particular unions and actually increased thepossibility of extinction.The individual essays reveal that with some important exceptions

the total numbers in national nobilities increased, sometimes sharply, overthe seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century. Yet this demographicexpansion should not disguise the reality of the threat of extinction whichfacedmany families at this time. It was a universal threat but not a ubiquitousfate. Many noble Houses whose origins lay in the period before 1600 survivedand prospered into the nineteenth century and beyond. The expansion of thelite, however, was made possible by constant replenishment, with the entryof new families into the nobility. As families became extinct, others replacedthem, underlining once again that the Second Estate was itself constantlyundergoing change. Such replenishment was crucial to the consolidation ofnoble power, and highlights the importance of the ways in which nobilityitself could be acquired.



Noble status could be obtained in several ways. The most important,which has been referred to already, was also the simplest through birth.On the continent all the legitimate children female as well as male ofa nobleman were themselves noble, while in certain countries and underparticular circumstances a noblewoman alone could also transmit her priv-ileged status to her children. The situation in Britain was quite different(Volume I, Chapter 2). Here only the eldest son of a nobleman received hisfathers status, the other children being in law commoners unless the familypossessed courtesy titles which passed to one or more younger sons. Thiswas quite exceptional in the context of continental Europe, where a fathersnoble status normally passed to all his legitimate children. Uniquely, noblestatus (hidalgua) in the Spanish Monarchy also passed to the illegitimatechildren of a nobleman (Volume 1, Chapter 6).The second way in which nobility could be acquired was from a ruler,

either by grant or sometimes purchase. The two notable exceptions to thisgeneralisation were Poland-Lithuania after 1601 and Sweden during the Ageof Liberty (17201772) where the Estates or Diet, rather than the King,usually ennobled.44 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rulerscontinued to reward meritorious service by a patent of nobility or by advan-cing a nobleman within the lite through the award of a title or a higherrank than he possessed. The principal routes to such ennoblement continuedto be military and administrative service. During the later seventeenth andearly eighteenth centuries, rulers in Denmark, Sweden and Russia in partic-ular formalised this practice through the creation of Tables of Rank, the bestknown of which was introduced by Peter the Great in Russia in 1722 (VolumeII, Chapters 2, 3 and 10). These tied noble status to service to the ruler andState, and laid down that any individual who reached a particular rank inthe army or grade in the administration would automatically be ennobled.Privileged rank could also be acquired by purchase, either of a patent ofnobility, of land that conferred noble status or by buying an ennobling office.This attracted a good deal of unfavourable comment from contemporaries,but in most countries the numbers ennobled in this way were a relativelysmall proportion of the total. It was, however, of considerable significancein France and Spain (Volume I, Chapters 4, 5 and 6). The numbers whosecured the status of noblesse de robe in France were considerable, reflectingthe scale of the sale of such charges and the way in which the practicebecame systematised after the introduction of the paulette in the early seven-teenth century.45 Within the Spanish Monarchy, it was primarily positionsin local government which could be purchased and which could ennobletheir holder. The outright sale of nobility itself was rarer in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Europe, though it certainly occurred. From time totime a financially hard-pressed ruler would permit a favoured applicant topurchase the status of noble or a title which enabled him to rise within thelite, or might even bestow that status in return for the covert cancellation



of a loan. These were unusual, and almost always to individuals deemedworthy of the honour in the first place.46

The final way in which nobility might be acquired was by assuming thestatus and hoping it would be acknowledged by other members of society.A commoner who had acquired some wealth or land, or aspired to a positionof standing within the community, would simply begin to behave like anobleman: by carrying a sword, by wearing noble dress, by claiming some ofthe other privileges of nobility and so forth. He might seek to have estateshe had purchased reclassified as noble land, a practice which was partic-ularly widespread in France. If he were able to secure acceptance of thisstatus and especially of the privileges which conferred, particularly exemp-tion from direct taxation or other State burdens, he might be able to establishhimself as a member of the local lesser nobility and, in certain countries suchas Spain, have his status formally confirmed by a law court. The growingemphasis during the early modern period upon maintaining a noble lifestylefacilitated this way of entering the lesser nobility, which was very difficultto detect. A man who was prepared to leave his own immediate localityand take up residence elsewhere would often be able to establish a claim tonoble status in this way, especially if he possessed or could pretend to exper-ience of military service the connection between arms and nobility wasstill crucial.The essays in this collection suggest that the fraudulent assumption of

noble status was especially common in countries such as France and Spain(Volume I, Chapters 4, 5 and 6), where the fiscal privileges of nobilitywere especially valuable, and in other countries which had a large and ill-defined lower nobility, such as Poland-Lithuania and Hungary (Volume II,Chapters 7, 8 and 9). In certain states, the revenue lost to such false nobles,together with a desire to regulate the elite, even led the government to insti-tute enquiries into the noble status of families within a particular region;these were especially common in seventeenth-century France, the so-calledrecherches de la noblesse, while both rulers and the lites themselves werekeen to prevent impostors securing noble status and in this way under-mining the concept of nobility. Yet it was extremely difficult to preventa wealthy and skilful commoner slipping into the lesser nobility and evenrising within it; the barrier between the Second Estate and the rest of societywas always permeable. The social fluidity at the bottom of the noble Estatewas particularly marked in Hungary (Volume II, Chapter 7), but was to befound to some extent throughout the continent. It was, for example, clearlyapparent in the Reich, where the nobility appears to have been open to risingsocial groups (Volume II, Chapter 4). At the very end of this period, thePrussian Allgemeines Landrecht (General Law Code) of 1794 acknowledgedthis through its provision that 44 years living as a noble without chal-lenge conferred an express or implicit recognition by the state of privilegedstatus.47



The reverse of this was the question of how and under what circumstancesa nobleman or noblewoman might fall out of the lite. There was always asteady exodus out of the nobility and in the second half of the eighteenthcentury, this river became a torrent; it has recently been suggested thatas many as one-third of the entire European nobility disappeared duringthe century after 1750.48 Once again, such losses were concentrated at thelower end of the Second Estate, with considerable movement out of thelesser nobility into the ranks of the commonalty. In the French province ofBrittany (Bretagne), for example, the size of the Second Estate dropped byperhaps as much as a half between around 1600 and the eve of the FrenchRevolution, from some 40,000 to 20,00025,000.49 In this case a sizeable andoften impoverished lesser nobility suffered significant losses. Across Europeas a whole, by far the majority who lost their lite status did so more orless willingly, and largely because they were unable to support the lifestyledemanded of a nobleman. Even if the poverty of a member of the lessernobility might be relative when considered against that of a peasant, it wasstill a formidable barrier for many who were faced with the mounting costsof supporting the style of life demanded by their status, particularly whenthe privileges it brought were being reduced by the actions of the State.Another way in which a member of the lesser nobility might fall out of theSecond Estate was by contracting a marriage that was unworthy, that is tosay, with a commoner. The conclusion of a msalliance would often deprivea nobleman or noblewoman of their status and many who contracted suchunions willingly dropped out of the nobility. This was strengthened bythe growing preoccupation with lineage and untainted descent during theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries.There were several other ways in which noble status might be lost, all

involving action by the State which, during the early modern period, cameto regulate membership of the lite. One has already been mentioned:the recherches de la noblesse by which the financially hard-pressed FrenchCrown, especially during the seventeenth century, sought to reduce thenumber of false nobles and the accompanying loss to the treasury of directtaxation. The catalyst to such investigations was the Bourbon monarchyspressing financial problems, particularly during the 1630s and from the1660s onwards. Organised on a provincial basis, they operated in a sociallyconservative way.50 Such enquiries became a more significant factor in thenumerical decline of the nobility during the following century, when boththe Spanish Bourbon and Austrian Habsburg governments began to invest-igate and thus to challenge the status of large numbers of the lesser nobil-ities throughout their territories.51 In a more general way, it is clear thatthe early modern period saw an increasing body of legislation defining thenobility more precisely than medieval law codes had done and thus layingdown what members of the Second Estate could and could not do.The impact of these new laws, however, is less easy to establish with anycertainty.



A good example of this is provided by the concept of derogation. In theory,any nobleman who took part in certain kinds of activities, principally enga-ging directly in commerce or performing manual labour, put his noble statusin jeopardy. Nobility could also be forfeited by msalliance, that is to saycontracting amarriage with a non-noble.52 Many states possessed or acquiredsuch legislation during the early modern period. In France, for example,formal laws concerning derogation were introduced during the 1560s and1570s, giving juridical backing to earlier conventions prohibiting such activ-ities by members of the lite. The actual impact of these provisions is far lesseasy to establish. In the first place, noble status was usually suspended, ratherthan forfeited altogether, and it could be recovered, sometimes relativelyeasily. In Brittany, for example, a nobleman intending to establish or recoverhis familys fortunes by a successful career in commerce could put aside hisnoble status and simply resume it when convenient. Overall, the essays inthis collection suggest that formal laws of derogation were neither a universalnor a very effective threat against noblemen engaging in commercial activ-ities. Indeed, as Dr Thompson points out, it is probably not legitimate tosuggest a dichotomy between land, and economic and commercial activ-ities of all kinds.53 It was always accepted that a nobleman could exploithis own landed estate, which was likely to generate agricultural producewhich could be sold, and in this way involve commercial activities of certainkinds. Many noblemen supported commercial enterprises and invested thenobleman in a variety of financial opportunities either openly or throughan intermediary, and very few suffered loss of status because of this. InFrance, moreover, a desire to promote economic development, together withofficial concern at the number of merchants who were living nobly,54 ledto the removal in stages of the threat of derogation from involvement incertain kinds of commercial activities: maritime trade (1669), naval construc-tion and arms manufacturing (1681), maritime insurance (1686), wholesalecommerce (1701) and banking and all kinds of manufacturing (1767).55

These concessions, to a large extent, recognised the social reality of nobleinvolvement in economic activities and underline that derogation was lessof a real danger than a statement about the dominant cultural ethos ofthe lite.One traditional way of losing noble status was becoming a thing of the

past during the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth centuries. Thiswas through rebellion or treason. Occasionally this could still be a factor ofimportance. The unsuccessful Bohemian rebellion against the Austrian Habs-burgs in 16181620 led to significant numbers of the Kingdoms nobilitylosing their lands, their status and, in some cases, their lives, while manyothers were forced into impoverished exile. This was followed by a signi-ficant reconstitution of the Bohemian lite, with the ascent and some-times the arrival of many noblemen devoted to the House of Habsburg.It has been calculated that anything between one half and three-quarters



of all land in the Kingdom of Bohemia changed hands at this period,a figure without parallel in the history of early modern Europe (VolumeII, Chapter 6). A generation later, the English Civil Wars of the 1640sinflicted surprisingly little damage, at least in the long-term, on the peerage(Volume I, Chapter 2). Simultaneously, a significant minority as manyas 40 per cent56 of the Portuguese nobility remained loyal to Madridduring the extended rebellion (16401668) by which Portugal regained itsindependence after 60 years of union with Spain. Though this group lostlands and were forced into exile, some of its members were subsequentlyrewarded by the Spanish King with grants of titles and of lands. A generationlater, during Spains War of Succession at the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, some Castilian nobles including four grandees of the first class suffered for choosing the wrong side in the struggle between Habsburg andBourbon.Such cases were becoming exceptional, and underlined that domestic

politics were everywhere now less violent, as the nobilitys own militarypower waned.57 By the eighteenth century, noble rebellion had become athing of the past. Treason was also now extremely rare, and seldom ledto the permanent loss of noble status. The most celebrated case was thatof the Portuguese Houses of Aveiro and Tavora, who were jointly implic-ated in an attempt to assassinate King Jos I in 1758.58 The retributioninflicted was severe: their estates were confiscated, their arms and resid-ences destroyed, the very name of the Tavora temporarily expunged. Yet thefamily survived: Portugals leading minister during the third quarter of theeighteenth century, the Marquis of Pombal, who had himself carried outthe judicial proceedings, subsequently married one of his own daughtersinto the Tavora House. It exemplified a general trend; though individualswould occasionally suffer a severe fate for treason, their families wouldfrequently survive and, in time, flourish again. Nobility was too precious aplant for a single stem to be destroyed simply because one bud had failed toblossom.The attempted regicide was significant in a second respect. During its

severe judicial aftermath which secured widespread international publi-city, members of the two noble Houses involved were treated with espe-cial brutality. The Duke of Aveiro and the Marquis of Tavora were bothbroken on the wheel, their arms and legs being crushed, without first beingstrangled. The other family members implicated were also broken on thewheel, but were first put to death. Such treatment was not unfamiliar ineighteenth-century Europe, though it was usually the fate of common crim-inals, not leading aristocrats, and the sentences were for that reason widelycondemned. The episode underlined the extent of the privileges the nobilitypossessed and expected to enjoy even when convicted of the heinous crimeof treason.



III

Around 1600, Europes nobilities were the product of an evolution whichextended back over five or six centuries, yet they were still in a state offlux. The lites of individual states were often surprisingly heterogeneous,reflecting the various ways in which the status of nobility could be andhad been acquired: this diversity is apparent in the essays which follow.The Italian peninsula (Volume I, Chapter 8) best highlights the two prin-cipal routes into the lite: the traditional nobility created by service andespecially military service to a sovereign, rewarded by grants of land andrights of lordship and the evolution of urban patriciates into noble lites.The second route path was also important in the Reich, where the townpatricians like their Italian counterparts acquired lands and armorialbearings as they became part of the nobility (Volume II, Chapter 4). Onesignificant conclusion which emerges from the national essays is that theworld of the nobility spanned rural and urban life: particularly in the moreurbanised parts of Europe, a significant proportion of noblemen and noble-women ordinarily lived in towns. Yet the possession of a landed estate andthe accompanying rural lifestyle were everywhere seen as essential badgesof noble status avidly sought by those who lacked them, equally determ-inedly maintained by their fortunate owners. Indeed, one key developmentin later sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy was a renewed search bythe urban patriciates for landed property, where they might cultivate whatthey saw as the attributes of true nobility.One general conclusion which emerges from the two volumes is that the

European nobilities were not evenly distributed, either between individualcountries or within particular states. Each national lite had been shapedby a distinct historical evolution and this influenced both its size and itscomposition. The individual essays provide such figures as are available forthe size of particular nobilities, both numerically and as a proportion ofthat states total population. In view of the significant variations betweencountries, any attempt to aggregate these totals to produce a figure for Europeas a whole would be misleading. We should rather see a spectrum, rangingfrom those states Britain, Portugal, Denmark, the smaller territories of theHoly Roman Empire, Brandenburg-Prussia where the nobility amounted toless than one per cent of the total population, to the countries whose liteswere a much higher proportion: in Spain, Hungary and Poland-Lithuania thecorresponding figure was 5 or 6 per cent. The remaining countries would allbe located somewhere between these two extremes. One interesting generalconclusion is that everywhere, as more detailed research is undertaken onnoble demography, employing fiscal and other records, previous figures arehaving to be revised downwards and contemporary estimates revealed to beexaggerated, sometimes significantly so.The lite was not a consistent proportion of the population in a second

important way. It was never distributed evenly throughout a particular



society. Within individual countries there were usually significant regionalvariations. In the Spanish Monarchy, for example, noblemen were muchmore numerous in the north and relatively scarce in some areas of the south,because of the distinctive historical evolution (Volume I, Chapter 6). Inparts of central and eastern Europe, it had been particularly easy to securethe status of noble, as medieval rulers sought to encourage colonisationand settlement of inhospitable regions this was why both Eastern Pomer-ania in Brandenburg-Prussia and Mazovia in Poland-Lithuania containedwhole villages composed largely and occasionally entirely of impoverishednobles (Volume II, Chapters 5 and 9). There were parts of Poland-Lithuania,however, where noblemen and noblewomen were extremely scarce. Thisunderlines an important point: everywhere the nobility was not evenlydistributed, either as a proportion of a States total population or as acomponent in a particular society.The nobility throughout Europe resembled a pyramid, though the steep-

ness or otherwise of the sides varied according to the characteristics andthe composition of the individual lite. At its apex were a small numberof wealthy and powerful families who together composed an aristocracy.Originally, this word, of Greek derivation, had simply meant rule by thebest. But during the eighteenth century, it was increasingly used to describethe noble lite, in the sense of a group of leading nobles who enjoyedimmense social and political authority and, usually the economic resourcesto support this.59 This was an index of a process that was underway by whichthe lite of the nobility became more sharply differentiated. Though thearistocracy would be influential in at least one locality, its horizons wouldalways be national rather than regional. Below it was to be found the middleranks of the nobility: families of standing in their particular locality, whoseambitions and perspectives occasionally moved upwards to the nationallevel. The base of the pyramid would everywhere consist of a numerous andsometimes impoverished lesser nobility, whose interests seldom extendedfar beyond their own region. These divisions were fluid, yet are fundamentalto an understanding of the structure of Europes nobilities. In 1600, the litesin western and southern Europe were rather more complex in structure thanthose of countries lying to the north and east, reflecting their longer andmore varied evolution. Everywhere, by 1800, as lites became more strati-fied, the proportion of the Second Estate which belonged to the upper levelsof the nobility increased, while that represented by poorer families declined.Though these horizontal divisions were important, there was always signi-

ficant movement within the nobility. The rise and fall of individual familieswas a permanent feature, as Houses competed for social capital, politicalinfluence and economic resources. This rivalry was probably more importantthan the movement into and out of the lite which was discussed earlier.During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the principal develop-ment, apparent in all European countries to some extent, was the increased



degree of stratification within the nobility, with the aristocracy everywhereemerging as more wealthy, more powerful and more sharply differentiatedfrom the remainder. Poland-Lithuania diverged in one important respectfrom the European pattern. While a group of magnates can always be identi-fied, its composition was much less stable than elsewhere, as families movedin and out of the aristocratic elite, reflecting the way in which incomefrom crown offices was crucial to wealth and power (Volume II, Chapter 9).Everywhere, this process was usually assisted by the State, which saw clearadvantages in elaborating the social hierarchy over which it presided. Butstratification resulted primarily from the success of individual families insecuring land, wealth and the political power which everywhere accom-panied these.The rivalries of individual families divided the nobility vertically, espe-

cially its middle and upper ranks. Emphasis on the elements which unitedthe lite in particular, a common ideology and shared privileges does notmean that it was a unified body. On the contrary, it was rather an aggrega-tion of rival and fiercely-competitive individuals, families and Houses.60 Thegreat and middle-ranking nobility were engaged in a continuous strugglefor advancement and a search for additional status and new economic andpolitical opportunities for themselves and for their followers. Those familieswhich were successful in this competition moved up the noble hierarchy,and the most successful entered the aristocratic lite emerging at this time.In most countries, this lite was also distinguished and sometimes defined

by its monopoly of certain titles. Once again, this was widespread ratherthan universal. In early modern Poland-Lithuania the only titles either hadLithuanian or Ruthenian origins or were foreign imports and the possessionof crown offices was more important in designating the social hierarchy,while in neighbouring Russia the situation was also complex, with nativeprinces but no other titles until Peter I sought not altogether successfully to introduce these as part of his thoroughgoing attempt to create a western-style nobility (Volume II, Chapters 9 and 10). In countries such as Sweden,Denmark and Brandenburg-Prussia, indigenous titles seem to have been arelatively late innovation and one that was of limited significance (VolumeII, Chapters 2, 3 and 5). Elsewhere, however, they increased in number andin importance during this period.Titles were as they had long been a way of rewarding meritorious

service, and recognising status and social and political power. During theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, they increasingly became away of favouring and, at the same time, distinguishing the aristocratic lite.This development in turn highlighted the growing internal stratification ofthe nobility. One classic example of this trend was the rise of the ducs etpairs in seventeenth-century France.61 Successive kings sanctioned and, insome measure, created an lite of wealth and power at the top of the Frenchnobility through the grant or extension of the title of duc and the privileges



associated with this, together with gifts of lands and, occasionally, cash to theespecially favoured (Volume I, Chapter 4). During the seventeenth centurya broadly similar process was underway in Spain (Volume I, Chapter 6) andin the Hereditary Lands of the Austrian Habsburgs (Volume II, Chapter 6).Titles were everywhere important as a public mark of a familys power andachievements and of the esteem in which it was held. Promotion in theestablished hierarchy of titles was eagerly sought by families engaged in theceaseless search for power and advancement. There was an element of socialengineering in this: rulers such as Louis XIV were motivated in part by adesire to create a more stratified hierarchy both within the lite and withinthe nobility as a whole.The granting of such advancement, moreover, recognised an existing hier-

archy more than it created a new one. The award of a higher title was oftena simple recognition of social and political reality and of the distributionof wealth and power. It acknowledged a familys growing importance and,sometimes, its economic might, more than contributing to its rise. A goodexample of this is provided by the Esterhzy family, whose seventeenth-century ascent from minor and impoverished Hungarian nobles to greataristocrats was the most remarkable success story of the age (Volume II,Chapter 7). It was brought about by a mixture of matrimonial and politicalskill, loyal service to the House of Habsburg and the rewards that brought,principally in the form of lands. This was climaxed in 1687 when a gratefulEmperor created the Palatine Paul Esterhzy a Prince of the Holy RomanEmpire.This section has emphasised both the vertical and the horizontal divisions

within the early modern nobility and has outlined the different degrees ofstatus, power and wealth. These were undoubtedly significant and becamemore so during the two centuries after 1600. Yet at the same time, theEuropean nobilities were also remarkably unified social groups, particularlyin their interaction with other sections of society. One of the clearest illus-trations of this was in later eighteenth-century Hungary. There the realtensions economic as well as political between themagnates and the lessernobility, evident in the crisis of 17901791, did not dissolve the fundamentalunity of the Second Estate, though it certainly placed it under considerablestrain (Volume II, Chapter 8). The very concept of nobility was everywherea powerful adhesive. By marking out who was, and therefore who was not,noble, it imparted enormous unity to the Second Estate.The process of consolidation was advanced by the development of

clientage and patronage links among all Europes nobilities during the earlymodern period.62 By this is meant a series of personal ties and networksthat ran vertically through the noble lites in particular of all continentalcountries. One element in the power of the great aristocrats was the linksthey established and cultivated with the middle and, indirectly, lower ranksof the nobility. An aristocratic patron would secure social and professional



opportunities and advancement for his clients, who in return would provideloyalty, support and, sometimes, payments in cash or kind. This relationshipwas reciprocal, and it was continually nurtured by the distribution of favoursand advantages to the patrons noble clients in the localities. These oppor-tunities could take many forms: a fortunate marriage, the award of lands or apension, entry into or advancement within the army, government or (wherethis was to be found) the Roman Catholic Church. These vertical bonds didmuch to unify the Second Estate, and they were everywhere the means bywhich national aristocracies maintained important links with their coun-tries regional nobilities and in this way strengthened their own positionand influence.

IV

Wealth was an important element in nobility, enabling families to livenobly, which was crucial if their status was to be upheld. Noble descentwas only to be valued if accompanied by a lifestyle which was visibly noble.Both collectively and individually, the nobility was the wealthiest group insociety; only in the Dutch Republic was this not so (Volume I, Chapter 3).During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, there was surprisinglylittle change in the sources of that wealth, which remained overwhelminglylanded in origin and nature. This is not to say that the lite was uninter-ested in commerce, finance or manufacturing; as has been seen, derogationwas seldom much of a barrier to such activities, which may actually haveincreased during this period. Their very wealth, moreover, often made thenobility the only group within society with sufficient capital available forinvestment. Yet the origin of that wealth was predominantly landed, andthe major element in noble fortunes, the estates which they controlled andexploited. Even in Hanoverian Britain, where commercial opportunities werefar more abundant and where no code of derogation inhibited the economicactivities of the peerage, the basis of its considerable wealth was the landedestate (Volume I, Chapter 2). The major exception to this generalisation wasPortugal, where royal grants and crown support, rather than landed wealth,was the basis of the lites prosperity (Volume I, Chapter 7).The exploitation of these estates was overwhelmingly traditional in tone,

and pragmatic and opportunistic in nature.63 It was reactive in the sensethat it was shaped by the geographical and economic contexts of the familylands and the consequent opportunities. This management was guided bya distinctive approach, which did not correspond to modern conceptionsof economic rationality, but was rooted in social and cultural assumptionsabout the aristocratic family and House, and its distinctive requirements.Though themodern science of economics was born in the Enlightenment, itsimmediate impact was slight. Economy was famously defined in the Encyc-lopedia as the wise and legitimate management of the household.64 It was



concerned, first, with the running of the extended family at the heart ofwhich the individual House stood, and secondly with the administration ofthe lineages resources, both landed property and moveable wealth.65 Theseresources were managed less to promote growth, which was everywhere asecondary aim, but to generate the income needed to support the familysactivities at any particular point. Borrowing might periodically be essentialto these operations. It could be necessary to fund a daughters dowry or tolaunch a sons career, or to pay for a new palace or a family funeral. Paradox-ically, debt was at least as likely to be a symptom of prosperity and carefullymanaged finances as an indicator of economic problems.66

One reason why this was so was that a proportion of income, andsometimes a significant percentage, would come in kind rather than cash,reflecting the dominance of landed estates as a source of income. During theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries many noble families, and especiallythose in the lites middle and upper ranks, acquired expanded adminis-trative agencies or groups of bailiffs and officials who advised on this exploit-ation and carried it out. These men brought expertise and their activitiescontributed to the real prosperity of many noble families by the second halfof the eighteenth century. A more professional and systematic exploitationof the family estates could lead, for example, to new opportunities beingpursued. The best example of this is the way in which forests and woodlandscame to be exploited more systematically. By the second half of the eight-eenth century the income of numerous noble families was being boostedby the profits of the timber trade. In a similar way, manufacturing was wellestablished on many of the larger estates in Poland-Lithuania by the eight-eenth century and contributed substantially to magnate wealth (Volume II,Chapter 9).The economic health of the nobility as a whole at this period is a subject

of crucial importance, yet one where satisfactory generalisations are diffi-cult and may even be impossible. Too often the short-term problems of onefamily have been used as the foundation for speculative theories about thelite as a whole. There is also a need to view developments in the long-term.A family experiencing financial problems at one point could, a generationlater, once again be prospering. Though some impressive studies have beenpublished, there is still an urgent need for much more detailed researchinto the finances of individual families and the economic circumstancesof particular groups within national nobilities. One considerable barrier tosuch investigations is the paucity of surviving records, especially for familiesoutside the higher nobility.67 Yet even where the documentation for sucha study exists, the obstacles in the way of exploiting these records are stillconsiderable.68 Nevertheless, some tentative conclusions about the subjectof noble finance are becoming possible. Once again, much more detailedinformation is likely to be available for the aristocratic lite than for othergroups within the nobility, where information is less abundant and gener-alisations are more problematical.



Different groups were clearly affected in different ways, while the chrono-logy of decline and recovery also varied significantly, in line with the highlyregionalised structure of the European economy as a whole. Throughoutthe nobility, moreover, individual families were prospering, maintainingtheir position or declining during this period not only, or even principally,because of wider economic factors. The trajectory of an individual House orfamily would frequently be determined by variables such as the successionof a spendthrift heir or of one who was financially astute. Biological chancealso played a considerable part. Too many daughters, with dowries to bepaid upon marriage or entry to the Roman Catholic Church, might help toundermine a familys finances. Conversely, too many sons who had to beprovided with portions could impair the fortunes of a noble lineage. Butthese might also be retrieved sometimes in the most spectacular fashion by a sons fortunate marriage or dazzling career in military or Crown service,with the rewards these might bring.There is, however, considerable and accumulating evidence that the

nobility was facing serious economic problems in the decades around 1600.One established explanation was that these difficulties were a delayedconsequence of the dramatic sixteenth-century rise in prices, particularly offoodstuffs. Nobles were squeezed between increasing costs, which resultedboth from this inflation and from their own soaring expenditures, andincomes that were stable and sometimes decreasing. Their revenues wereoften fixed (particularly in the form of long-term leases of land) and couldnot easily be raised to meet the new costs. These problems were compoundedby the widespread economic instability apparent at this time with the endof the long period of economic and demographic expansion, stable pricesand widespread prosperity. The nobility was clearly affected by this down-turn, the precise chronology and incidence of which varied from countryto country and even region to region. Members of the lesser nobility wereparticularly adversely affected and, in some countries, faced major economicdifficulties by the later sixteenth century.One region where this was clearly the case was Lower Austria. Noble

landowners, most of whom received over two-thirds of their incomes in theform of fixed feudal rents, services and other dues, were severely affectedby the cumulative impact of the sixteenth-century Price Revolution. Unableto profit from the prevailing high prices for agricultural produce (since solittle of their income came in that form), the nobility of Lower Austria,and especially the lesser nobles and younger sons, went through a periodof serious economic difficulty between around 1580 and 1620.69 Theseproblems were exacerbated by the accompanying demographic expansion,which increased the numbers of landless nobles. By the final decades ofthe sixteenth century, significant numbers of poorer nobles in particularwere facing severe economic problems all across Europe. The same broadprocess was underway in Denmark and in Scotland. In each country, the



lesser nobility was trapped between incomes that were stable and evendeclining and outgoings that were rising sharply.70 Yet this trend was farfrom universal, nor in itself a complete explanation for the undoubtedeconomic problems of many noble families at this time.In the first place, short-term leases, with rents which could readily be

raised were widespread. A proportion of noble income and sometimes thegreater part was likely to be paid in kind, and this offered a degree of protec-tion against inflation. The sale of agricultural surpluses received as rentor dues, or produced by direct farming did help to cushion the nobilityagainst increases in its own expenditure. One especially noteworthy exampleis provided by the Junkers of Brandenburg-Prussia who, as Edgar Meltonmakes clear (Volume II, Chapter 5) had prospered throughout the sixteenthcentury and continued to do so until the 1620s. Their wealth was basedvery largely on the profitable sale and export of grain, mainly produced bydemesne farming involving serf labour, and was only undermined by thewidespread destruction of the Thirty Years War, which devastated centralGermany and Brandenburg in particular.71 The economic problems of theJunkers owed everything to the dislocation and destruction caused by thisfighting and to the residual problems after it ended in 1648. Yet that sameconflict also enabled some Junker families to rebuild their fortunes throughsuccessful careers as mercenary soldiers. The near-continuous warfare ofthe later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enabled many noblemen toretrieve their economic fortunes. The long period of Civil War in Francebetween 1562 and 1598, for example, exemplified exactly this combinationof opportunities for enrichment and severe damage to noble incomes causedby the disruption of their established agricultural profits.72 This underlinesonce again that the fortunes of individual families and of groups withinthe nobility were determined by national and local factors as well as byEuropean-wide trends.There is, however, an emerging consensus that the nobilitys economic

problems around 1600 were caused primarily by the new scale and purposesof expenditure being undertaken, especially but not exclusively by the aris-tocratic lite, rather than by the erosion of incomes by inflation. Thesesoaring costs had several origins. The transformation of warfare during theearly modern period (see pp. 406) required increased outlays on the partof every noble officer. Military careers might and sometimes did yield asignificant return, but the investment demanded had gone up substan-tially. Changes in noble lifestyles were even more important. Conspicuousconsumption, undertaken especially by lite families, in order to keep upappearances, was widespread. The importance now placed uponmaintaininga lifestyle that was self-evidently noble was apparent in all these expendit-ures. Nobles were building more resplendent country residences, often withornate and costly gardens, while the tendency for the higher nobility,particularly in France, Portugal and Spain, to reside at or near to the royal



court for at least part of the year involved the running costs and some-times the construction of a second major residence in the capital. A similarprocess was underway in the British Isles, where the Union of the Crownsin 1603 was followed by the migration of some prominent Scottish noblesto James VI and Is court in London. Though this brought new wealth, inthe form of royal patronage and economic opportunities, it also increasedexpenditure sharply and drawing up an overall balance sheet is difficult.73

At the end of the seventeenth century, a similar evolution can be seen inthe lands of the Austrian Habsburgs (Volume II, Chapter 6). The Austro-Bohemian aristocracy in particular was drawn to the court in Vienna, wherethey built impressive town houses and then suburban palaces. Residences,entertainments, funerals, even clothes: all were becoming more resplendentand therefore expensive, particularly throughout Western Europe.Individual families and sometimes whole groups of the nobility were

clearly experiencing significant financial problems throughout the latersixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth century. The nobility,moreover, was not immune from the general economic difficulties of thesedecades, with at the very least the ending of sixteenth-century expansionand the prosperity it had brought. Yet the Second Estate and especially thearistocratic lite were frequently better placed than other social groups tocope with these difficulties. This was principally because of their access tonew sources of income and, more important, to credit. This was certainlythe case in the Spanish Monarchy during the first half of the seventeenthcentury, when frequently one-third and sometimes as much as two thirdsof a grandees revenues was being spent to service his debts.74 ThroughoutEurope, the higher nobility prospered from the new financial and economicopportunities o

the consolidation of noble power in europe

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french nobility

british nobility

thompson7 nobility

dutch nobility

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italian nobilities