The Aristocracy - Born to Rule

so ah every christmas the duke and duchess of devonshire invite the children who live on their derbyshire estate to a party in the painted hall at chatsworth the duke has just returned from his solicitors and all carriage centuries were very by and large nothing too bad not very but the thing is you've come to the end of your useful life so we've got to die she doesn't matter i mean she does better i've been some people think that in the last hundred years or so the british aristocracy as a whole has come to the end of its useful life right children would you like to move upstairs please dukes are the most senior rank in the british peerage and devonshire is one of the great dukedoms these children all live in the three or four villages which the duke of devonshire owns and he is said to be particularly fond of this event so no expense is spared to give the local children a good time i'm today the chatsworth estate has 165 staff there are 12 departments dealing with everything from the rented properties in the art collection to the restaurant the farm and their grace's personal staff including seamstress butler and private secretary today the duke and his family still own one of the most extensive country estates in britain chatsworth is one of the most visited stately homes and it houses one of the largest private art collections in the country yet despite all this andrew cavendish the 11th duke of devonshire believes that the british aristocracy no longer enjoys real wealth or influence we're no longer forced largely because of tax i mean most few aristocratic families have got money and you can't i mean why should we have obligations before your money's been taken away but they are i mean you can say about the aristocracy in two words there are spent force and what is the purpose of the aristocracy or can you define an aristocrat for me it was to look after uh those who lived on the land they would get london and their job to see if the their tenants were properly provided and looked after georgina silco the landlord has got a responsibility to be a good one and meet his sons demands but i repeat the words out of spent force and people should realize that is the duke of devonshire right is the story of the british aristocracy's last hundred years one of terminal decline or survival against the odds we must say a great big thank you to their grace is the duke and duchess of devonshire for inviting us for making it such a wonderful occasion so we're going to do three cheers for the duke and duchess are you ready one two three hit to examine the duke of devonshire's claim we've been to country houses across britain and ireland to ask aristocrats to tell us about their family's experience since the last quarter of the 19th century then the owners of the great country estates were still confident in their view of themselves as the ruling class in 1893 the members of the house of lords had themselves painted at work in the palace of westminster the two paintings which still hang just off the piers lobby show the government and opposition benches in the house of lords an image of the late 19th century peerage a class on the brink of losing its power there were about 560 peers sitting there they were divided into five ranks with 27 dukes at the top followed by marquises earls vi counts and barons the basis of their power was land altogether the aristocracy owned about four-fifths of the entire country among the top land owners were the dukes of westminster bakloo bedford and northumberland these major grandes each owned houses in estates in several counties one of the wealthiest of all was the duke of devonshire at chatsworth his 200 000 acres were spread across 14 different counties chatsworth in derbyshire the so-called palace of the peaks was one of seven great houses he owned so there's a fascinating house at bolton abbey where they used to go in august and hardwick hall near here which is the most staggering elizabethan house you've ever seen in your life it's where they used to go in october and then they had a house called compton place at eastbourne which is also beautiful in a different sort of way where they went in the summer earlier summer and so and then they went to the small castle in ireland in january february march so they were forever packing but of course of their their their journeys were ruled by the house of commons and the house of lords the eighth duke had to wait until he was 58 to succeed to the dukedom so for most of his long political career he sat in the house of commons and was known as lord hartington or hearty tati for short a classic aristocrat he was as keen on fishing and horse racing as he was on politics hartington was the last of the great whig politicians a liberal aristocrat who supported gradual reform and was believed to be above self-interest i think he was typical very typical in that he had in spite of whatever he's defecting to his private life he had a great sense of public duty i mean i think he was i think he really was entirely military in his political career by a sense of of duty i don't think he was ambitious isn't he wonderful can't you see when he was asked in the cabinet should we do this or that he used to have long silence and he used to say far better not i think people could learn from him now don't think hardington actually refused queen victoria's offer to be prime minister on three occasions but he was a minister in numerous governments and a rival of gladstone and chamberlain is the leading liberal politician of the day the other great aristocratic politician was the marquis of salisbury who was tory prime minister for 14 years he shared the concern of many peers that the growth of democracy was undermining the power of the landed classes in 1884 a bill to give more people the vote was vetoed by the lords there were widespread public protests including a massive gathering at hyde park amid calls for the abolition of hereditary peers the bill was passed the members of the house of lords still believed that they were born to rule and so did their wives this was the era of the political hostess women who used london society to support their husbands careers the love of lord hartington's life was louise von alton the daughter of a german aristocrat but when they first met she was already married to the duke of manchester so louise and hartington had to continue a clandestine affair for 30 years i think it was an open secret um i mean the world of uh westminster and mayfair uh knew all about it i dare say the wider world didn't know of course there weren't there wasn't private eye nor were there the tabloids when they finally married and took up residence at chatsworth the double duchess as she was then known ushered in a new era at the house the great dining room became the scene for some spectacular entertaining when she came here she was already quite old about 60s but she made a tremendous effect on the place because she brought people and they entertained a lot and they gave a tremendous children's party for the estate children every christmas all the things that hadn't happened for years and years and years so they really brought the house back to life she was very keen on racing which is great gambler and all those things i suppose it was a sort of smart set of the time especially as they were friends with the prince of wales and the filter queen alexander so they used to come the prince of wales the future king edward vii was the acknowledged leader of aristocratic society he moved from country house to country house mixing the old money with the new the old aristocracy attached great importance to the social hierarchy some devoted their lives to improving their social position one such was christopher sykes the younger son of a yorkshire baronet the sykes family estate at sledmia consisted of 34 000 acres in east yorkshire after the peerage baronets formed the next layer in the aristocratic pyramid they have hereditary titles but no seat in the house of lords christopher sykes divided his time between the house in yorkshire and london he was obviously in an intellectual that was one side of his life but the other side was um he would go to london and leave what he considered to be a totally idle useless life um going round from party to party trying to sort of ingratiate himself into a higher society because younger sons didn't inherit their marriage prospects weren't good many went into the church or the army sykes became mp for beverly but during 27 years in the commons he only ever got one bill passed it was about the preservation of seabirds and earned him the nickname the gull's friend however during those years he had made progress socially and was now mixing with the likes of hartington and the prince of wales that's right as one the present christopher sykes also a younger son of the family is fascinated by his great great uncle's story these relate to the time when he became a very close friend and confidant of the prince of wales later edward the seventh who he met in the 1860s and they became very very firm friends this would be a goodwood racing party and wherever the prince went christopher was always there i see that um is the shooting party at windyard prince of wales is there wearing a hamburg hat with christopher right in the middle again another house party at sandringham with a lot of foreign royalty prince edward of saxophone are the king of portugal prince nicholas of greece prince john of glaxberg wherever that was then what's become of him and on the end of the royal lineup the now ever-present christopher sykes i mean this must have been his finest art really because the prince of wales was the leader of society and christopher sykes was his closest confidant so if his aim was to be at the top of the social ladder he'd reached it now but it soured in some house party when they all the gentleman was sitting around after dinner and the principal suddenly took it upon himself to pick up his glass of brandy that he was drinking and tip it over uncle christopher's head when the brandy landed on his hand trickled down his face to the golden beard christopher showed a rare thing an excess of presence of mind not a muscle moved then after reports inclined to the prince and said without any discernible trace of arrogance or amusement as your royal highness pleases the effect of this is recorded as being quite indescribably funny the whole room burst into violent paroxysms of laughter and no one laughed more heartily and certainly not more loudly than the prince laughter begat laughter the jest was prolonged of every act of mirth was unbearable christopher dripped without a smile on his face he made no effort to mop up the tiny rivulets of spirit the brandy had been poured by a royal hand it was sacred and i'm full of afraid having done that you know things just went from worse to worse it wasn't a glass of brandy and it was a whole decanter that would go over his head you know they used to push him under billiard table after dinner and so hunt him with billiard cues as well as being humiliated by the royal set sykes was left virtually bankrupt by his efforts to entertain the prince in that respect he was not alone the extravagant demands of high society left many aristocrats deep in debt in the 1870s the owners of the great landed estates faced a new threat to their fortunes a prolonged agricultural depression the woolsey estate in staffordshire is one of the oldest in england some of the land here was held by a wolseley in king alfred's day a thousand years and several woolsey halls later and the family is still here it is now the home of the 11th baronet sir charles woolsey has not only inherited a title and a remarkable lineage but also the long-standing family tradition of being seriously hard up indeed the family had been short of money since the fifth baronet the sixth was a a big gambler and high liver seven spent it all on his radical endeavors the eight didn't do very much in live very long the ninth um inherited the land but no money the ninth baronet was the archetypal victorian gentleman a brilliant horseman he played in the first ever polo championship in this country sir charles served in the staffordshire yeomanry the presence of charles his great-grandson was in the same regiment it's just one of many curious parallels between the lives of the two sir charles's he inherited about the same age as i did he inherited debts rather than capital apart from the land i did the same for estate duty and we set about resolving it in different ways neither more successful than the other it seems that's far anyway the agricultural depression forced the ninth baronet to sell off property and land from the family estate as agricultural incomes fell many landlords like sir charles had to reduce the rents they were demanding from their tenant farmers the garden park business which the presence a child started was a victim of the 1980s recession and today the entire woolsey estate in the family for over 1 000 years is on the market and the parallels between the two sir charles's go on sir charles ix baronet married an american anna murphy of san francisco and it was the story of that marriage which brought the presence of charles together with his american wife jeannie brown i was researching a book on american heiresses who married into the british aristocracy between 1880 and 1905 and came across sir charles woolsey who married anna theresa murphy in 1883 so i wrote to the woolsey of the day that's how it all began jeannie brown didn't just gain access to the wolseley papers she fell in love with sir charles and then married him to become the second american lady woolsey the family letters she is still studying confirmed the ninth baronet's motive for marrying the american anna murphy he was just chronically short of money he would never have remotely considered getting a job gentlemen sort of didn't do that and so one of the few options left to him other than selling off the estate um was finding someone to marry uh who had the little bit of money and she had more than a little she had quite a lot it was all tied up legally of course contracts were made and it was about two million dollars that she was going to bring in and she therefore really had a great deal of control anna and charles had two sons edric and william but anna quickly tired of english country life she was quite bored and rather isolated here i mean i find it a little isolated now and i can imagine what what it would have been like um a hundred years ago she wanted to brighten the hall up have bright colors curtains furniture he wanted it all victorian dark brown and dingy and dark and overcrowded these um sort of differences in their views are evident in in the correspondence you have driven me from wolves from looking on walls as a home underlined by your perpetual criticizing my tastes and all i wanted to do to the gloomy place whenever i propose to make anything bright and cheery just tell me what attraction you have ever made of the place for me that i should ever want to return there three exclamation marks he insisted on his way she had been brought up daughter of a wealthy millionaire american in california and was also i think spoiled and willful and insisted on her way and the two ways weren't the same a postcard made from one of their early engagement photographs open post so the postman and anyone can read it for their wedded wedding anniversary she writes almost driven to utter despair by ill treatment and neglect by her roman catholic husband and finally turned out of her home and deserted certainly i found a great deal of unhappiness um in in the heiresses that i was researching uh they the money they brought in was awfully important i i believe i'm correct in saying that indoor plumbing and all that sort of thing was improved at blenheim by consuela vanderbilt and there again if you look at that marriage she was utterly miserable when the british aristocracy was hard up it always married money for over a hundred titled families the american air s was a welcome source of cash over 800 million dollars came out of america in dowries at least that was the estimated figure a lot of a lot of people didn't announce to the world how much money they were bringing but if anna was bringing two million and she was not in the range of fabulously wealthy um a lot of money changed hands but anna's dollars had not solved the cash flow problems at woolsey hall as well as selling the contents of his house sir charles like many other aristocrats was forced to dispose of yet more land just as land was no longer always profitable so it became the source of increasing political trouble for the british aristocracy nowhere was the land questioned more acute than in ireland where many english aristocrats owned big estates the duke of devonshire's irish home lismore castle was in county waterford he and his fellow irish landowners were now the targets of rural unrest when viking mcmorris was murdered in 1880 during the so-called land war all irish landowners felt threatened sir jocelyn gore booze owner of lissadell in county sligo well last i've succeeded in opening the front door this is where the carriages used to arrive i was intrigued by this the way in which this porch was built and if you look up at the windows which after all what eight feet above ground level at the bottom they still have these substantial armed bars i would imagine put there to make sure that if there wasn't a difficulty locally it wasn't that easy to get into the house and um the doors themselves which as you can see um considerable height i have no idea what it is 20 feet that sort of thing they would have been closed at night both sides and these massive boats would have been dropped to make sure they didn't blow open and then in addition to the bolts and i'm not going to try this i'm afraid because they no longer work these vast wooden beams would have been lifted across the doors to secure them there so there really was no question of getting in once the doors were shut and barred and i suppose just in case somebody got this far who wasn't regarded as a desirable guest or whatever there was a little spy hole there and i imagine a porter or somebody was sitting in the cubicle behind it and he would look out and necessarily open the little window and ask what your business was lissa dell is one of the most romantic of irish country houses it was the childhood home of the nationalist heroin constance gore booth and yates was a regular house guest during the land war the butler at lissadel was thomas kilgallon in his memoirs he detailed the precautions the family took against attack there were rumors of the fenians rising at this time there were great preparations in the house for their reception armed plates were fitted on lower bedroom shutters and here they are to this day old guns and rifles carefully examined and loaded hand grenades pistols and swords seemed to the bullet molds taken out and bullets made for each of the different rifles extra powder and shot order all rifles and guns were muzzle loaders i was kept busy making bullets in the gun room nothing came of it there were about a thousand tenants on the lissadel estate the average holding was a mere 30 acres the famine had hit sligo particularly hard and although sir robert gore booth was not among the toughest of irish landlords many of his tenants still lived in desperate poverty he had an unpopular agent at one point but as i'm always saying to my own agent it's part of the job of being the agent to be the mr nasty if you like i think i think he was always on good terms with people who lived here but being a powerful man and liking to have his own way he obviously had some enemies during the land war any big house was a likely target at less adele they received one of the so-called captain moonlight letters which were sent as a threat to many irish landlords my dear lucifer i must inform you that you have the poorest tenants in ireland and all into your bad treatment but do you see bad the time has come that by god we don't care for man or the devil is that you are stuck in is adele like the devil in hell but i'll meet you like parson bell on the reverse side of the sheet of paper was the sketch of a coffin marked died 1882 and the words captain moonlight printed in large letters that must have sent a shiver down his spine i suppose the biggest shock for the british establishment came with the phoenix park murders in 1882 frederick cavendish lord hartington's younger brother was set upon and killed a few hours after he arrived in dublin to be the new chief secretary ireland now dominated british politics the painting in the lords actually depicts the famous home rule debate in 1893. it was in this debate that the liberal peers led by lord hartington joined forces with the tories under their leader lord salisbury and defeated home rule he was wrong over her bro he was wrong for perfectly good reason which was that he thought that ireland separate from the united kingdom would suffer materially and i think that's probably true to say that it has done but man doesn't live by bread alone and he didn't see the strength of nationalism irish landowners were saved from home rule but over the next 10 years a series of new laws encouraged them to sell land to their tenants at lissadel the gore booths eventually reduced their estate from thirty thousand to three thousand acres sir henry gorboul son of sir devoted less time than his father to public affairs and estate management and concentrated instead on his own private obsession travel and exploration with his butler kilgallen as steward sir henry made a series of arctic voyages hunting whales and bears as he went i think it might interesting to describe the incident of the bear because obviously in the arctic you come across bears quite often and on one occasion my great grandfather who was quite a keen shot um got a bear in his sights pulled the trigger of his rifle and the trigger didn't do what it should the rifle just clicked and the bear was obviously very close and the story is that kilgallon faithful to the last got hold of another rifle shot the thing between the eyes anyway here is the bear which was brought back to ms adele and stuffed it's been given some cosmetic treatment recently their feet had fallen off when it was used by my father and his brothers and sisters to negotiate their bicycles around the hall but there is the bear and we're proud to have him travel to exotic locations was fashionable among victorian aristocrats egypt was a popular destination christopher sykes went there as did the duke and duchess of devonshire others went to africa and india it seemed that many aristocrats were choosing to escape the increasingly competitive business of public life for the thrills of travel and exploration so henry gorbal's greatest arctic adventure was a rescue mission he had a great friend called lee smith who'd gone off to the arctic in a separate vessel called the era in i think 1881 and say henry had said jv while walking down regent street or whatever if you are backed by such such a date i'll come and rescue you and of course he didn't return by such and such a date so say henry felt another bad to go and rescue him so he got hold of this boat and off he went and eventually he met up with um lee smith whose boat was completely fast in the eyes and brought him home and in gratitude lee smith gave say henry this boot which survives to this day rather like the the bear over there the boot worn by mr lee smith in france joseph land where he went in 1881 and he's doing to the loss of his yacht ara with nearly all his provisions they live principally on walruses and bears it must have been an anxious winter don't you think and aristocrats didn't just travel for fun there was an empire to rule too the marquis of aberdeen spent five years in canada as governor general and then a further ten as viceroy of ireland with his wife ishbela's vice reign they were expected to preside at dublin castle in grand style and at their own expense earl beacham was governor general of new south wales at the tender age of 27 and lord kerzen was one of a number of peers who enjoyed the most sought after imperial position of all viceroy of india but at home landowners faced another new threat to their estates death duties at chatsworth the duke of devonshire claimed the modest 8 tax would make it impossible for him to keep up chatsworth the duke of richmond and 50 other peers signed a petition complaining about the disastrous effects of the new tax in 1897 queen victoria celebrated her diamond jubilee despite their anxieties about death duties and agricultural depression the aristocracy still ruled the social world and the celebrations gave them a chance to prove it by now the duchess of devonshire was a dominant figure in smart society and she decided she would throw the biggest party of all for the jubilee season the duke's london residence was devonshire house a vast mansion just off piccadilly the duchess announced that there would be a grand ball there in july she asked her guests to come as allegorical or historical figures from before 1815 she would be a syrian queen zenobia of palmyra you can't see that she was beautiful i don't think in either of these but it's very hard i don't know how old she was that but it's hard with other fashions look at the hair how strange the present duchess still keeps the original costume in her wardrobe but that little short neck is so unattractive isn't it anything this is her dress that she wore and here she is in it looking a right fright really doesn't she that's it's the work on it is wonderful isn't it the weight of it the weight of it and i mean it's all proper uh heavy stuff it's not real jewels but it's next best thing i believe some of them did have real jewels on their clothes sewn onto their clothes that seem incredible isn't it but they really went to town over the dressing up the duke came as the holy roman emperor charles v with a costume based on a portrait by titian he must have been absolutely fed up with it because it's sort of thing he really hated i think he was not interested in social life at all he was a politician by nature statesman really um i think he thought it was the most frightful waste of time but he adored his wife he had done anything to please her in the garden at devonshire house the society photographers set up a studio in a tent to record the guests in their costumes the resulting album gives a vision of one of the most extravagant aristocratic parties countess of minta well she didn't look too bad beautiful dress anything strange um witch's hat but this one do look at that one do look at the photographer's furniture how funny it is lady doreen long as urania goddess of astronomy princess of wales prince of wales june darts of york dutchess of five duke of five prince princess charles of denmark dr conor i do say they all came the prince of wales was guest of honor he came as the grand prior of the order of st john of jerusalem sporting a diamond maltese cross and new money was well represented in the shape of some of the prince's smarter friends ernest castle dressed as the painter velazquez was actually a financier and an advisor to the prince and alfred bite who had made a fortune in the diamond mines of south africa was there as prince frederick of nassau the american wives were there in force the daughter of the founder of the marshall field department store was now the honorable mrs george curzon future vice reign of india mrs padgett formerly minnie stevens of boston was there as cleopatra in a six thousand dollar costume ablaze with precious gems the new york press reported that when she entered people accustomed to the greatest displays of jewelry in the world gasped with wonder and astonishment and consuelo vanderbilt's duchess of maldra appeared in the tightly laced costume of a 17th century french diplomat's wife this despite being seven months pregnant whether the photograph was touched up or not history does not relate faced with the style of these american women the old english aristocrats were not to be outdone the martinez of londonderry who had an immense social position then came as the empress maria theresa oster and this wonderful white satin dress with gold embroidery all down the front and the famous london tree jaws an awful lot of them were draped over her imposing decolletage and others of her jaws had been reset into the most marvelous and realistic crown she looked absolutely wonderful costume balls were all the rage then and some guests went to elaborate lengths to be original especially in their headgear mrs asquith appeared as an oriental snake charmer complete with a papier-mache snake on her head the celebrated new york singer mrs ronald's there as uturpy the spirit of music with notes from verdi embroidered on her dress had a diamond liar in her crown which lit up by means of a tiny battery hidden in her hair mrs tolbert's winged valkyrie helmet gave her a terrible headache but that was nothing compared to the trouble the countess of westmoreland had as he be a goddess of youth she chose to attach a stuffed eagle to her shoulders and the hostess herself made a suitably dramatic entrance she appeared at the head of an oriental procession the duchess of devonshire came as the queen of egypt born in on a litter escorted by these glamorous society women uh got up as oriental slaves with gauze trousers and waving ostrich feather fans i think most of the people who went were fairly old because all their contemporaries you see were in their 60s and it seemed so funny to give a ball a lot of very young people there were some young ones no doubt but when you look through the book they mostly look that sort of thing that sort of age that's terrific that is a davinci's ball in 1901 the british aristocracy gathered in the capital for queen victoria's funeral and a year later the aristocracy lost its staunchest defender when lord salisbury retired ending his long reign as leader of the tories in the new edwardian era aristocratic society came increasingly under the public gaze this was the heyday of ascot and aristocratic and royal patronage took horse racing to the peak of its popularity the public came in huge numbers to watch both the racing and the aristocratic owners lord lonsdale spent so much on carriages and horses he was forced to sell four family houses and such stories of extravagance were not confined to the world of racing plus neweth in anglesey provided one of the most bizarre the first marquis of anglesey one of the nation's great military heroes led the cavalry charge at waterloo the lesser-known fifth marquis was not a military man the fifth marcus of course was an oddity he died incidentally before he was 30. he may have been illegitimate we're not at all certain about that but he was a very old fellow and he was extremely well-off because the family was in those days there was laws about property and so on and he spent a very very large amount of money on clothes which he loved i think he had 400 pairs of pajamas and 300 wastegates and that sort of thing most of which were never worn and he bought all sorts of things funny but he was mad keen about the theater and he started here in what had been the big chapel which doesn't exist anymore uh a full theater and he used to pay the famous actors and actresses from london to come and play second to him whatever the show the marquis himself took the lead he frequently adapted the script to include his party piece a solo number called the butterfly dance there is no surviving account of quite what the butterfly dance was and there's red riding hood and of course at the bottom in scene four the marquis of agassi will introduce his snow dance i wonder what that was like and then there were other things like this miss brown's trouble the marquis of anglesey's company a screamingly funny farcical comedy um produced under the personal direction of mr alex keith who was one of the great people in the theater at that time one of his favorite roles was queen eleanor a park which demanded a particularly voluptuous outfit as the performances and costumes became more and more elaborate the dancing marquis spent more and more money he even took his shows on tour abroad giving audiences in berlin and dresden the chance to enjoy the famous butterfly dance naturally the marquis chose a woman of real beauty to be his wife the woman who the fifth mark was married was my grandmother lily who is the beautiful lady in this rather unusual pastel portrait she was strikingly beautiful with this wonderful wonderful tissue and red hair and very very pale skin while they're on honeymoon in paris she stopped to admire the window display of the famous jeweler's shop called van cleef and apples and the highly extravagant fifth marquis immediately walked into the shop and bought entire window display which would have been lovely for her had he not forced us to sleep wearing all the jewelry it turned out that he had a complete fetish about jewels the closest the marriage ever came to consummation was that he would make her pose naked just covered from top to bottom and jewels and she had to sleep wearing the jewelry the marriage only lasted six weeks and she came really running home i think she had a pretty miserable time really his theatrical exploits eventually led the marquis into serious debt he owed more than 250 000 pounds to various jewelers alone and in 1904 trustees took over his property to pay off the creditors when the great anglesey sales came which lasted 47 days the jewelry only made thirty thousand pounds or something it was expected to make three hundred thousand pounds so that that was false but there were hundreds of other things clothing on a scale it was unbelievable he couldn't have worn half of what he bought or anything like harv press reports of the angle see sales detailed with some relish the items on offer and the prices that were paid lord angles is coronation robin crimson velvet with college was sold yesterday at anglesey castle for 59 pounds an open work paced dog collar five pound ten shillings a flexible ditto six pounds and a flexible detail and two others five pound ten five and fifty respectively et cetera et cetera in the end he lost a lot yes yep just from complete extravagance he's quite a character the dancing marcus i love it such stories only confirmed the growing public view of the aristocracy as profligate and indulgent in 1906 when asquith and the liberals won a landslide victory at the poles the landowners feared an attack on their interests it was lloyd george's 1909 budget which provoked the inevitable showdown he proposed some modest land taxes to raise money for pensions and the navy when the lords rejected the budget lloyd george attacked them without mercy in a particular telling phrase he described the house of lords as 500 ordinary men chosen accidentally from the unemployed now since the unemployed were regarded by many at the time as being the victims not of circumstance or of the social system but of their own fecklessness uh to describe the house of laws this whole gust body as being a lot of layabouts like like the as as the unemployment regarded by many as being this was a a most savage attack and this this was deeply resented the lord's rejection of lloyd george's budget led to a two-year constitutional battle over the powers of the upper house in a series of bravura speeches the chancellor offered a powerful critique of the whole system of land ownership he said by what right are 10 000 people owners of the soil in this country and the rest of us trespasses in the land of our birth that this was powerful stuff in the so-called peers versus the people election of 1910 posters went up all over the country ridiculing their lordships the dukes were depicted as bloated money-grabbing fools dressed in their coronets and ermine after two election victories lloyd george prevailed over the lords and his budget was passed the resulting parliament act did not in fact diminish the power of the upper house much at all but the aristocracy had suffered an irreversible blow it's claimed to be the governing class was at an end as the military class the aristocracy soon had another opportunity to lead the nation from the front but the great war dealt another serious blow to aristocratic survival losses were disproportionately high among the officers as a consequence the aristocracy were to advance into the 1920s and 30s with their ranks drastically depleted so you

Channel: Daisy Mason

Views: 525,299

Keywords: BBC, Aristocracy, Britain

Id: 4bzNldCeVrg

Length: 48min 33sec (2913 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 12 2016