Henry Hoare, Banker, his Family, and the Stourhead Estate

Abstract

Abstract One of the theses which Sir John Habakkuk developed in the course of his pioneering work on English landed society in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was that, with the growing availability of more flexible and higher-yielding outlets for their savings, eighteenth-century businessmen were less inclined to invest in land than their predecessors of earlier generations had been.1 2 More recently other scholars have come up with similar conclusions, Nicholas Rogers for instance, and now, at least by implication, Lawrence and J. C. F. Stone? However, my own investigations into the land market suggest that, at least down to the time of the American War of Independence, more moneyed capital than ever was flowing into the purchase of landed estates.