The social origins of marriage partners of the British Peerage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the social status of women who married into he British peerage during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The majority of marriages by peers and their sons were outside the peerage. The occupations of the wives' fathers is used to indicate that the families from which wives were selected were largely those of rank and esteem in contemporary British society. Marriages outside the peerage took place in a narrowly-defined band of privilege and social acceptability. The paper shows that the numbers of marriages into groups like the new industrial bourgeoisie were negligible, and had a marginal impact on the social exclusiveness of the peerage. The separate analysis of the marriages in each rank of the peerage, and of the marriages of heirs and younger sons, reveals that an ethic of endogamy prevailed within the peerage even for those marriages taking place in the twentieth century.