Middlemen in English Business 403 



Geiitn-, and the declining Gentry sinks into Trade . . . Thus 

 Tradesmen become Gentlemen, by Gentlemen becoming Tradesmen."^ 

 The results of these shifts in gentility were, in the first place, to 

 originate "a new species of gentlemen", as Dr. Johnson called the 

 EngUsh merchant; but the merchant was new only in the sense of 

 being more generally recognized. In 1640 it was said that "Mar- 

 chaundes & Franklonz . . . may be set semely at a squyers 

 table. "^ The compiler of the London Directory, 1677, made ''a 

 passing reflection" as to the dignities of the merchants of London as 

 follows: "Some are knights and baronets; some are alderman; the 

 mass are plain John or Thomas, with a considerable sprinkling of 

 Misters."^ But these knights, baronets and aldermen differed from 

 their .colleagues so titled in one essential particular, viz., that they 

 were men of wealth. They spent freely, lived luxuriously, and in 

 equipage, display, estate and mansion outshone the landed gentry.'' 

 The splendid homes of Sir John Eyles, Sir Gregory Page, Sir Nathaniel 

 Mead, the Earl of Tilney, and many more such merchant princes 

 were looked upon with envy by the nobihty of hereditaments.'' These 

 princes were buying up the estates and ancient possessions of the 

 English gentry, and by power of purse were dispossessing them from 

 their time-honored realms.'' Probably the greatest result, therefore, 

 of the shift in social prestige was to erect an aristocracy of wealth and 

 set it in antagonism to the ancient aristocracy of birth. This rivalr>' 

 in France broke into the passion of the Revolution in 1789. In 

 England it was constantly tempered by the admissions of merchants 

 of wealth into the ranks of the peerage; the peerage was democratized; 

 the spirit of destruction was thus tempered, and, though conquered 

 and subjected, the nobihty of birth still holds a high respectabiht}' in 

 eminently commercial England." 



1 Defoe, Plan, of Com., 12. 



- The quotation is cited in the New Diet., s. v. INIerchant, from Russel, Bk. Nur. 

 1071, Babees Bk. Mrs. Green found that the merchants and traders during the 

 fifteenth century were beginning to rise by their wealth to prominence socially and 

 politically. See Green, Town Life, II, 68-9, 78-9. 



' ''London Directory," XV. 



^ Instance Sir Dudley North's luxurious way of living: Bourne, Eng. Mer., 228; 

 also the references from Defoe, cited in the following note; Chamberhiync, Ang. 

 Not., 1673, II, 212. 



* Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., I, 243-5; Plan of Com., 100. 



^ Defoe, in 1728, claimed he could name live hundred such estates within a hun- 

 dred miles of London. Defoe, Plan of Eng. Com., 80-84. 



'Similar observations are found in Toynbee, Ind. Re\-., 63; Lecky, Hist., I, 

 170 ct seq.; Gibbins, Ind., 324. 



