Who were the urban gentry? Social elites in an English provincial town, c. 1680–1760

Abstract

This paper explores the identity and social worlds of the ‘urban gentry’ of Chester as they developed from the late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century. In place of the political and cultural definitions which characterise analyses of this group, it takes the self-defined ‘occupational’ titles of probate records as a starting point for an investigation into the background and activities of those styling themselves ‘gentleman’. Central to their identity were networks of friendship and trust. These reveal the urban gentry to have been closely tied with both the urban middling sorts and the rural gentry: a position which at once reflected and underpinned their particular situation within eighteenth-century society.

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

“…Harris considers the extent to which the Enlightenment was an influence on urban society in Scotland during the later Georgian period. Stobart ( Continuity and Change ) examines the social worlds and identity of the urban gentry of late seventeenth‐ to mid‐eighteenth‐century Chester. As the starting point for his study, he allows the urban gentry to define themselves by drawing the study group from those who, in probate records, described themselves as gentlemen.…”