ENGLISH HOMES OLD & NEW

Each month of this 125th-anniversary year, COUNTRY LIFE describes a period in the development of the English great house. In the seventh of this 12-part series, John Goodall looks at the mid-Georgian world

- John Goodall

English Home, part VII 1725-60

ON January 9, 1731, Thomas Watson-Wentworth (from 1746 the Marquess of Rockingham) hosted a large entertainment to all my tenants in the neighbourhood and their wives and some neighbouring gentlemen' at his seat at Wentworth Woodhouse, South Yorkshire. There were about 1,000 guests, so, to prevent confusion, each 'had tickets sent them with the name of the rooms they were to repair to, men by themselves, and women by themselves, with a few men at each table to help them and women servants ready at their coming to show them and assist them in taking off their hoods etc, men to conduct the men and the chief were carried to the best rooms and the inferior according to their rank'.

It's easy to imagine Georgian country houses as the backdrop to an existence as polite, ordered, and elegant as their architecture. This event at Wentworth Woodhouse, however, was connected to their vital role in the rough and tumble of politics. Parliament had consistently been an important institution in English affairs, but the events of the Glorious Revolution in 1688, and the constitutional monarchy that the succession of George I in 1714 confirmed, changed its character. To exercise political power, it was now necessary to control votes in the House of Commons. That, in turn, made election to its membership hugely important and established rival political interests; those of the Whigs the architects of the new political regime, and the Tories, their opponents.