strong collateral lines

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strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 09 apr 2005 18:38:21

I thought it better to split this question off as a separate topic.

Because of primogeniture, younger sons tended to found lines that were
much weaker financially that tha patriarchal line, right? The oldest
gets the estate, and the younger ones token gestures, and they've got
to become soldiers or clergyman or lawyers or government servants to
survive.

The family I'm researching had a whole bunch of thriving collateral
lines. They had lots of property, social prestige, and married almost
as well as the patriarchal heir. Yet, there is nothing about this in
their Wills. The heir gets the estate and the younger sons token
gestures. So, I'm asking myself, how did the founders of these
collateral lines have so much personal wealth?

In the family I am researching, it is such a common thing for a
collateral line to thrive that I'm wondering whether there was a family
tradition that brother had to help brother. Have any of you come
across evidence of such traditions in families? If not, to what would
you attribute the strong collateral lines in this family?

Gjest

Re: strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 09 apr 2005 19:27:42

Sorry, I should have been more specific. I am talking about
Fourteenth-Fifteenth Century England, upper gentry.

Granted, a younger son can become a successful merchant and become
richer than the heir with the country estate, but he had to start the
business with substantial funds in the first place. In America we have
a saying, "it takes money to make money". How did these younger sons
get the money to set up thriving businesses? Did the younger sons get
the money from their older brothers, or by dowry, or what else?

Gjest

Re: Strong Collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 09 apr 2005 19:50:03

Dear Gerald,
I have a simple answer for You, this family was thought
well enough of locally(?) so that the younger sons married heiresses.

Sincerely,

James W Cummings

Dixmont, Maine USA

Paul K Davis

RE: strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Paul K Davis » 09 apr 2005 22:10:03

I'm sure the detailed answer depends on the time-period and nation, but,
two common occurences are:

In medieval England it was common for a powerful father to marry his
younger sons to heiresses, and illegtimate daughters to substantial
families of lower social status.

In the renaissance, throughout Europe, it was common for a younger son to
become a merchant, and then be more successful than the eldest son who
inherited the landed estate.

-- PKD [Paul K Davis, pkd-gm@earthlink.net]


[Original Message]
From: <geraldrm@earthlink.net
To: <GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Date: 4/9/2005 10:42:29 AM
Subject: strong collateral lines

I thought it better to split this question off as a separate topic.

Because of primogeniture, younger sons tended to found lines that were
much weaker financially that tha patriarchal line, right? The oldest
gets the estate, and the younger ones token gestures, and they've got
to become soldiers or clergyman or lawyers or government servants to
survive.

The family I'm researching had a whole bunch of thriving collateral
lines. They had lots of property, social prestige, and married almost
as well as the patriarchal heir. Yet, there is nothing about this in
their Wills. The heir gets the estate and the younger sons token
gestures. So, I'm asking myself, how did the founders of these
collateral lines have so much personal wealth?

In the family I am researching, it is such a common thing for a
collateral line to thrive that I'm wondering whether there was a family
tradition that brother had to help brother. Have any of you come
across evidence of such traditions in families? If not, to what would
you attribute the strong collateral lines in this family?

Chris Dickinson

Re: strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Chris Dickinson » 10 apr 2005 03:51:02

geraldrm@earthlink.net wrote:

Because of primogeniture, younger sons tended to found lines that were
much weaker financially that tha patriarchal line, right? The oldest
gets the estate, and the younger ones token gestures, and they've got
to become soldiers or clergyman or lawyers or government servants to
survive.

The family I'm researching had a whole bunch of thriving collateral
lines. They had lots of property, social prestige, and married almost
as well as the patriarchal heir. Yet, there is nothing about this in
their Wills. The heir gets the estate and the younger sons token
gestures. So, I'm asking myself, how did the founders of these
collateral lines have so much personal wealth?

OK, I'm going to give a very long reply here, some of which is based on the
nineteenth century (but I hope that the principles shine through and that
the psychological/cultural/economic base can be extended backwards 500
years - ouch, here I am with a historical training, and I've just written
that!).

(1)

The traditional interpretation of English social history, which I assume is
Whig, is that social class was extremely fluid and that this was based
partly on primogeniture and the need for younger sons to find an alternative
source of income. The older sons created the Agricultural Revolution and the
younger sons created the Empire. Somewhere between you have the Industrial
Revolution.

(2)

The principle of primogeniture applied to what was perceived as the
principal asset, the main estate. Anything additional to that could be used
for the advantage of younger sons or of daughters; and very definitely was
if the additional asset came from their natural mothers.

[Of course, parts of England did not have a custom of primogeniture]

(3)

Sometimes the main estate was nibbled into to provide the
daughter with an advantage, either because the father (naturally
enough) favoured the daughter or because a good marriage provided
connections and opportunities for further profit.

(4)

An estate might be used for a younger son (or to pay for a daughter's dower)
for a temporary period before returning to the eldest. Enough time for him
to find his feet and start a family (not that feet have much to do with
it!).

(4)

At the yeoman social level, part of the customary tenancy was sometimes
given or sold to a younger son in order to provide him with 'yeoman' status
(maybe with the older son running the farm, the younger becoming a tailor or
cobbler). Non-yeomen were effectively excluded from any manorial rights.
Whether a similar principle applied to gentry and above, I don't know.

(5)

Various assets could be used to provide an income for younger sons without
alienating those assets from the main estate. One was any right of advowson
(much better that your brother was the local rector or bishop than a total
stranger). Another (at least at a later date) was estate management.

(6)

As has already been mentioned, older and younger sons looked for heiresses.


(7)

Provision for heirs simply didn't get mentioned in wills unless there was a
complication. Wills weren't about real estate. That went automatically to
the main heir anyway. Other children were likely to have had arrangements
for them during the testator's lifetime - a peripheral estate, the purchase
of a military commission, an apprenticeship, etc..

(8)

Patronage from others. The more powerful you were, the more likely people
would fall over themselves to offer younger sons assistance.

(9)

A principal source of enrichment was through the military. This shouldn't be
underestimated. Not only did you get pay and booty, you had a chance of
getting patronage that wouldn't otherwise have been available. Civil wars
were quite good in this respect!

(10)

Opportunities for younger sons did depend on family social status. Thompson
in 'English Landed ociety in the Nineteenth Century' commented that 'younger
sons of the landed aristocracy were certainly not debarred from having
careers, but these were more likely to be diginfied than self-supporting,
and to require injections of pivate income supplied by allowances from the
family estate. Younger sons of the gentry, on the other hand, were likely to
seek careers that would support their independence.'

(11)

Thompson continued by illustrating from my own family 'of Cumberland
squires, around 1800 we find brothers who were an attorney, a liquor
merchant, a grocer and a mariner'. The grocer, my g-g-g-grandfather, made a
fortune at it, bought two farms from his elder brother as well as Ennerdale
Water, and built a manor house next to the old family estate. The younger
line was to outshine the elder locally, right up to the present day. Plenty
of potential confusion for genealogists.

Chris

Gjest

Re: Strong Collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 10 apr 2005 06:14:20

It might be helpful if you are more specific about the family...who
were they? What kind of documentation do you have that has given you
this much information? - Bronwen



Jwc1870@aol.com wrote:
Dear Gerald,
I have a simple answer for You, this family was
thought
well enough of locally(?) so that the younger sons married heiresses.

Sincerely,


James W Cummings


Dixmont, Maine USA

Gjest

Re: Strong Collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 10 apr 2005 15:20:03

Dear Bronwen,
Chris indicated that this unknown family was upper
gentry and the period the fourteenth century, mostly precluding that the younger
sons of said family were merchants. So, unless They were lucky enough to win
several times in the tournaments or received their land as (or paid for it with)
war bounty, that leaves heiresses, who were occasionally war bounty anyway.
Sincerely,
James W
Cummings
Dixmont,
Maine USA

Gjest

Re: Strong Collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 11 apr 2005 03:39:10

My post was to the original question and its immediate follow-up by the
same author. Others evidently asked him the same thing and more
information was given after I had replied. I only asked for more
information about the specific family because specific instances are
known to scholars that may or may not reflect the prevailing cultural
norm. I don't quite understand the point of your reply to me. Bronwen

Gjest

Re: strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Gjest » 11 apr 2005 18:17:28

Chris Dickinson wrote:

An estate might be used for a younger son (or to pay for a daughter's
dower)
for a temporary period before returning to the eldest. Enough time
for him
to find his feet and start a family (not that feet have much to do
with
it!).

Chris, everything you wrote gave me lots to think about, but this quote
in particular.

In the family I am researching, I was puzzled to find a detailed
contract in which a member of the family's collateral line several
generations down arranged to give his new wife's dowry (very
substantial) to the patriarch in return for permanent rights to the
estate he was living at. It made no sense to me, why should the dowry
go to the baronet and why did this young man need the right to an
estate his forefathers had lived at? The theory set forth in the above
paragraph would give an answer. The estate had been loaned "for a
temporary period" and when the line finally got on its feet (by a great
marriage) it had to be returned to the patriarch. The couple decided
they would be willing to pay the dowry and keep the estate, and the
patriarch was amenable. Does this make sense to everyone?

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: strong collateral lines

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 11 apr 2005 22:52:08

In message of 11 Apr, geraldrm@earthlink.net wrote:

In the family I am researching, I was puzzled to find a detailed
contract in which a member of the family's collateral line several
generations down arranged to give his new wife's dowry (very
substantial) to the patriarch in return for permanent rights to the
estate he was living at. It made no sense to me, why should the dowry
go to the baronet and why did this young man need the right to an
estate his forefathers had lived at? The theory set forth in the above
paragraph would give an answer. The estate had been loaned "for a
temporary period" and when the line finally got on its feet (by a great
marriage) it had to be returned to the patriarch. The couple decided
they would be willing to pay the dowry and keep the estate, and the
patriarch was amenable. Does this make sense to everyone?

Yes. The cadet family did not have freehold title to their pad. So
they paid for it: a normal commercial transaction, making their title
much easier to sell and thus more valuable.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

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