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The term landed gentry, although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used for the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, these terms eventually became complementary. The term gentry by itself, as commonly used by historians, according to Peter Coss, is a construct applied loosely to rather different societies. Any ...
The landed gentry, or the gentry (sometimes collectively known as the squirearchy), is a largely historical Irish and British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. It is the British element of the wider European class of gentry.
The gentry largely consisted of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate; some were gentleman farmers. In the United Kingdom, the term gentry refers to the landed gentry, the majority of the land-owning social class who were typically armigerous (having a coat of arms), but did not have a peerage.
The American gentry were rich landowning members of the American upper class in the colonial Southern United States. Mount Vernon, Virginia, was the plantation home of George Washington. George Washington. The Colonial American use of gentry was not common. Historians use it to refer to rich landowners in the South before 1776.
The German sociologist Max Weber formulated a three-component theory of stratification that defines a status group [1] (also status class and status estate) [2] as a group of people within a society who can be differentiated by non-economic qualities such as honour, prestige, ethnicity, race, and religion. [3]
The notion of landed gentry in the United Kingdom and Ireland varied over time. [1] In Russian Empire landed nobles were called pomeshchiks, with the term literally translated as "estate owner". Junkers were the landed nobility of Prussia and eastern Germany. Landadel were the landed nobility of the Holy Roman Empire.
Polish landed gentry (Polish: ziemiaństwo, ziemianie, from ziemia, "land") was a social group or class of hereditary landowners who held manorial estates. Historically, ziemianie consisted of hereditary nobles ( szlachta ) and landed commoners ( kmiecie ; Latin: cmethones ).
The meaning of the word "franklin" evolved to mean a freeholder; that is, one who holds title to real property in fee simple. In the 14th and 15th centuries, franklin was "the designation of a class of landowners ranking next below the landed gentry". [1] With the definite end of feudalism, this social class disappeared as a distinct entity.