I began the work upon which these Lectures have been based with no specific hypothesis in mind, but a general uneasiness, a collection of unformed doubts and reservations about the degree of social mobility at the highest level in Hanoverian England. These misgivings were reinforced by what I knew of work being published on the social structure of other European countries, which seemed to reveal greater mobility than had been commonly supposed. My analyses slowly crystallised – perhaps congealed would be a more appropriate word – into two rather simple theses: that a comparatively small number of peers controlled to a great extent the commanding heights of political and social life and that, contrary to much presumption, aristocratic influence strengthened as the century progressed.

No two people would agree in drawing up a balance-sheet of the aristocratic regime. I have already praised the political acumen and sense of national interest. The aristocracy ran the country well, won its wars, fostered its trade and industry, and extended its empire. Not until the last quarter of the eighteenth century, with the loss of the American colonies, was the first set-back experienced, and even that was surmounted with surprising ease. To this we should add that, under patrician patronage, the eighteenth century set standards of taste in architecture and landscape gardening, in painting and music, in porcelain and furniture and dress, seldom, if ever, equalled. But there is a less attractive side. That it was a regime of bleak oppression is scarcely plausible. But there was a great deal of greed and pomposity.