gentry
gentry A term applied to the stratum immediately below the aristocracy (see UPPER CLASS) in the social hierarchy of late medieval and early modern Britain. Untitled, the gentry were an intermediate grouping whose wealth lay in landholding, mineral rights, or rents from urban property. They were tied loosely to the nobility by marriage ties and similar lifestyles, and to the middle class by family ties and their interest in farming. At various times this rather diffuse stratum has been held to have played a decisive part in English history; for example, by sponsoring the agricultural revolution and the commercialization of farming during the seventeenth century, and (conversely) offering a ‘gentlemanly ideal’ to the sons of nineteenth-century, industrialists (a factor which is sometimes said to have contributed to Britain's relative lack of success in manufacturing).
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