Anne de Bourgh Inherited Rosings Park

When I first began plotting my novel, Rosings Park, I knew two things about the Regency period: the Napoleonic wars raged across Europe and a pelisse was a woman’s garment usually worn outdoors. Being ignorant of nearly every aspect of Regency life, I was forced to start at the beginning with the most important question related to Jane Austen’s character Anne de Bourgh: Who inherited Rosings Park?

From Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, we know that Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s husband, Sir Lewis, is no longer living. We also know Lady Catherine’s only child, Anne, is a young woman who has been engaged to her cousin Darcy since her infancy. Lady Catherine and Anne live at Rosings Park, the seat of the de Bourgh estate in Kent. Rosings Park might have looked very like the house pictured in this 1799 illustration of Godmersham Park, a Kent estate that was inherited by Jane Austen’s brother Edward.¹

Anne’s Situation at Rosings Park

What do we know about Anne’s status? In a conversation with the Bennet family, Mr. Collins— the rector of the Kent village of Hunsford, near which Rosings Park is situated—explains that his patron, Lady Catherine, has “one only daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very extensive property.” Later, Mr. Wickham informs Elizabeth Bennet of Lady Catherine’s being Darcy’s aunt. He goes on to say, “Her daughter, Miss de Bourgh, will have a very large fortune, and it is believed that she and her cousin will unite the two estates [when they marry].” When Elizabeth Bennet visits Rosings, Lady Catherine observes that her [Miss Bennet’s] father’s estate is entailed on Mr. Collins, but adds, “… I see no occasion for entailing estates away from the female line.—It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh’s family.”² Thus, we know that Anne is an heiress of considerable property.

Heiresses in the Early 19th Century

But what did it mean to be an heiress in the early 19th century? My search for answers began with The Republic of Pemberley website, where I found several lively discussions about the Rosings inheritance. Some Pride and Prejudice enthusiasts believe Sir Lewis left the estate to Anne but gave Lady Catherine a life interest in Rosings; others believe he bequeathed the estate to his wife outright. In both cases Anne would inherit the estate when her mother died. Some speculate that in the event of Anne’s death, Rosings would descend to her child, if she had one; if she had no issue (that is, living children), then another member of the de Bourgh family would inherit Rosings.

In the beautifully annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice, Patricia Meyer Spacks describes Lady Catherine as “a rich landowner” who might have had the right to dispose of several livings, including the one enjoyed by Mr. Collins.³ Her comment hints at the possibility that Lady Catherine inherited Rosings on Sir Lewis’s death. An alternative view is that Lady Catherine did not inherit Rosings from her husband but was a wealthy landowner herself and owned other property that was not a part of her marriage settlement. In this scenario Lady Catherine, being the daughter of an earl, inherited land on her father’s death.

What would other experts say? On my first foray into the minefield of British property law I encountered considerable turbulence in the form of a Google Book: The Tenures of Kent, published in 1867.⁴ It made me weep. Gavelkind. Serjeanty. Socage. Copyhold. Looking up terms in the dictionary or online was not always helpful, for the author’s prose reminded me of contemporary descriptions of the Big Bang or space-time: a paragraph might contain mostly common, everyday words of one syllable, but somehow the way the words were strung together rendered the simplest paragraph incomprehensible. (Click here for a summary of space-time!) I nearly gave up the project, thinking I would rather submit to the dentist’s drill than wrestle with British law.

Fortunately, I discovered other books that proved more enlightening. I began with Lawrence and Jeanne Stone’s book⁵ and moved on to those by Susan Staves,⁶ Joan Perkin,⁷ and Eileen Spring.⁸ When I had hacked a hole in the brambles, I took the bold step of writing Eileen Spring, asking her to review my plan for Anne’s inheritance and point out any deficiencies in my understanding. She kindly replied. Her guidance forms the basis for Anne’s inheritance scheme in Rosings Park.

My Inheritance Scheme for Rosings Park

After considerable reading and pondering, I developed the following scheme for Anne’s inheritance, with hearty thanks to Eileen Spring for her invaluable help:

1. According to the set of rules related to copyholds, which were lands within and parcel of some manor (such as Rosings Park), an entail could be barred or ended. Sir Lewis de Bourgh inherited Rosings Park “in tail general” from his father and was its tenant in tail in possession. Before he died he ended the entail and made a new settlement, leaving Anne a life tenancy but specifying that on her death the property would be entailed “in tail male,” meaning the property would go to her eldest son or to a male member of the de Bourgh family—most likely one of Sir Lewis’s nephews—if she had no son.
2. When Sir Lewis died, Anne inherited Rosings and became its life tenant. In other words, like nearly all heiresses of the time, she was an instrument through which real property was conveyed. Real property was defined in British law as land and immovable things, including soil and its produce; water, lakes and moors; woods; and structures and edifices.⁹ As Eileen Spring put it so succinctly: “The right of an heiress was less to enjoy property than to transmit it.”⁸ Having achieved her majority at the age of 21, Anne could make improvements to the property and enter into contracts and the like, but she could not sell or transfer it.

It is therefore my view that Anne inherited the landed estate known as Rosings Park. On her father’s death, she enjoyed an outcome that placed her in the 5% to 8% of true heiresses who inherited real property. (See also my previous blog of April 28th titled “Men Won the Inheritance Game in Jane Austen’s Time.”)

Still, one might be excused for being confused about Lady Catherine’s status at Rosings. She sits atop her throne in the Rosings drawing room, expounding on every imaginable topic, asking intimate questions of her guests, and managing everybody. She seems every bit the Master and Commander.

Lady Catherine’s possible role as inheritor is not far-fetched, for some wives did inherit property. One of Austen’s brothers, Edward Austen, was adopted by a childless couple, Thomas and Catherine Knight. Mr. Knight owned Godmersham Park in Kent, shown as it looks today in the photo at right. He bequeathed his seat, the park, and its manors and lands to his widow for her life, with the remainder—that is, the future interest in the property—to go to Edward Austen. In this case, the property was conveyed to Mrs. Knight by will and there does not appear to have been an entail. Under the terms of her husband’s will, Mrs. Knight could remain at Godmersham until her death, but instead she chose to remove to Canterbury and turn over the property to Edward Austen, who took the name of Knight on her death.¹⁰ (Click here to read about Godmersham Park; scroll down to the paragraph beginning “THE MANORS OF FORD AND YALLANDE” for information about Mrs. Knight and Edward Austen.)

What of Lady Catherine? My view of the Pride & Prejudice world is that Anne inherited Rosings Park, much to her mother’s consternation. Like Scarlett O’Hara who lived and fought for Tara during the American Civil War, Rosings is Anne’s home, her joy, and the foundation of her life. Her life there would be nearly perfect—if it weren’t for sharing it with her rude and imperious mother.

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Sources:
¹Godmersham Park, Kent [image] from: Hasted, Edward. The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent. (Canterbury, 1799).
²Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin Classics, 1996, pp. 66, 82, 160-161.
³Spacks, Patricia Meyer, ed. Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010, p. 209, note 7.
⁴Elton, Charles L. The Tenures of Kent. (London, 1867).
⁵Stone, Lawrence and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone. An Open Elite? England 1540-1880. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.
⁶Staves, Susan. Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660-1833. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
⁷Perkin, Joan. Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England. Chicago: Lyceum Books, 1989.
⁸Spring, Eileen. Law, Land & Family: Aristocratic Inheritance in England, 1300 to 1800. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993, p. 13.
⁹Wooddesson, Richard. Lectures on the Law of England. (Philadelphia, 1842).
¹⁰Tomalin, Claire. Jane Austen: A Life. London: Viking, 1997; pp. 236-237.