Description:

Speaker: Davis Kedrosky

Title: Expropriation, Reallocation, and Political Selection: Evidence from the Rise of the English Gentry

Abstract: We study the political effects of a large-scale land redistribution—the Dissolution of the English Monasteries—to test the ‘Tawney thesis’ on the evolution of parliamentary government in England. Before the nineteenth century, property ownership, specifically in land, was a near-requirement for political participation. Most constituencies had explicit property thresholds for voting, while standing for and holding office demanded time and resources. In this context, shocks to the distribution of landed assets could directly translate into shifts in the distribution of political power. Using newly-collected biographical data on English MPs from 1509-1640, we show that residents of parishes containing expropriated Church properties were more likely to enter Parliament after the Dissolution. New MPs were increasingly members of the gentry: relatively educated and politically engaged country landowners from outside the traditional elite. We also present descriptive evidence suggestive of important downstream political consequences, including simultaneous increases in the size and activity of Parliament during the late sixteenth century. Our results are consistent with one famous explanation of the emergence of English ‘inclusive institutions’: that the rise of a gentry class independent of the Crown strengthened Parliament, contributing to its victory in the English Civil War and the creation of a constitutional monarchy.