This book contains an account of the 2 352 families (close to 3 000 counting cadet lines) that
had one member sit in either House of the English British or United Kingdom Parliament the
Irish Parliament or the Scottish Parliament between 1660 and 1945 and was represented in one
of these Parliaments by at least three members at any time between the Middle Ages and 2015.
Nearly 20 000 individuals are included in the main listings.Information is provided about
social origins ownership of country houses wealth honors offices held and links with
associated families. The list provides a comprehensive reference source for the governing class
of Great Britain and Ireland from Oliver Cromwell to Winston Churchill and offers a deep pool
of data to support analysis of social political economic and cultural history in the British
Isles over the course of more than four centuries.The British and Irish ruling class was a
political social and economic elite. It constituted a hereditary landed aristocracy
constantly renewed and expanded by commercial and manufacturing wealth that dominated
government into the nineteenth century remained potent in the twentieth century and helped
shape the modern world. Volume II available here
