Background: Since I (Roy Johnson) joined the Pace Society, I have seen numerous mentions of Richard as being a member of the gentry, as if it were a solid fact, but I have not seen any evidence whatsoever. I asked Bruce Howard about this. Then I put together some historical materials about the British gentry/nobility in Richard's time. This page combines the materials in an attempt to increase understanding of this issue.
Contents:
What exactly was the British gentry and what was
it like? Nobility and Gentry: What do they mean?
I would like to first comment as a former history teacher. I cannot
cite the specific source, but this comes from having taught the French Revolution
and the British Industrial Revolution a number of times.
Britain and France had very different concepts of nobility. The French nobility
was a very rigid class. While the King could create nobles, the nobility
itself did not consider a person "noble" unless the title had been in
the family for three hundred years. As the wealth of the merchant class increased
and that of some nobles declined, a French nobleman would marry a daughter
of a merchant and take her money and income, but he would never deign to
participate in the activities of a mere "tradesman".
In Britain, it was different. Before the Norman conquest (1066), the Saxon
nobility was a matter of landholding, and a person could become a noble by
acquiring sufficient land. In the Norman conquest, the French system was
introduced, but it never became fully entrenched in England, and gradually
drifted back to a less rigid system. British nobles of the 16th and
17th centuries would enter into trade partnerships with merchants and actually
participate in the business themselves. Also, it was easier to enter the
nobility, and English society had many more gradations of classes and was
more open than French society. This is one of the reasons the Industrial
Revolution started in Britain, even though France was richer in the
beginning.
The following explanation by noted British historian G. M. Trevelyan gives
a more complete explanation. It relates to English society about
1640.
The leading class in England was the landed gentry or squires They
were no longer a feudal or a military class...So far as it is possible to
define the important and recognized distinction between "gentle" and "simple"
in England, the "Gentleman" was a landowner who could show a coat of arms
and had the right when he wished it to wear a rapier and to challenge to
the duel any other "gentleman" from a Duke downwards. But yeomen and merchants
were constantly finding entrance into this class by marriage and by purchase
of lands, and the younger sons of the manor-house normally passed out of
it into trade, manufacture, scholarship, the Church, or military service
abroad, in some cases carrying with them their pretension to gentility, in
other cases tacitly abandoning it.
There were infinite gradations both of wealth and rank in this peculiar upper
class. At the top of the scale was the great noble, with his seat in the
House of Lords, keeping semi-regal state in his castle of Plantagenet stone
or his palace of Tudor brick, which served as a school of elegant accomplishments
to young gentlemen pages m training for careers at Court. Broken meats were
daily distributed to a crowd of poor at the great gate. In the hall, on the
dais, sat his lordship with his lady and chief guests, while half a hundred
hungry clients and led captains feasted at the lower tables off silver and
Venice glasses, and an army of serving-men and gamekeepers caroused off pewter
in the ample regions of the kitchen. At the bottom of the scale of gentry
was the small squire who farmed his few paternal acres, talked in dialect
with his yeomen neighbours as they rode together to market, and brought up,
with the help of his hard-working wife and the village schoolmaster, a dozen
sturdy, ragged lads and lasses, who tumbled about together in the orchard
round his "hall," a modest farmstead (often converted by later generations
into a barn).
Trevelyan, G. M., HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Volume II: The Tudors and the Stuart
era. Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY, 1952; first edition June 1926.
Trevelyan is one of the best known and respected British
historians.
So it is entirely possible historically that a carpenter COULD be of noble
stock. Now let's look at the evidence.
The evidence (or lack thereof) regarding Richard
Pace
Bruce Howard's response to my e-mail:
July 1999 - I think this will satisfy your curiosity as to the research on
Richard of England.
In bulletin #13, September, 1970, the former editor gave her account of Richard
and his background. She had apparently written to a gentleman in England
to get the information she used in her article. This man was named Pace de
Shottery of Northport, England. She only mentions him a couple of times but
doesn't say exactly what he sent her or what search he did for her. She mentions
a book entitled, Richard Pace, A Tudor Diplomatist, by Jervis Wegg. The book
was published in London in 1932. She talks briefly about that. She then goes
into John Pace who is supposed to be the brother of Richard the diplomat.
And, finally she goes into Richard of Wapping and the first thing mentioned
is the marriage record and comments of about half a page and then gets into
William Perry. The entire thing covered six pages and very little of it was
about our Richard of Virginia. Apparently Pace de Shottery of England searched
for only the marriage of Richard and Isabella in the register. There is no
mention of any other Paces from any records of Stepney, meaning the marriage,
birth and burial registers.
In bulletin #17, September 1971, Mrs. Mehrkens gets fan mail in the form
of an anonymous person who states the following, in part, "...I just completed
reading the Sept Bulletin, (#13 on Richard I), of the Pace Society. I could
not help but be amused at your efforts to explain away the fact that our
ancestor, Richard, happened to be a carpenter. "First of all, I do not think
you need to be apologetic for this. I would much prefer that my ancestor
be an honest working man than a member of the "gentry" who did not work,
but rather made their living from the poor existence of the peasant class
of that time." "Also it is a fact that very few successful men of that time
left their homes to come to an uncertain life in Virginia. We were colonized
by the poor and the ne'er-do-wells, and I think we should be proud of that
fact." "It is not surprising that Richard Pace could establish a farm - (it
was not a plantation in the usual sense) - on 400 acres. The new world had
land far beyond anyone's imagination, and the land was there for the taker..."
To which Madam Editor replied, "I am delighted with your letter of Sept.
12th. I always wonder what the readers of the Bulletin think about it. Yours
is a rather novel reaction, but quite interesting." "I don't believe I
consciously romanticize these early Paces. I do try to make them people..."
"The article about the Paces in England dealt with an era when classes were
rather fixed and everyone "knew his place". There were artisans, gentry,
and the nobility... "Now Wegg, in his biography of Richard Pace [an earlier
Richard, c. 1483-1536, an official in the court of Henry VIII.
Click here for a summary of his life and the book
about him], stated that he was 'of good family'. His brilliant mind and fine
education enabled him to rise still higher, and to even achieve a coat-of-arms.
In short, this family of Paces was far removed from the artisan or simple
farmer class." "IF WE ASSUME THAT OUR RICHARD WAS A MEMBER OF THIS FAMILY,
I.E., DESCENDED FROM RICHARD'S BROTHER JOHN, WE MUST ACCEPT AS A FACT - NOT
A BOAST - THAT HE WAS OF THE SAME CLASS, I.E., THE ARISTOCRACY She went on
to back up her conclusions that Richard could be of the class of gentry and
a carpenter at the same time. [The capitalization is mine. Note
"If we assume..." ...a HUGE if! --Roy Johnson]
I try reading her articles and it makes me tired. I will be glad to make
you a copy of these articles if you would like to read the entire thing.
This whole thing must be investigated by someone with a cool head, a sharp
eye, and a reflective mind; someone who understands real life, history and
the true make up of early English society. The answer to your question is,
Mrs. Mehrkens got this gentry thing started and it became chiseled in stone.
I have never seen one bit of proof that any of the Paces of Virginia or any
other colony in America, had a coat-of-arms, a signet ring with the arms
that they passed down, or anything of the sort. Absolutely nothing in almost
fifty years of researching this family. I wouldn't mind if our family was
of noble stock. Wouldn't bother me at all. But, I am like you, I would like
to see some semblance of proof to back these claims up.
Bruce Howard
So we have another case of starting with "If we assume...." and ending up with a "fact" chiseled in stone. There is no known evidence that Richard was a descendent of John, brother of the earlier Richard.
Important links:
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Golden Love site at
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Golden Love site on SchnakeNet
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Golden Love site on Pace Network
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Golden Love on FortuneCity
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Rick's main
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Mirror site on Schnakenet at
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Mirror site on Pace Network
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~pace/HistoryInInk.htm