Cost of a baronetcy

Hello Renia,

Although the follwing is from 1660, it might be of interest. I will
look further in re: the cost at the title's inception in 1611.

This, from Peps' _Diary_:

Friday 22 June 1660 To my Lord, where much business. With him to White
Hall, where the Duke of York not being up, we walked a good while in the
Shield Gallery. Mr. Hill (who for these two or three days hath
constantly attended my Lord) told me of an offer of 500l. for a
Baronet's dignity, which I told my Lord of in the balcone in this
gallery, and he said he would think of it.

Chris Dickinson...

Not very much!

I'm just beginning to look at a marriage contract dated 1653 between two
yeomen, in which Ł400 is being exchanged [one of them is John Steele, one of
John Steele Gordon's ancestors, admittedly a rich yeoman!].

This sounds to me as though the Ł500 is an introductory price, just to get
the Duke to sniff in the right direction. Unless in 1660 no-one wanted
baronetcies because they thought other titles would come flooding through,
or so many baronetcies had been created already that their value had
collapsed.

Nathaniel Taylor...

Derek Hirst, _Authority and Conflict: England, 1603-1758_ (Harvard UP,
1986), 113, says the first grants (1611) were against payment of L 1095;
"By 1614, baronetcies had brought in over L 90,000."

Elsewhere (Wikipedia, alas) I see the fee explained as the equivalent of
3 years' pay for 30 men-at-arms at 8d per day per man, but it adds up to
the same.

Nat Taylor

a genealogist's sketchbook:

my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/immigrantsa.htm