landed society

English

Noun

landed society (countable and uncountable, plural landed societies)

1. (uncountable) A British socio-economic class of landowners, socially just below the aristocracy or peerage, who could live entirely from rental income.
   • 1991, Elizabeth Blackmar, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850, →ISBN, page 222:

     As defined by English judges, common law itself offered tenants some minimal protections that eighteenth-century New York rentiers had often ignored. Thus the legal custom of landed society had exempted from seizure beasts of plow, certain essential household goods, and especially the implements of trade unless all other remedies had proved insufficient.

   • 2004, Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, →ISBN, page 25:

     What makes this particular period so interesting is the remarkably volatile nature of the land market in Scotland; an enormous amount of land changed hands, and some minor noble families made quite staggering inroads into the highest levels of landed society.

   • 2006, J. S. Hamilton, Fourteenth Century England - Volume 4, →ISBN, page 175:

     Over the years, historians of the late-medieval English gentry have mapped out several working models to explain the character and behavior of landed society in various localities around the country.

2. (countable) A socio-economic system in which wealth and status are derived primarily from land ownership.
   • 1982, David B. Quinn, Early Maryland in a Wider World, page 115:

     It was a landed society, a society which regarded only land and landed wealth as ultimately acceptable in creating status.

   • 1984, Neal Wood, John Locke and Agrarian Capitalism, →ISBN, page 113:

     For them Locke was the classic theorist of landed society and the landholder, not of commerce and mercantile interests.

   • 1992, Axel Hadenius, Democracy and Development, →ISBN, page 99:

     In addition, it is perhaps of equal importance that in a landed society those at the top of the pyramid have interests in common and little to divide them.

3. (countable) A secret society that owns its own premises.
   • 2011, Willie Thomas Butler, The Kingdom Life Approach, →ISBN, page 357:

     It is a traditional peer society to Scroll and Key and Wolf's Head, as the three senior classes landed societies at Yale.

   • 2015, Arthur Morius Francis, Secret Societies Vol. 3: The Collegiate Secret Societies of America, →ISBN:

     Societies that own tombs or halls are sometimes known as 'landed' societies. The three oldest landed societies are Skull and Bones (1832), Scroll and Key, (1841) and Wolf's Head, (1883).

   • 2015, Julie Tibbott, Members Only: Secret Societies, Sects, and Cults Exposed!, →ISBN, page 160:

     Landed societies, like Bones, have buildings on campus. Their headquarters is a brown sandstone mausoleum known as the Tomb: a crypt-like, windowless structure that is strictly off-limits to non-members.

4. (countable) A landowner's association.
   • 1939, Scottish Forestry Journal - Volumes 53-58, page 2:

     In October 1940 the Forestry Commissioners enlisted the services of forestry and landed societies to help with the distribution of wire and rabbit netting to private estates requiring it for afforestation purposes.

   • 1977, Franz Pick, Pick's Currency Yearbook, page 285:

     But delaying the "reform" was the cattle farmers' lobby and other landed societies, which were actively vying to counter the so-called "Communist" influence of the National Peasant Union, a powerful lobby challenging the status quo.

   • 1991, Richard Maxwell Brown, No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society, →ISBN:

     Allegiance to the homestead ethic thus inspired the settlers to resist incorporation in a landed society dominated by the Southern Pacific Railroad and its Big Three owners.