How Trennels was built.

[jackmerlin]

I know this has been brilliantly covered in fanfic, but I have been searching back through old threads and can't see that it has ever been discussed in a thread here. In Peter's Room we are told as a casual aside, that Trennels was built by a Joshua Marlow, who made his pile in the slave trade

Comments

[anonymous]

A lot of country houses were built in the past through money making activities that are similar to capitalism today. The Spencer earls were
originally sheep farmers. Anne Boleyn's family were able to buy country houses through successful merchant activity in the City of London. The Weld family of Dorset were originally major grocers in the City, and married into the Roman Catholic aristocracy. Some of this might have involved some child labour, as apprenticeships were a major form of training and child labour laws were different, but still it is not that different from modern capitalism. It does say in Peter's Room that the eighteenth century Trennels was built on the slave trade, but many country houses were not. Still, although I can see no evidence that the Merricks had plantations or slave investments( the source of their wealth could be similar to the Welds) obviously some Catholics did, particularly in the US, and presumably AF knew this. The Carroll family of Maryland were major slave owners for example. This didn't stop other Roman Catholics from being opposed on moral grounds, but I would say, with reference to Mansfield Park, that the majority of active abolitionists were Protestants, particularly evangelical Protestants. I imagine that the Marlows, if they think at all about the source of the money to build a country house, think that it was obtained immorally,
but a longtime ago, with the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, and they are not going to pull it down.
Lizzzar