When the late Gerald Grosvenor, Duke of Westminster -often credited with being 'Britain's riches man'- was asked what advice he had for young entrepreneurs, Mr. Grosvenor told The Financial Times, “Make sure they have an ancestor who was a very close friend of William the Conqueror.”
Although the Grosvenor family dates back to the Norman Conquest. Most of their fortune is rooted in the 1677 marriage of Sir Thomas Grosvenor to the 12-year-old Mary Davies, heiress to 430 acres of boggy marsh between what is now Knightsbridge and the Thames in London’s West End. This bog would later became some of the most expensive real-estate in the world.
In 1066-7 William the Bastard declared that all land, animals and people in the country belonged to him personally. This was as alien to these Isle’s laws and customs as the colonial land-grabs were to the First Nations of America. Over a very short space of time, we went from a country in which >90% of people owned land, to a country of landless serfs, themselves owned by foreign lords. Our lands were parcelled up and given as payment to Williams mercenaries.
Still today, the monarch’s land monopoly remains, in theory and practice, a legal reality. Most of the largest land-owning families are direct descendants of the Norman Yoke and William the Bastard's 22th great-granddaughter sits upon the ‘English’ throne. Meaning, in this 'property owning democracy', land distribution is -for the most part- still determined by 'Right of Conquest'. Important to bear that in mind... especially if you run out of space whilst pegging your washing out on that increasingly thin-blue-line! ;)
In 1872 the British Government published ‘The Return of the Owners of Land’, only the second audit of land to have taken place in British history, the other being the Domesday book. After 2 years of gathering all the information the returns found that 1 million people owned freeholds, about 5% of the population. 10 Dukes owned over 100,000 acres each with the Duke of Sutherland owning 1,350,000 acres (1/50th of the entire country). Return of Owners of Land, confirmed that 0.6 per cent of the population owned 98.5% of the land and half of Britain was owned by 0.06% of the population. These findings are still well hidden till this day.
The reason for all this secrecy is because Britain has the worst land-distribution of any country on Earth (except Brazil). As it stands, AT LEAST 70 per cent of land in the British Isles is owned by fewer than two per cent of the population. Meanwhile Britain’s 16.8 million homeowners account for barely 4 per cent of the land between them... which is about the same amount as is 'owned' by the Forestry Commission.
I have to thank the late Gerald Grosvenor for his honesty, at-least he didn't attribute his vast fortune to some 'divine right'... although, he may as well have -it's not like you peasants are gonna do anything about it... ARE YOU?!