Estate owners were finding that their income no longer matched the expenses of keeping their mansions in decent shape, their lands profitable, and their lifestyles humming along. To make matters worse, they had no liquid capital. Everything had been put into the land, buildings, and their furnishings. In a way, Fellowes bypasses this reality when he has Grantham lose Cora's money in a bad investment.
Tom Branson, whom we first see as the chauffeur of Lord Grantham's newly-acquired wheels, is a dedicated Irish revolutionary and socialist. He manages an awkward but tender romance with Lady Sybil, the youngest of the Crawley daughters. They leave England to marry in Ireland where the armed struggle for freedom from the empire is already underway. Eventually, this leads to a 1921 truce and the establishment of the Irish Free State as a dominion of Great Britain on the order of Canada and Australia. Northern Ireland, heavily populated with Protestant immigrants from England and Scotland, pulls out of this arrangement and stays with the British rule.
There was yet another threat to the system that in Downton Abbey is represented by Sir Richard Carlisle, wealthy newspaper tycoon, and, for a short time, Lady Mary's solution to the crisis. He is a member of a growing upper-middle class that was challenging the economic and political power of the aristocracy.
Today, the titles are still hanging around, but the landed gentry are a thing of the past. It is the royal family that carries on -- under mounting pressure to hand over the crown and give up the throne.
Note:
Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace. To Marry An English Lord (New York: Workman Publishing, 1989).
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