The landed gentry, or the gentry, is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. While distinct from, and socially below, the British peerage, their economic base in land was often similar, and some of the landed gentry were wealthier than some peers. Many gentry were close relatives of peers, and it was not uncommon for gentry to marry into peerage. It is the British element of the wider European class of gentry. With or without noble title, owning rural land estates often brought with it the legal rights of lord of the manor, and the less formal name or title of squire, in Scotland laird. Generally lands passed by primogeniture, and the inheritances of daughters and younger sons were in cash or stocks, and relatively small. Typically the gentry farmed some of their land, as well as exploiting timber, minerals such as coal, and owning mills and other sources of income, but leased most of the land to tenant farmers. Many heads of families also had careers in politics or the military, and the younger sons of the gentry provided a high proportion of the clergy, military officers, and lawyers. The decline of the gentry largely stemmed from the 1870s agricultural depression; however, there are still many hereditary gentry in the UK to this day. The designation landed gentry originally referred exclusively to members of the upper class who were landlords but also commoners in the British sense—that is, they did not hold peerages—but usage became more fluid over time. By the late 19th century, the term was also applied to peers such as the Duke of Westminster who lived on landed estates. Successful burghers often used their accumulated wealth to buy country estates, with the aim of establishing themselves as landed gentry. The book series Burke's Landed Gentry records the members of this class. Origin of the term The term landed gentry, although originally used to mean nobility, came to be used of the lesser nobility in England around 1540. Once identical, eventually nobility and landed gentry became complementary, in the sense that their definitions began to fill in parts of what the other lacked. The historical term gentry by itself, so Peter Coss argues, is a construct that historians have applied loosely to rather different societies. Any particular model may not fit a