Ralph Allen: The mayor of Bath of is now largely a ceremonial position, but Ralph Allen as mayor (elected in 1742) and postmaster of Bath, and most importantly as the owner of a quarry, defined the look of Bath. To his quarries and its honey-colored stone we owe the consistent Georgian look of the city

archbishop and bishops: the archbishops of Canterbury and York are the leaders of the Church of England, although the monarch, of course, is the head of the church. Bishops supervise the dioceses, ordain new priests, confirm the faithful and sit in the House of Lords.

assemblies: organizations that provided, for a subscription, balls, concerts, salons and suppers during the social season.

barrister: Britain has a split legal profession that includes barristers and solicitors (and at one time serjeants at law). Barristers can plead in court but don’t directly represent a client. Instead they are retained (or instructed) by a solicitor. More importantly, they are considered gentleman because they don’t directly take money from a client. In fact, there is a little pocket sewn into the back of a barrister’s robe into which a solicitor could slip a payment (there is some debate about this). Daniel Poole’s What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew is very informative about the legal profession.

barouche, landau: a four wheeled carriage drawn by two horses with two benches, allowing the passengers to face each other across the middle, with a separate box for the driver, often protected by a folding cover. In Emma, Mrs. Elton speaking of her brother and sister: “They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four perfectly.” I believe a landau to be similar to a barouche, probably larger and drawn by four horses. You would have seen Prince William and Princess Kate being taken back to Buckingham Palace from Westminster Abbey in one of the state landaus.

brougham: pronounced “broom,” this is a four-wheeled carriage for two, with a separate seat for the driver and perhaps a footman. Similar to the phaeton, but with a protected cab and glazed windows.

cabriolet: a two-wheeled carriage for two, one of who is the driver, drawn by a single horse. It has a folding top to cover the occupants and may have a platform in the rear for a groom to stand. Very similar to the Hansom cab, where it was driven by the person in back. From whence we get the word “taxi cab,” the taximeter being the device that tallied the distance.

Court of St. James: St. James Palace is the official home of the British monarchy, although the sovereign has many royal residences, such as Buckingham and Windsor palaces. St. James Palace is a working palace, and foreign ambassadors are said to present their credentials to the court of St. James. Young ladies were also presented to the court, marking their “coming out,” meaning they had entered society and were considered eligible for marriage. And Sir William Lucas in Pride and Prejudice is presented to the court, presumably on the occasion of his knighthood.

dandy, Beau Brummell: George Bryan Brummell was a trend setter in Regency England and a friend of the Prince Regent. Nowadays we might think of a dandy (a term coined by Lord Byron and describing the club to which Brummell belonged) as being outrageously dressed, but at the time Brummell favored simple but elegant, in some ways severe, clothing of high quality. Dandies were said to devote a lot of their time to their toilet, meaning they were meticulous about grooming, deportment, the cut of their trousers (Brummell favored trousers over breeches) and the polish of their shoes. Think of dandies as the first metrosexuals.

deacon, curate: the low man on the ecclesiastical totem pole. The deacon was a full-fledged clergyman but without the benefit of a benefice (living, see below). They basically did all the work and populate a lot of P.G. Wodehouse plots.

look him up in Debrett’s: Since 1780 (with a few lapses) Debrett’s Peerage and Baronetage has been the who’s who of the English titled, and you see it referenced in Persuasion: “Sir Walter Elliot … was a man who … never took up any book but the Baronetage.” The entry mentions his name, birthdate and title, the date of his marriage and his wife’s name and her death, and the birthdates and names of his children. If someone claimed to be Lord So and So, you could look him up in Debrett’s.

entailed: To ensure that property remain in the family, many estates were entailed, meaning that only a male heir could inherit property. This discussion at austenprose my help.

fichu: a scarf-like square of linen tucked into the bodice (or worn as a shawl) to conceal the bosom. Despite a lot of films, during the day women usually didn’t expose a lot of skin.

gentry, landed gentry: The landed gentry is the class from which most Jane Austen characters were drawn. They are below the nobility but may include the lower ranks of the titled, like baronets and knights. Fitzwilliam Darcy, for all his pride, is from this class, as is Mr. Bennet. Their status was also marked by the amount of land they owned and how long their family had owned it (see entailed above). Their income was derived from the land they owned (landed gentry) and farmed. Often, they did not directly farm their land but instead rented it to other gentlemen (the gentry). If you actually worked with your hands, you were not a gentleman and so they usually had managers who handled the actual business of running the estate.

Georgian era: We often think of Jane Austen as the Regency era, but she lived most of her life before the Regency officially began (see Regency). Of course, the Regency is overlapped and subsumed by the Georgian era because the Prince Regent eventually became another Hanoverian king named George. Reputedly Austen, despite the dedication in Emma, did not think much of the Prince Regent’s dissolute ways. (Miss Austen Regrets, which is in included in a DVD package for Sense and Sensibility, dramatizes her “relationship” with the Prince Regent.) Incidentally, the Prince Regent’s father, King George III, was the king during the American Revolution.

a living: Many wealthy landowners had it within their rights to grant a living to the local vicar or parish priest. This person would be entitled to all or part of the local tithes and possibly even some income from the glebe, that is the farmed land that went along with the parsonage, if any.

Interestingly, as the duties of vicar could be very light and the deacons did all the work, some vicars (for instance, Jane Austen’s father) held multiple livings.

letters patent: these were open letters issued by a monarch conferring some office, right, monopoly, title, or status to a person or to some entity such as a corporation. For instance, Charles Dundas was elevated to Baron Amesbury by letters patent issued by William IV.

Lower Assembly Rooms: The older of the assembly rooms (see assemblies) in Bath. It no longer exists, having burned down in the 1820s.