Fill in the blank with appropriate words:

For over 300 years, one of the most ___(1)___ beliefs among historians of England has been that the character of English society has been shaped by the unique openness of its ruling elite to entry by self-made entrepreneurs (especially newly wealthy merchants) able to buy their way into the ranks of elite society. This upward mobility, historians have ___(2)___, allowed England to escape the clash between those with social/political power and those with economic power, a conflict that beset the rest of Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Upward mobility was also used to explain England’s exceptional ___(3)___ since the late seventeenth century (no revolutions, for example), as well as such major events as the development of the most efficient agricultural system in Europe, the making of the first industrial revolution, and the onset of severe economic decline.

But is the thesis true? Recent work on the supposed consequences of an open elite has already produced some doubts. Little ___(4)___, for example, is now accorded the idea that England’s late nineteenth-century economic decline resulted from absentee business owners too ___(5)___ by the demands of elite life to manage their firms properly. But, although the importance of an open elite to other major events has been severely ___(6)___, it is only with a new work by Lawrence and Jeanne Stone that the openness itself has been confronted. ___(7)___ the tack of tracing the careers of successful entrepreneurs to gauge the openness of the elite, the Stones chose the alternative approach of analyzing the elite itself, and proceeded via the ingenious route of investigating country-house ownership.

Arguing that ownership of a country house was seen as essential for membership in the ruling elite, the Stones analyze the nature of country-house ownership in three counties for the period 1540-1880. Their critical findings are ___(8)___: there was strikingly little change in the ownership of such houses throughout the period. Instead, even in the face of a demographic crisis (fewer marriages, declining fertility, rising infant mortality), the old elite was able to maintain itself, and its estates, intact for centuries through ___(9)___ to various marriage and inheritance strategies. The popular picture of ___(10)___ elite families overcome by debt and selling out to merchants is simply not borne out by the Stones’ findings. Rather, the opportunities for entrepreneurs to buy their way into the elite, the Stones show, were extremely limited. If further studies of country-house ownership attest to the representativeness and accuracy of their data, then the Stones’ conclusion that the open elite thesis cannot be maintained may, indeed, prove true.