Thomas Garden Barnes offers an excellent account of gentry governance of Somerset County, in England's West Country. Local gentry served as justices of the peace, and, somewhat more begrudgingly, in the onerous office of sheriff. Barnes offers an interesting account of the duties of local officials, and the conflicts of gentry cliques as they contested for local power.

This should be interesting for students of Southern history. A number of Somerset gentlemen settled in the American South, including Virginia governor Sir William Berkeley, the younger son of a Somerset gentry family.

On the heritage of the Berkeley family in another county, before a younger son established the cadet branch of the family in Somerset, see the discussion of West Country gentry in Virginia in David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. For a discussion of government, economy and society in the nearby city of Bristol, see David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700. For a discussion of Somerset cavaliers in Barbados, see Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, and Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery.