Darcy controlled a number of House seats? I think it would take a very powerful and influential man to control more than one seat. And there's not even any indication in P&P that Darcy was political, unlike in MP, where Sir Thomas was a member of Parliament. We also never see Darcy in London society, but only in country society, where he was the richest and most powerful man. In London society, he would be a rich man, but not among the richest and most powerful. JA's nephew Austen-Leigh in his Memoir of JA, said that JA did not write of the very high or very low. In one of Anthony Trollope's political novels, a landed gentleman with 14,000 a year who married an earl's daughter had difficulty maintaining his seat in the House, and eventually lost it. Trollope's novels were of a slightly later period than JA, but not that much later, and he was a great admirer of JA.
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