How Much £5,000 Is Worth Today & How Wealthy Colin & Penelope Are

Summary

• The Queen’s £5,000 reward for Lady Whistledown’s identity was a massive sum, worth almost half a million today.
• Penelope coming clean as Lady Whistledown made her independently wealthy, elevating her to the Bridgerton’s level.
• The Bridgertons’ wealth was primarily from land ownership and passive income, contrasting the struggles of the Featheringtons.

The Queen offers £5,000 for the identity of Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton season 3, a huge amount of money for the time. The third season of Bridgerton skipped about in book order; instead of focusing on Benedict’s love story, it focused on Colin and Penelope’s. Their love story ran into Bridgerton‘s usual challenges, not the least of which was that Penelope had to come clean to Colin about her identity as Lady Whistledown before Bridgerton season 4.

And come clean she did by the end of Bridgerton season 3, part 2, not just to Colin, but to the entire ton when she revealed that she was the writer behind the Lady Whistledown persona. It was underscored just how much influence Lady Whistledown had when the Queen offered the huge reward for her identity. Naturally, it caused quite a stir when Penelope outed herself as the gossip columnist, partly because of the Queen’s reward and also because of the scandal.

£5k In Bridgerton Is Worth Over £300,000 In Today’s Money

It Was A Large Sum No Matter The Era

Prior to Penelope publicly admitting it was her hand behind the Lady Whistledown pen, Queen Charlotte offered an enormous sum of money to anyone who could give her the identity of the gossip writer. £5,000 may not seem like much up front, but consider that Bridgerton season 3 takes place around 1815. According to the Bank of England, £5,000 in 1815 would be worth £371,921 today, or $473,005 – almost half a million dollars.

That’s a lot of money today, let alone in the early 19th century. The wealth gap wasn’t as big then as it is today, but, like today, the main thing separating the wealthy from the not wealthy, particularly in England, was owning land. Nobility, like the Bridgertons, were born into wealth, with land and ancestral homes that went back generations. While nobility “worked,” it wasn’t labor, but simply managing the wealth. Often, their money was made farming their land through tenant farmers who paid the landowner to farm, or through investments, often imports. It gave them a steady stream of passive income, allowing them to live a life largely of leisure.

The average farmworker and other blue-collar laborer, meanwhile, earned just a few shillings a week, or even a few pence. It wasn’t unheard of for an average yearly salary to be £30. Nobility had to earn much more in a year, as they had households to support, including servants and all the trappings of the ultra-wealthy, including clothing and leisure activities – balls weren’t cheap. A rich household would have needed at least £500-1000 per year to run the household. Considering that, what Queen Charlotte offered Penelope was an astronomical sum for the era.

How Rich Are The Bridgertons & Penelope?

They Are Rich – Very Rich

Thanks to the Queen’s reward, Penelope could be a very rich, independently wealthy woman. The sum she got was enough to be the cover story to turn her entire family’s fortune around and restore them to their former glory. Even before that, though, Penelope had earned quite a bit for her work as Lady Whistledown thanks to the gossip paper’s popularity. In fact, she’s now arguably getting close to the Bridgerton family, who are easily in what would be considered today’s 1%, though how much the Bridgertons are worth isn’t exactly made clear in the show.

However, considering all three younger brothers live lives of absolute leisure without working says a lot. In the books, they’re described as being rich as earls, which is considered the middle tier of the five ranks of British nobility: duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron. They are, essentially, given a stipend by Anthony, who manages the family’s estate. That makes Gregory, Colin, and Benedict very rich, Anthony very, very rich, and the Bridgerton family as a whole obscenely rich. That’s without including Daphne having married into Simon Basset, Duke of Hastings’ even vaster fortune.

That makes Gregory, Colin, and Benedict very rich, Anthony very, very rich, and the Bridgerton family as a whole obscenely rich.

That said, to give the Bridgertons credit, thanks to Anthony’s careful (and often stressed-out) management of the family wealth and estates, the Bridgertons don’t appear to be spendthrifts. Likewise, Anthony prefers to manage the estate himself rather rthan passing that off to a hired bookkeeper. The Featheringtons, prior to Portia and Jack’s scheme to restore their wealth, offered the perfect contrast to the Bridgertons and a cautionary tale about what happens when vast fortunes are squandered. The books describe Anthony as being exceptionally generous with the money he gives his brothers, but that would be expected – though Anthony may be a little more generous than most. Still, the family isn’t likely to hurt for money any time in Bridgerton season 3 or beyond.

Source: Bank of England