I'd put that the other way around, saying the land owners have disproportionately ended up as the wealthy and powerful. The ownership of land and the huge unearned income derived from renting it to the masses looks more like cause than effect to me.
I think either they bought it from the Crown, because they were wealthy, or they were granted it from the Crown, because they were part of the elite and did something for the Crown.
Since you think it was the other way around, how do you explain how they got the land?
There was no necessity to be wealthy first (although as you point out, this was often the case). Trouble is, if they were wealthy to start with, how did this happen? It just pushes the same question a bit further back. I suspect that in most cases, there are smaller conquests of local areas by a local family who gradually expand their reach, then lend military support to the king in exchange for being left alone.
Also, without the constant income the rents provide, you would not stay wealthy for long even if you had cash to start with, which is why land is so important. Getting money via trade and industry means you have to both be good at what you do and accept a profit margin which may vary depending on market conditions. Renting out land requires no skill and is impervious to competition. Constant cash flow forever with no effort. In order to accumulate serious wealth in the age before industrialisation, there was no better way.
In Marxist economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be.
Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour . Karl Marx rejected this explanation as "childishness," instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation". This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism.
I don't endorse this theory but I thought it was relevant.
Thats why you choose a proper partner.
Wealth still helps a lot, obviously, but thats why things went wrong and many people married for money and not for fitting genes.
The problem with this line of argument is the land always belonged to somebody else first. The Moors took it from the Visigoths, who took it from the Roman Empire, who took it from Carthage, who took it from Celt-Iberian tribes that had been taking it from each other since time immemorial.
>>or taking it from natives of new territories (America, Africa)
Who were engaged in near constant tribal warfare against each other for the possession of territory. The Conquistadors had such an easy time toppling the Aztecs because two of their abused vassal states rose up in rebellion and joined the Spaniards (providing the bulk of Cortes' forces at one point). Africa's tribal kingdoms and regional empires show the same bloody history of conquest as any other region in the world.
Although it's certainly unsettling, one of the ever-present themes across human history is the legitimacy and endurance of conquest. Any attempt to challenge that legitimacy requires a coherent framework for dismantling the hierarchy and replacing it with a "fair" one (a fool's errand). This is precisely the task at which Marxism and its various Critical Theory descendants fail so spectacularly.
It's all well and good to say the current distribution of things is unjust and demands to be addressed. It's another thing entirely to actually do so "fairly" (and more importantly, peacefully). It seems to me far more likely that whatever agency or panel is authorized the enormous power necessary to affect such a change will inevitably abuse that power and merely replace the current hierarchy with a new one of their choosing. And the odds are that if mere government dictate could not accomplish it, they would resort to the same "violence, war, enslavement" that Marx was denouncing (i.e., conquering the conquerors). Friedrich Hayek put it this way: "Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order."
I'm reminded of the thought experiment in Rawls' Theory of Justice that he calls the "veil of ignorance"[0]. In short: before individuals enter a society they are totally blind to their own place in it (race, class, gender, wealth, etc), like a randomized spawn in a game. They are then asked to deliberate on the distribution of rights and resources before entering the society. Rawls concludes that everyone would agree on the most equitable distribution because they cannot know who they will be in this new society (e.g., a lopsided society where most people are incredibly poor or enslaved is a huge gamble to take).
What Rawls doesn't do is take things a step further and imagine what that utopian society would be like in practice. Once everyone "spawns" in and begins living (pursuing opportunities, acting out passions, planning for the future, etc) there are guaranteed to be unequal outcomes when some are more successful/economically valued/powerful/attractive/politically manipulative/etc than others. Soon enough the once-equals have established a new hierarchy, as human societies tend to do, and we're back to square one.
Marx was wrong to call Smith "childish", especially when his own ideals are so naively hopeful. Even in a hypothetical world where one could implement a completely "fair" redistribution of possessions, once people begin exercising their will and making choices, inequalities will inevitably emerge and Smith's view of original accumulation would play out.
I don't share Marx's view on the solution, but my point is that he correctly addressed the problem. All the examples you gave about previous violence in conquered territories just strengthen the point that meritocracy and wealth had nothing in common. Now, I actually believe strongly on personal merit and nowadays it can get you much further than before although I think we could do much better to give more similar chances to everyone at birth.
Regarding Rawls, it seems as though the point is more to avoid a situation where there is a glut of people living truly miserable lives, such as the world we live in today. Inequalities are inevitable, but if almost everyone has a tolerable standard of living and there is no major dystopic framework in place it's no longer such a huge gamble to be born in this hypothetical world. It's definitely commendable to try to reduce the spectrum of inequality, or to redesign the system so that rent-seeking behavior no longer becomes problematic.
By being given it by a state (which you have already said, in turn used force) or by forcefully taking it. It's primitive accumulation in the second instance and favouritism in the first. However both methods involve the creation of the concept of this type of property and further to take it, which requires as Proudhon put it, barbarism.
(The "glorious revolution" of 1688 contained no fighting, although it did involve foreign troops. There was a successful armed revolution in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, but this was more of a decolonisation than a class-based revolution.)
If you look at how major English land owners got started it all goes back to elites being granted land by the Crown for service.
Is this a trick? The Crown got all their land by conquest: the Roundheads, Normans, the Danes, the Romans, &c.
I'm talking about people except the Crown. 1066 and all that reset everything. Otherwise who's patronage would I be referring to?
Only if your ancestors win the battles and can stick around to defend it. Land was won and kept with blood, sweat, and tears (in that order).
And this brings us close to studies of "social mobility" (glossing over the difference between class and wealth - which - taking a long perspective - can be assumed to be roughly synonymous).
And with social mobility between generations usually fairly low in general - the next most trivially true answer is "because their ancestors were".
Attempts to trace this back to some origin myth is slightly silly but on the whole your answer to the "where did it all begin" question indicates your political colour.
If you tend to answer "Because they stole it by force" then you're probably on the left. And if you tend to answer "Because they created a strong leadership that protected a group from other groups" that places you on the right.
Of course - pure examples of bandits vs noble warrior kings are rare but I suspect there's more of the former in history than the latter. ;-)
You can try and mitigate that by gifting to your children, but the tax free limit for that is only £3k per year and is still taxed if it's given less than 7 years before you die. Not really enough to do extensive property owners much good.
E.g., the Grosvenors, who own 3% of London. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-ta...
If you want to give away property, then you have to make sure you don't continue living in the property rent-free for it to count for IHT.
As others have mentioned, serious estates just use trusts etc. instead.
http://www.money.co.uk/guides/gifting-money-to-your-children...
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-ta...
I think the recent changes have made it more difficult to completely avoid inheritance tax, but a proper trust setup will drastically reduce it.
Many can get tax relief as a "national heritage asset" by opening to the public [1].
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/tax-relief-for-national-heritage...