this became increasingly impossible, and they were forced to
seek their fortunes abroad in the French wars, or at home as
hangers-on of the great nobles. These men, under the old system,
had no definite status; but they were generosi, men of birth,
and, being now forced to describe themselves, they disdained
to be classed with franklins (now sinking in the social scale),
still more with yeomen or husbandmen; they chose, therefore,
to be described as “gentlemen.” On the character of these
earliest “gentlemen” the records throw a lurid light. According
to Sir George Sitwell (p. 76), “the premier gentleman of England,
as the matter now stands, is ‘Robert Erdeswyke of Stafford,
gentilman,’” who had served among the men-at-arms of Lord
Talbot at Agincourt (ib. note). He is typical of his class.
“Fortunately—for the gentle reader will no doubt be anxious
to follow in his footsteps—some particulars of his life may be
gleaned from the public records. He was charged at the
Staffordshire Assizes with housebreaking, wounding with
intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page,
who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging for his
life.” If any earlier claimant to the title of “gentleman”
be discovered, Sir George Sitwell predicts that it will be within
the same year (1414) and in connexion with some similar disreputable
proceedings.[1]
From these unpromising beginnings the separate order of “gentlemen” was very slowly evolved. The first “gentleman” commemorated on an existing monument was John Daundelyon of Margate (d. c. 1445); the first gentleman to enter the House of Commons, hitherto composed mainly of “valets,” was “William Weston, gentylman”; but even in the latter half of the 15th century the order was not clearly established. As to the connexion of “gentilesse” with the official grant or recognition of coat-armour, that is a profitable fiction invented and upheld by the heralds; for coat-armour was but the badge assumed by gentlemen to distinguish them in battle, and many gentlemen of long descent never had occasion to assume it, and never did. This fiction, however, had its effect; and by the 16th century, as has been already pointed out, the official view had become clearly established that “gentlemen” constituted a distinct order, and that the badge of this distinction was the heralds’ recognition of the right to bear arms. It is unfortunate that this view, which is quite unhistorical and contradicted by the present practice of many undoubtedly “gentle” families of long descent, has of late years been given a wide currency in popular manuals of heraldry.
In this narrow sense, however, the word “gentleman” has long since become obsolete. The idea of “gentry” in the continental sense of noblesse is extinct in England, and is likely to remain so, in spite of the efforts of certain enthusiasts to revive it (see A. C. Fox-Davies, Armorial Families, Edinburgh, 1895). That it once existed has been sufficiently shown; but the whole spirit and tendency of English constitutional and social development tended to its early destruction. The comparative good order of England was not favourable to the continuance of a class, developed during the foreign and civil wars of the 14th and 15th centuries, for whom fighting was the sole honourable occupation. The younger sons of noble families became apprentices in the cities, and there grew up a new aristocracy of trade. Merchants are still “citizens” to William Harrison; but he adds “they often change estate with gentlemen, as gentlemen do with them, by a mutual conversion of the one into the other.” A frontier line between classes so indefinite could not be maintained, especially as in England there was never a “nobiliary prefix” to stamp a person as a gentleman by his surname, as in France or Germany.[2] The process was hastened, moreover, by the corruption of the Heralds’ College and by the ease with which coats of arms could be assumed without a shadow of claim; which tended to bring the “science of armory” into contempt. The word “gentleman” as an index of rank had already become of doubtful value before the great political and social changes of the 19th century gave to it a wider and essentially higher significance. The change is well illustrated in the definitions given in the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the 5th edition (1815) “a gentleman is one, who without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen.” In the 7th edition (1845) it still implies a definite social status: “All above the rank of yeomen.” In the 8th edition (1856) this is still its “most extended sense”; “in a more limited sense” it is defined in the same words as those quoted above from the 5th edition; but the writer adds, “By courtesy this title is generally accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence.” The Reform Bill of 1832 has done its work; the “middle classes” have come into their own; and the word “gentleman” has come in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners. The test is no longer good birth, or the right to bear arms, but the capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society. In its best use, moreover, “gentleman” involves a certain superior standard of conduct, due, to quote the 8th edition once more, to “that self-respect and intellectual refinement which manifest themselves in unrestrained yet delicate manners.” The word “gentle,” originally implying a certain social status, had very early come to be associated with the standard of manners expected from that status. Thus by a sort of punning process the “gentleman” becomes a “gentle-man.” Chaucer in the Meliboeus (c. 1386) says: “Certes he sholde not be called a gentil man, that ... ne dooth his diligence and bisynesse, to kepen his good name”; and in the Wife of Bath’s Tale:
| “Loke who that is most vertuous alway Prive and apert, and most entendeth ay To do the gentil dedes that he can And take him for the gretest gentilman,” |
and In the Romance of the Rose (c. 1400) we find “he is gentil bycause he doth as longeth to a gentilman.” This use develops through the centuries, until in 1714 we have Steele, in the Tatler (No. 207), laying down that “the appellation of Gentleman is never to be affixed to a man’s circumstances, but to his Behaviour in them,” a limitation over-narrow even for the present day. In this connexion, too, may be quoted the old story, told by some—very improbably—of James II., of the monarch who replied to a lady petitioning him to make her son a gentleman, “I could make him a nobleman, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman.” Selden, however, in referring to similar stories “that no Charter can make a Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of some great Princes that have said it,” adds that “they without question understood Gentleman for Generosus in the antient sense, or as if it came from Gentilis in that sense, as Gentilis denotes one of a noble Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth.” For “no creation could make a man of another blood than he is.” The word “gentleman,” used in the wide sense with which birth and circumstances have nothing to do, is necessarily incapable of strict definition. For “to behave like a gentleman” may mean little or much, according to the person by whom the phrase is used; “to spend money like a gentleman” may even be no great praise; but “to conduct a business like a gentleman” implies a standard at least as high as that involved
- ↑ The designation “gentilman” is, indeed, found some two centuries earlier. In the Inquisitio maneriorum Ecclesiae S. Pauli Londin. of A.D. 1222 (W.A. Hale, Domesday of St Paul’s, Camden Soc., 1858, p. 80) occurs the entry: Adam gentilmā diḿ acrā, p’ iii. d. This is probably the earliest record of the “grand old name of gentleman”; but Adam, who held half an acre at a rent of three pence—less by half than that held by “Ralph the bondsman” (Rad’ le bunde) in the same list—was certainly not a “gentleman.” “Gentilman” here was a nickname, perhaps suggested by Adam’s name, and thus in some sort anticipating the wit of the famous couplet repeated by John Ball’s rebels.
- ↑ The prefix “de” attached to some English names is in no sense “nobiliary.” In Latin documents de was the equivalent of the English “of,” as de la of “at” (so de la Pole for Atte Poole, cf. such names as Attwood, Attwater). In English this “of” was in the 15th century dropped; e.g. the grandson of Johannes de Stoke (John of Stoke) in a 14th-century document becomes John Stoke. In modern times, under the influence of romanticism, the prefix “de” has been in some cases “revived” under a misconception, e.g. “de Trafford,” “de Hoghton.” Very rarely it is correctly retained as derived from a foreign place-name, e.g. de Grey.
