writes, ' the order of " gentlemen as a separate class seems to be forming as something new. By the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have been fully established'[1]
Both Macaulay and Hume speak of the Norman gentleman, and Green points out that in the reign of Edward I. ' the number of the country gentry and of the more substantial yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national wealth.'[2] Gardiner dwells upon the general feeling against gentlemen in 1381, and their duties as justices of the peace. Stubbs describes in picturesque detail the domestic economy of the country gentleman's household at the close of the Middle Ages, and defines the class of gentry, ' men of family, of worship and coat armour,' as including knights and esquires and occupying a position intermediate between the barons and the yeomen.[3] Hallam speaks of the ' simplicity with which the gentry lived under Edward I.,'[4] and tells us that in the days of the Plantagenets we find in the gradation of ranks the peers, the gentry or principal landowners, many of them distinguished by knighthood and all by bearing coat armour, the yeomanry, the burgesses, and lastly the peasantry and labourers.[5]
If we turn to original documents we shall find the word ' gentilman ' and its Norman-French equivalents, Gentil and Gentil-homme, in common use at an early date. ' Gentilman,' as a surname, is met with in the first half of the fourteenth century. Langmead, in his Constitutional History, refers to a suit of 1353-4, in which the addition of gentilis homo, after a man's name was held to be a sufficient description.[6] Froissart, in the seventeenth chapter of his first book, speaks of an entertainment given at Warwick by le gentil d' Angleterre. In the parliamentary rolls and statutes such expressions are often met with. In 1305-6, the armour, riding horses, jewels, clothes and plate of chivalers et gentils hommes are excepted out of the assessment of the 30th granted to the king.[7] In 13 60-1, we find mention of gentil homme d'estat d' avoir faucoun.[8] In 1363, a sumptuary law regulates the costume of esquiers et toutes
- ↑ Enc. Brit. xvii. 540-1. This passage is quoted in the New English Dictonary.
- ↑ History of the English People (1878), i. 336.
- ↑ Constit. Hist. (1878), iii. 544, 548.
- ↑ Middle Ages (1878), iii. 370.
- ↑ Chap. i.
- ↑ Cowell's Interpreter (1701), in verbo ; Langmead's History (1896), 287.
- ↑ Rot. i. 270.
- ↑ Stat. i. 369.
