Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/107

THE ANCESTOR 67 Every baron, banneret or knight was to pay forty shillings ; every bachelor and every esquire who ought by statute to be a knight, twenty shillings ; every esquire of less estate and every substantial merchant, half a mark ; every esquire who had neither lands, rent nor chattels, but was in service or had been armed, a quarter of a mark. Then, after the assessment of ecclesiastics, lawyers, mayors, aldermen and merchants, we return to landowners. Every sergeant and franklin, according to his estate, was to pay half or a quarter of a mark. Farmers of manors, parsonages and granges, cattle dealers and all other merchants of mean merchandise were, according to their income, to pay half a mark, a quarter of a mark, two shillings or twelve pence. The indentures fastened to the returns show that these were made ' according to the estate and degree of the persons contained in them, but the commissioners returned no one as a gentleman. In Chaucer's Canterbury 'Tales y in Piers Plowman and in the Lytel Jeste of Robyn Hode^ medieval society is drawn for us to the life ; we meet in all three with knights, esquires, merchants, franklins and yeomen, but not with gentle- men. One feels inclined to ask with John Ball, 'Who was then the gentleman ? ' But I shall be referred no doubt to the ' List of gentry of the land,' ^ which Fuller in his JV irthies of England tells us was 'solemnly returned' in 1433 'by select commissioners into the chancery.' Here at last we seem to have something definite and authentic. Our ' county historians ' have never troubled themselves to search for the original of this document, but I have succeeded in tracing it to the Patent Roll of 12 Henry VI.^ It turns out to be a catalogue made, not in 1433, but in the following year, of certain knights, esquires and men of influence and substance {ceteros regni potentes et valentes to whom it was thought expedient to tender an oath that they would not ' wetyngly receyve, cherishe, hold in houshold ne maynteyne, Pilours, Robbours, Oppressours of the poeple, Mansleers, Felons, Outlawes, Ravyshers of women ayenst the ^ Fuller speaks also of a list of the English gentry made towards the end of the reign of King Henry VIII. ; and the later editors of his book tell us in a footnote that, if this could be found, it would be * a valuable continuation of the Worthies of England.^ I have no doubt the author is referring to the lists of those who lent money to the king in 1542-4, which are amongst the subsidy rolls in the Record Office. ^ No. 437, dorso.