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68 THE ANCESTOR lawe, unlawefuU Hunters of Forestes, Parkes or Warennes, or eny other open mysdoers.* These persons are generally thought to have been supporters of the Yorkist cause, and though the statute proposes that the oath shall be tendered to all men of substance in the various counties, the commis- sioners were instructed to call before them only those to whom it seemed expedient to oifer it.-^ The statute speaks of them not as gentlemen, but as men of substance ; and the Patent Roll classes them not as knights, esquires, gentlemen and yeomen, but as ^ knights, esquires and valetti.' In the commission itself, as in the Petition against Livery of 1400-1,^ valettus is translated as ' yoman ' ; ' yomen ' in the translation (1387) of the Polychronicon follow next after esquires ; and it is impossible to resist the conclusion that all persons of lower military rank than esquires, even if they were lords of manors and the representatives of ancient houses, might be so described. From the point of view of tenure they were free tenants, from the point of view of military service ' valets ' or yeomen. In France young men of noble birth were spoken of as ' valets,* until they were eighteen years old ; ^ in England the wards of the Crown were so named in the twelfth century, as were also, in the fourteenth, certain Members of Parliament, who we know were descended from knightly houses.* More- over the same classification of society into knights, esquires and valetti will be found in the royal letters to the sheriffs of various counties in 1403 ;^ in the statute of 1444-5, which ordains that in future valetti are not to serve as knights of the shire ; and in the many Acts passed between 1389 and 1400 in restraint of livery, maintenance and apparel. This phrase, chivaleVy esquier^ ne vallet^ 1 qualified sometimes by the addition ' and all of lower estate than a knight,' or of ' nor none other of lower estate than an esquire,* represents the ordinary divi- sion of society in the latter half of the fourteenth century. But if no reference can be found in early times to the exis- tence of a class of gentlemen, how are we to explain the occurrence of the words gentils and gentils-hommes in the extracts which I have given from Froissart and the Parlia- mentary rolls and statutes. The difficulty is easily resolved, if it can be shown that genttl-homme does not mean a gentle- ^ Patent Roll, 12 Henry VI. 437. 2 Rot. Pari. iii. 478 ; iv. 456. ^ Du Cange. ^ Langmead's Consttt. Hist. i. 288, note. ^ Ryraer's Faedera, riii. 313.