family has been obliged to accept a new grant from the heralds, and thus to falsify the whole history of the house.
But such considerations must not divert me from the object of my enquiry. My answer to 'X' is that the letters patent of Henry VIII, instructing the heralds to deface false and unauthorized arms, were an unlawful encroachment upon the rights of his subjects. England is not an absolute monarchy. The Crown, it is true, has always had control over musters and arrays, and could therefore govern the use of armorial ensigns there displayed, but without Act of Parliament that power could not be extended so as to affect the rights of private citizens. The very fact that an Act was obtained in Scotland is an acknowledgment that such authority is not vested in the Crown. The early writers upon heraldry were without exception of the opinion that any man may lawfully bear arms chosen by himself. That opinion is supported by the unbroken custom of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The royal proclamation of 1417 admits unreservedly that long usage gives a good title to arms assumed without authority, and after the date of that proclamation many persons so assumed arms and exhibited them openly before the royal officers under whom they were serving in France. Both the Crown and the College have, over and over again, allowed the title of 'gentleman' to persons who did not even pretend to be armigerous, and have described as noble or gentle the families from which they sprang. Gentility does not depend upon the possession of a coat of arms.
III
WHAT IS A GENTLEMAN?
Side by side with this absurd theory that arms make the gentleman, we find in the writings of 'X' another which strangely contradicts it, namely that in the Middle Ages the 'landowner was the nobleman or gentleman, and the smallest tenant of land held by military service participated in the privileges of nobility.'[1] This suggestion has even now its supporters in the College of Arms, and it may be traced back to a respectable antiquity. The great lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, lays down in his Institutes[2] that 'of ancient times those
