Gentleman

In these enlightened times, this term is used in a very indistinct and indefinite manner though we tend to consider a gentleman more particularly as any man who behaves honourably and with courtesy. In former days however the terms gentle and noble were synonymous and were opposed to ignoble and plebeian. All who were entitled to a coat of arms were included in the word gentlemen; but it was more particularly applied to the lowest rank of armigers who, for want of a specific term, given that they bore no honour or title, were called gentlemen to distinguish them from the ignoble. It is applied to all who, without any recognised title, were not in the known exercise of any trade. In times when the different ranks were more carefully distinguished, there were several shades of gentility.

The first and most honourable were those who could boast four generations of gentlemen, both in the paternal and maternal line; these were gentlemen by blood: if they could not prove this, but the contrary was not known within the memory of man, then they were gentlemen by prescription. It was, also, in the power of the king to raise any ignoble person to the rank of gentleman by letters patent, conferring upon him the right to bear coat-armour. When this was done without any achievement, either in war or peace, of the person thus ennobled, he was insultingly called a gentleman of paper and wax. All officers of the king’s household, not in a menial capacity, were considered as raised to the rank of gentlemen, as were all persons holding the king’s commission, whether for the performance of civil or military duties. All orders of ecclesiastical preferment constituted a claim to gentility; and, also, any degree taken in the liberal sciences.

In feudal times gentility might be acquired by the purchase of a seigneurie or lordship which had in any way lapsed to the king, and the new purchaser became entitled to bear the arms of the last possessor. There was yet another way in which gentility was sometimes obtained, and that was by adoption, when a person not gentle was adopted by one who was and, as he succeeded to his property and name, was admitted as his offspring and allowed to bear his arms.