![]() Hence the term nobleman came to be reserved for members of the peerage, while anyone who could afford, as William Harrison put it in Description of England (1577), to “live without manual labour, and thereto is able and will bear the port, charge and countenance of a gentleman,” could “for money have a coat and arms bestowed upon him by heralds…and reputed for a gentleman ever after.” Since it was held that a gentleman bore arms, it followed that anyone who bore arms was a gentleman, and in the fluid social conditions of the 16th and 17th centuries many acquired the right to bear arms who were ignobiles. The result was the extinction, in England, of the identification of gentry with nobility. This view was quite unhistorical, for many gentlemen of long descent had never had occasion to assume coat armour and never did. At the same time, the badge of this distinction came to be thought of as the heralds’ recognition of the right to bear arms. Such men often chose to describe themselves as gentlemen.īy the 16th century the “ gentry” were officially regarded as constituting a distinct order. They tended to seek their fortunes abroad in Continental wars or to become dependents of the court or of some great noble house. More widespread influences were also at work: the profound economic changes of the 14th and 15th centuries, caused partly by the Black Death, made it increasingly difficult and unattractive for the younger sons of the nobility to settle on the land. The immediate cause of this was probably the statute of 1 Henry V., chapter 5 (1413), which required that in all original writs of action, personal appeals, and indictments which involved the process of outlawry, the “estate, degree or mystery” of the defendant must be stated. Yet after 1413 it was increasingly so used the list of landowners in 1431, printed in Feudal Aids, contains, besides knights, esquires, yeomen, and husbandmen, a fair number who are classed as "gentilman." Even as late as 1400 the term still had only the sense of generosus and could not accurately be used as a personal description denoting rank or quality or as the title of a class. ![]() There was, in this respect, no distinction between the great earl and the humble freeman. In its original and strict sense the term denoted a man of good family, deriving from the Latin word gentilis and invariably translated in English-Latin documents as generosus.įor most of the Middle Ages, when the basic social distinction was between nobiles (the tenants in chivalry, whether earls, barons, knights, esquires, or freemen) and ignobiles ( serfs, citizens, and burgesses) the word gentleman was roughly equivalent to nobilis. Gentleman, in English history, a man entitled to bear arms but not included in the nobility. SpaceNext50 Britannica presents SpaceNext50, From the race to the Moon to space stewardship, we explore a wide range of subjects that feed our curiosity about space!.Learn about the major environmental problems facing our planet and what can be done about them! Saving Earth Britannica Presents Earth’s To-Do List for the 21st Century.100 Women Britannica celebrates the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, highlighting suffragists and history-making politicians.COVID-19 Portal While this global health crisis continues to evolve, it can be useful to look to past pandemics to better understand how to respond today.Student Portal Britannica is the ultimate student resource for key school subjects like history, government, literature, and more. ![]()
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