Franklin,

Franklin, the English freeholder of former times, who held his lands of the crown, free from any feudal servitude to a subject-superior. He is one of Chaucer's group, and his description in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales will keep his memory from ever being forgotten. It is the finest picture in our literature of the hearty old country gentleman. In later times the franklin seems to have fallen in dignity (cf. Winter's Tale, V. ii. 173), his position apparently corresponding to that of the well-to-do yeoman; yet Dr Johnson's remark that franklin is 'not improperly Englished a gentleman servant' was at no time accurate.