Gentleman

Gentleman, in its original and strict sense, a person of noble descent. The first part of the word comes from the Latin gentilis, which signifies belonging to a gens or family. The terms gentleman and nobleman were formerly identical in meaning; but the popular signification of each has become gradually modified, that of the former having widened, of the latter having become more restricted. The continental noble (Fr.) or adel (Ger.) still retains the original sense of our gentleman. The broadly-marked distinction between the nobleman or gentleman and the rest of the community is one of the most prominent features of medieval life, and the source from which the less abrupt gradations of rank in modern society have been developed. The gentry of England had formerly many privileges recognised by law. If a churl or peasant defamed the honour of a gentleman, the latter had his remedy in law, but if one gentleman defamed another, the combat was allowed. In equal crimes a gentleman was punishable with less severity than a churl, unless the crime were heresy, treason, or excessive contumacy. A gentleman condemned to death was beheaded and not hanged, and his examination was taken without torture. In giving evidence the testimony of a gentleman outweighed that of a churl. A churl might not challenge a gentleman to combat, quia conditiones impares. After the introduction of heraldry the right to armorial ensigns or insignia gentilitia became (as the jus imaginum had been among the Romans) the test of gentility or nobility. Gentility was of course inherited; but it was also within the prerogative of a sovereign prince to ennoble or make a gentleman of a person of a lower grade whom he thought worthy of the distinction, and whose descendants accordingly became gentlemen. We have examples in England of the direct exercise of this prerogative by the sovereign as late as the reign of Henry VI., the patent of gentility or nobility being accompanied with no title of honour, but merely with a coat of arms, the grant containing the words 'nobilitamus nobilemque facimus et creamus . . . et in signum hujusmodi nobilitatis arma et armorum insignia damus et concedimus.' Letters of nobility of a similar description are granted by the emperor in Germany and Austria to the present day, conferring no title, but only the status of adel (nobleman or gentleman) indicated by the prefix von to the surname. A gentleman of ancestry was (or is) something beyond a gentleman of blood and coat-armour: he must be able to show purity of blood for five generations—i.e. that his ancestors on every side for four generations back—viz. his eight great-great-grandfathers and eight great-great-grandmothers—were all en- titled to coat-armour. This purity of blood is still insisted on for certain offices in Germany and Austria. In England the concession of insignia gentilitia (or of creating a gentleman) has long been deputed to the kings of arms, the prerogative of the sovereign in the matter of rank being directly exercised only in creating peers, baronets, or knights. In our own day, while the stricter meaning of the word is retained in the expression 'gentleman by birth,' the less abrupt gradation of ranks and the courtesy of society have caused the term gentleman to be applied in a somewhat loose sense to any one whose education, profession, or perhaps whose income, raises him above ordinary trade or menial service, or to a man of polite and refined manners and ideas. See ESQUIRE, NOBILITY.