Theme: Class

THE EVOLUTION OF THE TERM “GENTLEMAN”

The most basic class distinctions in the Middle Ages were between the nobiles, i.e., the tenants in chivalry, such as earls, barons, knights, esquires, the free ignobiles such as the citizens and burgesses, and franklins, and the unfree peasantry including villeins and serfs.

In its original meaning, “gentleman” denoted a man of the lowest rank of the English gentry, standing below an esquire and above a yeoman.

This category included the younger sons of the younger sons of peers and the younger sons of baronets, knights, and esquires in perpetual succession, and thus the term captures the common denominator of gentility (and often armigerousness) shared by both constituents of the English aristocracy: the peerage and the gentry. In this sense, the word equates with the French gentilhomme (“nobleman”), which latter term has been, in Great Britain, long confined to the peerage;

Even as late as 1400, the word gentleman still only had the descriptive sense of generosus and could not be used as denoting the title of a class. Yet after 1413, we find it increasingly so used, and the list of landowners in 1431, printed in Feudal Aids, contains, besides knights, esquires, yeomen and husbandmen (i.e. householders), a fair number who are classed as “gentilman”.

The British Empire begins in the 1580’s.

The clear distinction between the aristocratic and laboring classes was pervasive. After 1600 Gentlemen would not challenge men of lower status to a duel, and a challenge to (or excuse for) a duel was based on some perceived public insult to the challenger’s sense of his honour as a gentleman.

The industrial revolution starts in 1790.

In (1815), the encyclopedia britannica states: “a gentleman is one, who without any title, bears a coat of arms, or whose ancestors have been freemen.”

The Reform Acts were implemented (1832): the British equivalent of Jerrymandering was revised and the allocation of seats in parliament to boroughs (the equivalent of US counties) were adjusted. The qualification as property holder adjusted for inflation, and the electorate expanded by as much 50% – although universal enfranchisement was not yet adopted.

As prosperity expanded, and the middle class with it, the designation came to include a man with an income derived from property, a legacy or some other source, and was thus independently wealthy and did not need to work.

Then in (1845) we see “in its extended sense, a gentleman is accorded to all above the rank of yeomen.”

So the title expands to cover any well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus (its usual translation in English-Latin documents, although nobilis is found throughout pre-Reformation papal correspondence).

And by (1856), “in its most extended sense, by courtesy this title is generally accorded to all persons above the rank of common tradesmen when their manners are indicative of a certain amount of refinement and intelligence.”

The middle classes were successfully enfranchised; and the word gentleman came in common use to signify not a distinction of blood, but a distinction of position, education and manners.

The term no longer required good birth or the right to bear arms, but the capacity to mingle on equal terms in good society.

Signaling. 🙂

In Propertarianism, a gentleman is one who pays for the cost of the commons by not only contributing in his manners, but by policing the rest of society as any good nobleman would. And as such one who does not insure the truth, the normative, institutional, and physical commons, is not a gentleman. And anyone who does so is one.

So my perception of gentleman is simply the smallest unit of nobility: a man with nothing but his actions to justify his nobility.