*

is "of noble race," and he will understand without labor " was one. This would be you to mean that he springs from "a lord." monstrous in the eyes of a herald and genealYet, what the foreigner means by the phrase ogist, but it was good sense according to the noble de race, strictly applies to the English customs of England. gentry, who, as descendants of the old feudal This word gentleman," with its synlandlords and bearers of coat armor, are gen- onyms 66 gentilhomme" and " gentiluomo," tilshommes in the primitive application of the has cost no little ink in its time. Its derivaword, and so "noble," according to the gen- tion from gentilis is obvious enough, and that eral sense of the term in Europe; while the it bore a distinct reference to race; and as lord, in spite of his peerage and his coronet, early as we find it, it is a term of distinction, may be of origin almost immediately plebeian. and indeed may be said to lie at the bottom This is one of our native curiosities, and has of all distinctions between classes in modern given rise to many mistakes on the continent, history. Why, and how, the "barbarians," with much natural indignation occasionally on our ancestors, came to use the word as a word the part of our squires, amusing enough to a of honor has been much disputed. One view philosopher. In particular, foreigners cannot is, that as the barbarians were gentiles, or be brought to understand our "Commoner," outer nations, to the Romans, the leaders or to conceive how such an equivocal word of the conquering northerns assumed the came to be the designation of individuals, appellation as one of honor, to distinwho in descent and possessions are the equals guish themselves from the degenerate people of all the titled people in Europe. While they had enslaved. To this view inclined annoyance is sometimes caused to individuals Selden, as may be seen in his great work, the from this confusion, Englishmen may well" Titles of Honor;" but Gibbon considered congratulate themselves on the fact that such" more pure and probable" the theory which is the result of our history, and that it is a would derive it from the civilians' use of peculiarity which belongs to the very essence the word, as synonymous with ingenuus. A of our constitution. We soon discover, in" gentle (its derivative) is used as the the course of these studies, that while the opposite to "simple. Oné writer suggests continental distinction has remained in theory that a " simple man was one of those who here, and has had the support of the heralds had only a single name, like John or Roger, and genealogists-in practice, and specially while the proprietors (who were, no doubt, in law, England has divided its nobility, that the first to do so) distinguished themselves is, those whom we call the peerage, and those by adopting surnames derived for the most who compose the gentry, into two classes. part from the names of their possessions, The peers have certain privileges, not as a According to the view of Mr. Hampson, the caste, but as a body occasionally recruited by author of "Origines Patricia," nobody is a creations by the crown; while all others are equal in the eye of the law, and take their chance with the general subjects of the realm. Mr. Hallam has not failed to approve this, nor Mr. Macaulay. The former of these historians remarks, that the term "Gentleman" man of family," which amounts to man is not known to the law. There has been, of some power or position; for a family could however, within the last few years, a case in never have become recognizable as an entity which a 66 surety "in a bankruptcy court among the horde, unless it had had something was objected to by counsel, because, while de- to fix itself on, and maintain itself by. Land, scribed as a gentleman, he was in reality a in those days, was to a family what earth is clerk in a steam-packet company. The objec- to a plant-the necessary support, and littion was held to be fatal. Now, of course, in eral locus standi. And it is characteristic of the eye of a herald, or any one who judged the title "gentleman " and shows its conthese questions by the strictly aristocratic nection with race, that it was a self-dependent standard, his being a "clerk" would not title; one which grew by time, and was not necessarily make him cease to be "a gentle- made by charters; an inherent title of unman;" whether he was so or not would be a traceable origin, which seems to have been question of blood. But the judge made not as well known in description of certain the objection on that ground; he went by people, as the name Northman or Frank, the old legal custom of describing a gentle- The uncertainty about its adoption is a proof man as one who would be at the port, of its antiquity. In fact, the origin of the charge, and maintenance" of one, or some rulers of the northern nations went back into general old notion, that any one who "lived

66

See Sir James Lawrence's well-written and very amusing treatise "On the Nobility of the British Gentry."

gentleman, in the strict sense, but one who traces himself to the first barbarian conquerors. But, at all events, there does not seem ever to have been a time when gentilhomme could not have been fairly rendered

"Any man that held land by knight-service, vested in him by descent or heritage, was deemed to be of gentlemanly condition or degree."— Madox, Baronia Anglica.

nurse,

It would be blasphemy against the nature of things to suppose that the history of England or the history of Europe for long ages was all one false and mad state of society. We must, therefore, just accept Gentilesse, with its fiefs, tournaments, shields, heralds. pedigrees, and "prejudices," as the state of life through which Europe had necessarily to pass, and as that which formed the foundation of the existing state of civilization. Of course, if any one seriously maintains that it would have been better for England if Jack Cade had succeeded, and

When Adam delved, and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman ?

become the motto of England, we must leave
him to consider us and our " Pedigree and
Heraldry" insanity, and proceed with our
further illustrations of the subject with what

the darkness of far ages; their assumed | portraits of the noble ladies, whose "lily. descent from Odin and Thor was a clear white hands" were such constant objects of enough expression of the fact, that their their simple admiration? Loyalty is the line had been of the highest type of their predominant feeling of these old songs. race, as far as the memory of all the generations of whom they had tidings reached. From this feeling came the strange exaggerations of old writers, those most extraordinary writers, the early expounders of heraldry. "God Almighty cannot make a gentleman!" exclaims one of these worthies. Indeed, James the First is said to have answered his who wished him to create her son one, "Na, na! I can make him a lord, but I canna mak him a gentleman." We have, however, cases of royal creations of gentlemen; there is the instance of one John Kingston, whom one of our kings" ad ordinem generosorum adoptabat," but from the fuss the writers make about this case, it is clear that it was thought extraordinary, nay, so to speak, unnatural. In France, one of the patents of nobility of which we have spoken, though it made a man a privileged person, did not make him a noble in a satisfactory sense. It took some three or four generations to make the offspring, "gentlemen of ancestry." Everything, in fact, shows, that "gentility," which is always spoken of as a matter of "blood" - that forcible and old metaphor affair of race. In the last result, and peering as far as we can into the ante Agamemnona days, we find that certain sections of men were bigger and stronger, and had more energy of every kind, than other men, and became their governors and rulers. Take a simple illustration of the estimation in which different sets of men were held in early times, afforded by our language. The terms villain, churl, boor, all passed, from being simple terms of description, into terms implying humiliation; and on the other hand gentilesse, gentleness, and so on, became the names of qualities such as were supposed to belong to the class from whose designation they were derived.

was an

sings Blind Harry of Sir William Wallace, who sprang from the De Walays of Normandy. Did the reader ever consider the testimony of those old ballads? They were written, it may be supposed, by the born singers of the humbler classes, in old days, when the gentleman's employment was war; they bear every trace of coming warm from the popular heart; now, how do they represent the Aristocracy? Stout Erle Percy and "Sir James, the bold Baron are made noble figures of by these singers; "Good Sir Patrick Spens" is lovable, as seen by their light; and what more charming than their

heart we can.

The gradual and important process by which the distinction between the greater and lesser nobles came about, is not easily traced; the constitution of Parliaments, in early reigns, is involved in obscurity and controversy. It would appear that there was an early distinction between barones majores and Committee on the Dignity of a Peer, esteemed barones minores. The Reports of the Lords this distinction earlier than the time of John. Both classes were barons, and both, in Mr. Hallam's opinion, were constitutionally members of the commune concilium; there was no that is, no distinction at and the barones minores were, in the words all resembling that of caste- - between them; of Camden, those who "vulgo generosi et gentlemen vocantur." Extent of property was probably the cause of the gradual distinction. In the course of it, the majores becaine what we call the Peers on which body the celebrated Madox, in his Baronia Anglica, has the following paragraph :

social distinction

know as 66 county members," our ancient But though the king's heralds were formed English "knights of the shire." By this into a constituted body; though Henry V. means a mass of the aristocracy of the coun- formed them into a College; and Richard III. try became the leaders of the popular interest, granted them a charter of privileges; and and the first stand against Charles the First Henry VIII. issued a commission to the Kings came from men who in every other country of Arms (21 Henry VIII.); in spite of all of Europe would have been counts or mar- this, England never took heartily to Norroy quises; such men as Hampden, Sir Dudley and Clarencieux.* A perpetual struggle went Digges, and Sir John Elliot. One consideration of great importance flows from a right understanding of the historic nature of the English aristocracy, and it is this. When the question is raised as to the number of eminent men produced relatively by the aristocracy and the people, it is never quite fairly argued, from the general misapprehension of the real character of what constitutes "nobility." But we shall devote a special paragraph to this point further on.

To Mr.

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on between the heralds and the multitude. First, there was a war between them and those who would, without authority, assume coat-armor; and an amusing struggle between them and the local painters and undertakers, who presumed to arrange funerals, nay, to wear gowns and tippets" (unhappy Clarencieux!) without authority, and contrary to all heraldic law and example. Their very visitations never received proper attention in England. Their first commission was the one Let us now endeavor to sketch historically above-mentioned, from Henry VIII. We will the state of aristocracy in the country. With give a specimen of the way in which a Visia nobility which does not yield to any other tation was conducted. When the deputy in antiquity or possessions, the English view arrived in a neighborhood he issued such a of the matter has always been more liberal document as the following: tthan that of the continent. This is shown by Summons to a Gentleman to appear before a many particulars. By the comparative inDeputy to a King-at-arms. difference in matters of alliance to begin with; in Germany a mésalliance is ruinous to the parish Co.. best pedigree. But, chiefly, the fact is proved by the very little success which the Heralds' College, or College of Arms, has had in this realm; it has been, and is, a prosperous corporation enough, but it has never been what could be called a successful institution. Heralds are among the oldest officials known. During the days of chivalry, when the knights rode into the tilting field, glittering with armor from head to foot, the herald stood by and announced the individual from the arms upon his shield. He was the messenger of kings and potentates; the regulator of ceremonial and state; the superintendent of all that pertained to the pomp and ornament of life; the authority on arms and pedigree; and the regulator of the stately ceremonies which accompanied that last display of human pride wherein our feudal forefathers were wont to be particularly magnificent, the occasions when

A funeral with plumes and lights,

And music, went to Camelot.

Sir,

.of

You are personally to appear before Esq., Windsor (or other) herald of arms, on being the -th of next, by eight of the clock in the morning, at the sign of the › there to enter your descent and arms, and to bring with you such arms and crest as you bear. Whereof you are not to fail, as you will answer the same before the Lords Commissioners for the office of the Earl Marshal of England.

Many, of course, did (luckily for descendants of a genealogical turn of mind) obey these summonses; but many treated them with indifference. Old Gerard Leigh relates, in his Armorie, that some who were applied to concerning their "coats," made somewhat obvious jests touching other portions of their apparel, shocking to the heraldic mind.

and

As might be expected, the Stuarts contrived to create all the mischief that could be conveniently created out of such institutions as these. In 1633, Charles I. issued a commission, by which the kings-at-arms had " liberty These vulgar hatchments-symbols which to reprove, control, and make infamous, by have lost all meaning-which infest Great- proclamation at the assizes, or general session, gaunt street, are only the miserable descend- all that have taken upon themselves the title ants of the warrior's shield hung outside his of esquire, gentleman, or otherwise,' castle wall, to tell the country that the gentle- also to punish the shameless persons-goldman whom they had followed to battle had smiths and tippet people, mentioned begun his long slumber. On such occasions above. Further than that, he used the " puras these funerals your antique herald was in suivants-at-arms" to arrest Sir Dudley Dighis glory. For he was the lord of the sym-ges and Sir John Elliot, for speaking against bolic, and the interpreter of the gorgeous *Noble's College of Arms; Berry, Preface to imagery by which was expressed, in ornament Encyclopædia Heraldica, &o. and ceremony, the spirit of the ancient life.

66

† Noble, ubi sup. (Appendix, p. 22.)

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the Duke of Buckingham. But the Earl Marshal's Court, a kind of court of honor to which the spirit of England was decidedly adverse, did most mischief to the cause of the heralds. This court took cognizance of "gentility," and made causes about what were properly matters of air and fancy. Copley having spoken somewhat in defamation of Pierpoint's family, was fined 3007. And it was usual, then, to censure men for words, as a person was for saying, that one Brown was no gentleman, but descended from Brown, the great pudding-eater in Kent."*

Visitations fell into disuse. The College of Arms grants arms on application still, for fees; but, of course, interferes not either with shield or tombstone; and that ancient officer. the herald, has passed, like so many other great officials, into beadledom.

The truth is, that the ancient aristocracy, of which the two great appurtenances were the land and the sword, had waned, and were ever waning-not only out of power, but out of existence altogether, long before the times of which we have just been speaking. It is only after poring over the huge tomes of It was not likely that courts and commis- the antiquary, that one begins to understand, sions like these would outlive such a century either how great the old nobles were, or how as the seventeenth in England. The heralds entirely they passed away. In Queen Elizamade a good fight of it; the sturdy Dugdale, beth's time, great social changes were going when he was Norroy, rigidly denounced on. "Brooke, York Herald (we quote again pretenders, publicly disclaiming all who took from Noble), says that Cook, Clarencieux. in upon them the title of gentleman or esquire this (Elizabeth's) reign, granted five hundred nay, sturdily defacing tombstones whereon coats-of-arms to different persons who applied arms were put without right, and so perse- for them; and that the two Dethicks gave cuting the poor parvenu even in his grave!† more than that number; he also acquaints But ever the authority of the Col- us that in his own time one hundred and lege was waning. In 1669, as Anthony à twenty were given within ten years." [Hist. Wood tells us, in the sour pages of his of College of Arms, p. 161.] These grantees, "Life," Sir Edward Bysshe, Clarencieux of course, were new men, every day purchasKing-of-Arms, "was at the Crown Inn, nearing estates from the old families; and no Carfax, in Oxon, in order to visit part of the doubt are the ancestors of many of our most county of Oxon being part of the potent "county families" at present. It province belonging to Clarencieux." Anthony, was natural that moderate estates should not a most laborious antiquary, devoted to learn- hold out in the same families many centuries. ing in his heart, but irritable at the surface, But, meanwhile, what had become of the with papistical tendencies, misogyny, and col- “ 'mighty barons, who formerly overawed the lege scandal, preying thereon, was then in- crown"? The curious particulars concerning dulging what he calls his "esurient genie for these magnates with which we become acantiquities.' However, he spared time to quainted in the great work of Dugdale, suffilook up at the proceedings of Bysshe, and ciently inform us of the splendor of their so to inform us and the world that few condition. The primal baron, who was a gentlemen appeared, because at that time member of the king's council before any there was a horse-race at Brackley. Such that other title but earl was known in England; came to him he entered if they pleased. If who had his own heralds; whose manors they did not, he was indifferent. Many looked were to be counted by dozens; who adminison this affair as a trick to get money.' So far tered justice on his own land, like a prince; Anthony, in his sour and prickly way he had who was waited on at table by gentle blood seen many things galling to an antiquarian - he lies away, in our distant early history, and Tory mind-how, at the " very fair as the megatherium does in that of the world, church" of Banbury, out of "sixty coats of the huge bulk of him only dimly conceivable ! arms that were on the windows before the war The wars and attainders- the fatal Roses, began, only twelve or thirteen were left." whose breath was as deadly as that of the This was in 1659. Likewise he had seen the flowers in Hawthorne's philosophical story,* "ancient and noble seat of Workworth were fatal to him. Innumerable families lately belonging to the Chetwoods of Chet- ended in heiresses, who carried the estates to wood" "sold by them to Hol-smaller men, and gave to their modern deman, a scrivener." And, what was worst of scendants the right to boast of some little of all, he had seen Fulk Grevill of "the antient the old blood of the rulers of Europe. But and gentile familie of the Grevilles in War- the wars of the Roses gave the finishing blow wickshire condemned for highway to the old style of great nobility. A modern robbery ! But we must not linger with noble may achieve considerable splendor in Anthony. The last commission was issued to the upholstery way by dint of money, but it the kings-at-arms in the 2d of James II. is not the splendor of power.

*Noble, from Rushworth.

+Life of Dugdale, prefixed to his "History of St. Paul's." He died in 1685.

There are various examples of the result "Rappacini's Daughter," in the "Mosses from an Old Manse."

of the horrible devastation of the wars of the to furnish soup kitchens and commit poachRoses in the way of family destruction. Of ers! We likewise find heraldry still enthe great house of Stafford, Earls of Stafford, joying considerable vitality in those days, for and Dukes of Buckingham, three successive my Lord Aubrey, having foolishly headed a heads died in the field; and the grandson of the third was beheaded by Henry VIII. This man's son was restored in blood, and the title of Lord Stafford remained to his race; but after public events had spared them, private injury completed the ruin of the male line. The restored lord's eldest son left a line which ended in an heiress, but that heiress married a Howard; and when the grandson of the restored lord (by a second son) claimed the title, he was bullied into silence and obscurity. He died without issue, which was the best thing he could do; but his sister June Stafford married a joiner, and produced a cobbler, who was living in 1637.