The Curiosities of Heraldry

by Mark Antony Lower

“As for Gentlemen (says Sir Thomas Smith[247]) they be made good cheape in this kingdom: for whosoever studieth the laws of the realm, who studieth in the universities, who professeth liberal sciences, and (to be short) who can live idly and without manual labour, and will bear the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall be called master, and taken for a gentleman.” This is the legal definition; but the heralds of former days recognized several different classes of gentlemen; Sir John Ferne, in his ‘Blazon of Gentry,’[248] enumerates the following:

1. Gentlemen of ancestry, with blood and coat-armour perfect; namely, those whose ancestors, on both sides, have, for five generations at least, borne coat-armour.

2. Gentlemen of blood and coat-armour perfect, but not of ancestry; being those descended in the fifth degree from him ‘that slewe a Saracen or Heathen Gentle-man;’ from him that won the standard, guidon, or coat-armour of a Christian gentleman, and so bare his arms; from him that obtained arms by gift from his sovereign; or from him that purchased an estate to which arms appertained. To this order likewise belong a yeoman who has worthily obtained arms and knighthood; and a yeoman who has been made a doctor of laws and has obtained a coat of arms.

3. Gentlemen of blood perfect, and coat armour imperfect; the ‘yonger blouds’ of a house, of which the elder line has failed after a lineal succession of five generations.

4. Gentlemen of blood and coat-armour imperfect; the third in lineal descent from him who slew a Saracen gentleman, &c. &c. &c., as under the third description; also the natural son of a gentleman of blood and coat-armour perfect, and the legitimate son of a yeoman, by a gentlewoman of blood, &c., being an inheritrix.

5. Gentlemen of coat-armour imperfect: those who have slain an infidel gentleman, &c., ut supra; also gentlemen of paper and wax.

6. Gentlemen, neither of blood nor coat-armour, are of three orders; namely, 1, Apocrafat—Students of common law and grooms of the sovereign’s palace, having no coat-armour; 2, Spiritual—A churl’s son made a priest, canon, &c.; and 3, Untriall—He who being brought up in the service of a bishop, abbot, or baron, enjoys the bare title of gentleman; and he that having received any degree of the schools, or borne any office in a city so as to be saluted Master.

As Saracen-killing has long ceased to be a favourite amusement,—as the winning of standards is an undertaking as rare as it is perilous,—as few in protestant England have the good fortune to serve abbots and bishops,—and, as a grant of arms by the heralds is a somewhat expensive affair,—how very few have now the chance of becoming gentlemen in the heraldrical sense of the term. Widely at variance with the courtesies of every-day life are these antiquated laws of chivalry!

We have seen that nearly every man, from the throne to the stable, each in his own sphere, is recognized as a gentleman; yet how few, notwithstanding, like to be so described in a legal, formal manner. Formerly, it was customary to add Gent., as an honourable distinction to one’s name, in the address of his letters, in his will, or upon his tombstone; but in these days nothing short of Esq. is deemed respectful. This foible, however, is not a thing of yesterday; for so long ago as 1709, Mr. Isaac Bickerstaff, of the Tatler, says: “I have myself a couple of clerks; one directs to Degory Goosequill, Esquire, to which the other replies by a note to Nehemiah Dashwell, Esquire, with respect.”

What courtesy at first concedes, the party honoured soon learns to exact. The tenacity with which many persons of some pretensions to family, but with very few of the other qualifications which are supposed to belong to the character of a gentleman, adhere to the courtesy title of Esq. must have been observed by every one. I have heard of persons of this description, who, from the pressure of circumstances, have entered into trade, being mortified by its omission; though their own good sense must have suggested to them the absurdity of such an address as “Nicholas Smith, Esq. Tailor,” or “Geoffry Brownman, Esq. Butcher.” Not long since a squireen of this order (in a southern county), who eked out the little residuum of his patrimony by the occupation of a farm comprising a few acres of hops, on receiving a letter from the local excise-officer respecting the hop-duty with which he was charged, felt his dignity much insulted at being styled in the address plain Mr. Full of rage at the insolence of the official, he appealed to the collector, expecting, probably, that he would reprimand the offender with great severity. The collector, however, treated the matter as a joke, but ordered his clerk to strike out Mr. from the beginning of the name, and to add Esq. at the end. This was not satisfactory to the insulted party, who determined to appeal to a higher court. He accordingly paid a visit to the magistrates in petty sessions assembled at H——, and a dialogue somewhat like the following took place.