The caviller will perhaps ask, concerning some of the rambling observations contained in this chapter, and the subject which has called them forth, Cui bono? He may also mutter something about the nobility of virtue, as the only one worth possessing. Well, well, let him enjoy his opinion, and maintain it if he can; but until he has convinced me that true integrity and exalted benevolence cannot reside beneath a coronet, and that the nobility of station obliterates or neutralizes that of virtue, I shall beg leave also to enjoy mine; admitting, meanwhile, the correctness of a sentiment quaintly, though wisely, advanced by Sir John Ferne: “That kind of gentry which is but a bare noblenes of bloud, not clothed with vertues (the right colours of a gentleman’s coat-armour) is the meanest, yea, and the most base of all the rest: for it respecteth but onely the body, being derived from the loynes of the auncestors, not from the minde, which is the habitation of vertue, the inne of reason, and the resemblaunce of God; and, in true speach, this gentry of stock only shal be said but a shadow, or rather a painture of nobility.”[251]
| “Manners makyth man, Quoth William of Wykeham.” |
CHAPTER XI.
Historical Notices of the College of Arms.
(Arms of the College.)[252]