Gentleman - Landed Gentry

Landed Gentry

That a distinct order of landed gentry existed in England very early has, indeed, been often assumed and is supported by weighty authorities. Thus, the late Professor Freeman (in Encyclopædia Britannica xvii. page 540 b, 9th edition) said: "Early in the 11th century the order of 'gentlemen' as a separate class seems to be forming as something new. By the time of the conquest of England the distinction seems to have been fully established." Stubbs (Const. Hist., ed. 1878, iii. 544, 548) takes the same view. Sir George Sitwell, however, has suggested that this opinion is based on a wrong conception of the conditions of medieval society and that it is wholly opposed to the documentary evidence.

The fundamental social cleavage in the Middle Ages was between the nobiles, i.e., the tenants in chivalry, whether earls, barons, knights, esquires or franklins, and the ignobiles, i.e., the villeins, citizens and burgesses; and between the most powerful noble and the humblest franklin there was, until the 15th century, no "separate class of gentlemen". Even as late as 1400, the word gentleman still only had the sense of generosus and could not be used as a personal description denoting rank or quality, or as 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".