Words In History: Gentleman
The 'gentle' in 'gentleman' could be seen as inappropriate, for, as George Redmond reveals, the word 'gentleman' was applied to a man entitled to bear arms.
George continues his pioneering series examining the meaning of words in an historical context. To read earlier articles in this series please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/words_in_history/
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The word 'gentleman' applied properly to a man who was entitled to bear arms but did not rank among the nobility. It was deemed important for a gentleman to live without manual labour and it was said that being a merchant was 'no competent or seemelye trade of lyfe for a gentleman'.
From the mid-1400s the word was used frequently, after a man's name, as an indication of his rank. For example, John de Mitforde, 'gentilman', was living in Northumberland in 1425.
It was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that members of the gentry became increasingly aware of their position or degree, and the subject was one they frequently commented on. Sir Henry Savile, accepting his baronetcy, wrote 'I desyre neither to be first nor laste; I can be content to followe Mr Wentworth and Sir Henry Bellasis ... for any other I yet heare of I may without any great incongruitye be rank't afore them'.
Nevertheless, it was to some extent a man's neighbours who decided whether or not he was a gentleman, and the right to be addressed as 'Mr' was a recognition of that. The status was therefore determined as much by common estimation as by legal distinctions. The Ramsden family of Longley were among the gentry in the Almondbury area, from the mid-1500s, but early references to William Ramsden, who was the architect of the family's fortune, reflect the hesitation among his contemporaries about the exact status that he enjoyed. In 1547, for example, he was described as 'William Ramsden of Longley, Yorkshire, gentleman, alias late of Almondbury, yeoman, alias of Elland, yeoman, alias late of London, esquire'.
