70 THE ANCESTOR that is to say, of an Earl or Baron.' ^ But even this distinc- tion is not always maintained, for 'others/ namely some of the more influential bannerets and knights, were occasionally included, together with prelates, earls and barons, under the title of les grants? Evidently the earls and barons differed from the chivalers in degree only, and not in kind. Privileged tenure or special summons to Parliament had made them more notable, but could not make them more noble than the rest. This want of discrimination between what we should now call noblemen and gentlemen is reflected in the use of the words themselves, for in Edward III.'s time every noble- man was a gentilbomme and every gentilhomme a noble. If a distinction is ever drawn, as between two classes, we shall find that it is due to error or misunderstanding. In the English version of the Scrope and Grosvenor depositions, two of the deponents are made to speak of ' nobles and valiant knights and esquires,' and again of ' nobles and valiant persons.' In both cases the translation is at fault.^ Another witness does actually refer to 'noble lords, valiant knights and good esquires,' ^ and the phrase would have considerable weight did we not meet later on with a variant of it, in which the knights and esquires are noble and the lords are valiant.^ Though Sir Richard Scrope's ancestors were not of baronial rank, quite a number of witnesses deposed that he was sprung from nohles et gentils hommeSy dez aunciens gentils hommez & de noble sane ; and one went so far as to say that his ancestors ' had always remained noblez &' gentils.' ^ Such phrases as gentils ^ noblezj gentils hommes chivalers ^ esquiers^ noble et generouse sane dez gentils hommeSy noblez gentilx generousez hommes^^ noblez vail- lantz chivalers ^ esquiers^^ are frequently met with. In Chaucer and other writers of this period ' gentil ' means neither more 1 Ztat. i. 231. 2 Rymer's Fcedera, ii. 274 ; Scrope and Grosvenor, i. 181 ; Gneist's Hist. Eng. Constit. note. ^ Scrope and Grosvenor, ii. 221, 245. * i. 68. ^ i. 70. ^ i. 185. 7 i. 156. 8 i. 187. 9 16^, 10 190. 11 i. 185, 195. ^2 Derived from the secondary meaning of * gentil' as graceful and w^ell mannered is its use in the Canterbury Tales to denote all the better-bred persons in the company of pilgrims : —
- And right anon the gentils ganne to crye
Nay lat hym telle us of no ribavdye ' (Pardoner's Prologue, 37). Here the v^^ord includes, I suppose, the knight, esquire, prioress, nun, monk, friar, merchant, clerk, man-of-lav7, franklin, and possibly the doctor and parson.
