72 THE ANCESTOR It should be possible, I think, to trace in the rolls, statutes and public records the exact process by which the word ' gentleman ' was reduced to its present more limited signi- ficance. Just as African lakes in winter swell into inland seas, so many of the old class-names had a wider as well as a narrower meaning. The churchmen are sometimes included among the nohiles^ the free tenants among the milites^^ the knights among the lihere tenentes ^ and even among the liberi homines. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was more usual for the ' knights and free tenants ' to be separately men- tioned, but even this classification groups together under one heading lords of manors, esquires, the sons or descendants of barons and knights, and humble freeholders who owned but a few acres of land. The inconvenience of this want of dis- tinction must have been strongly felt, especially in the latter half of the fourteenth century, when a great deal of nonsense was being talked about ' gentle blood,' * and cumbrous phrases, such as ml yoman ne null autere de meindre estat que Esquier (1392-3 and 1397)5^ and toutes manieres de gentils gents desouth r estat de chivaler (1363),^ were invented to meet the difficulty. From these or from the hypothetical form, seigneurs et autres gentils^ it is but a single step to describe untitled noblemen simply as gentils. But even as late as the year 1400, it was impossible to use ' gentleman ' as a personal description ex- pressing rank or quality, or as the title of a class. The Earl of Salisbury, as I have already pointed out, claimed in 1399 to be a gentleman. The statute of 1 400-1 in restraint of livery still divides mankind into ' knights, esquires and valetti^ and this is the more remarkable because the word ' gentleman ' occurs in the same paragraph only a few lines later. There is a proviso that the king's eldest son may give livery ^ to the said lords and to his menial gentlemen {meignalx gentilx).' When we come to enquire who these menials could be we understand why the word valetti comes next after esquire in the classification of ranks. The prince's household was a copy in miniature of his father's, and the king had retained power to confer livery upon the lords temporal, whomsoever he pleased, and upon his * menial knights and esquires.' The prince's menial gentlemen therefore included knights and ^ Nichols' Leicester, i. 145, note. ^ Leg. Mai. Mah. cap. 2. ^ Nichols, i. 170, note. * Wright's Domestic Manners, pp. 416-8. 5 Rot, Pari. iii. 307, 345. ^ ^tat. i. 380.
