Gentleman

The term gentleman (from Latin gentilis, belonging to a race or gens, and "man", cognate with the French word gentilhomme, the Spanish hombre gentil, and the Italian gentil huomo), in its original and strict signification, denoted a man of good family, the Latin generosus (its invariable translation in English-Latin documents). In this sense the word equates with the French gentilhomme (nobleman), which latter term was in Great Britain long confined to the peerage. The term gentry (from the Old French genterise for gentelise) has much of the significance of the French noblesse or of the German Adel. This was what the rebels under John Ball in the 14th century meant when they repeated:

Superiority of the fighting man

The fundamental idea of "gentry", symbolised in this grant of coat-armour, had come to be that of the essential superiority of the fighting man; and, as Selden points out (page 707), the fiction was usually maintained in the granting of arms "to an ennobled person though of the long Robe wherein he hath little use of them as they mean a shield".

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At the last the wearing of a sword on all occasions was the outward and visible sign of a "gentleman"; and the custom survives in the sword worn with "court dress".

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This idea that a gentleman must have a coat of arms (and that no-one is a "gentleman" without one) came about, however, comparatively late in history, the outcome of the natural desire of the heralds to magnify their office and collect fees for registering coats; and the same is true of the conception of gentlemen as a separate class.

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