Squires And Peers

Abstract One of the interesting minor debates in Victorian public life was over the definition of a gentleman: a debate which, if it did not reach a definite conclusion, at least revealed the confused standards of a rapidly changing society. Historically the term indicated a describable, if not definable, social status. It was the closest post-medieval England came to a caste. In their memoirs men could write without selfconsciousness that ‘I was born a gentleman’; on their tombstones ‘Gent.’ would appear after their name as a sufficient description of their rank. In this time-honoured sense, ‘gentlemen’ and the collective word ‘gentry’ were an extension of the hereditary aristocracy: men of good blood but not necessarily with a title. The gentry class was not a close caste; it was always losing impoverished members and gaining affluent recruits. The duke of Wellington was fond of a saying attributed to Charles II that he could make a hundred noblemen but not a single gentleman. ‘Foreigners’, he told Raikes, ‘hardly know our definition of the term.