The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer.
- Abram Smythe Palmer
- Date:
- [1908]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The ideal of a gentleman, or, A mirror for gentlefolks : a portrayal in literature from the earliest times / by A. Smythe-Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.
35/542 page 19
![The Lord Keeper [Finch, 1640] strongly urged the Commons, to postpone the consideration of their supposed grievances,, reminding them that ‘ they had the word of a King, and not only so but of a Gentleman.' {Note :—One of the earliest instances [?] of ‘ gentleman ’ being used in this sense.] 1845, Lord Campbell, Lives of the Chancellors, vol. ii, p. 560. I am a gentleman: and, by my birth Companion with a King : a King’s no more. Heywood. K. Henry : What are you ? Pistol : As good a gentleman as the Emperor. Shakspere, K. Henry V, iv, i, 42. An English gentleman no more thinks himself degraded by or inferior to an English nobleman, an English nobleman no more thinks himself degraded or inferior to an English king or queen, than a man of five feet nine thinks himself degraded by or inferior to a man of six feet three. Each rank is as jealous of its own privileges as it is punctilious in the observance of those of others. Saturday Review, vol. Ixii. p. 394, (1886). They are Gentlemen (saith he) which within themselues and in their own family haue continued the name of their house, being sprong from an honest and famous stock, whose Auncestors were Erenchmen [i.e. ‘ frank ’ or free men] and which for their disloialty haue not susteined any capitall paine. . . . Eor the protection and defence of this Gentil estate (being an excellency and noblenesse arising from the practise of virtues and conioined in one kinred or bloud) many lawes were by our aged forefathers carefully prouided. . . . Budaeus (upon the same place also) noteth, ‘ Gentiles fuerunt hi qui imagines sui generis proferre poterant, et erant Insignia Gentilitium quae hodie Arma dicuntur.’ So then the bearing of Armes was always proper and peculiar to the estate of Gentry, as the signe and outward badge of their generous and gentill kind, differing them from churles ; whereby it appeareth that no man can be properly called a Gentleman except he be a Gentleman of bloud, possessing vertue ; and such a one, that is to say, a gentleman of bloud and coate-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29008529_0037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
