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Archiver > HERBARZ > 2003-08 > 1059773016


From: "Leon Stevens" <>
Subject: RE: English Gentlemen
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 17:23:40 -0400


Dictionaries are probably not the best place to look for detailed
descriptions of the English nobility. Other sources far better describe
the English social structure and heraldic practice, such as J.H Pinches,
European Nobility and Heraldry, Boutell's Heraldry, Debretts's Peerage,
etc. etc. While most descendants of peers and knights (gentry), i.e.
nobles, are armigers through all male lines, most armigers are
commoners, owing to the laws of primogeniture. The eldest sons of peers
and the eldest sons of all younger brothers inherit nobility, but only
the eldest sons of eldest sons among the gentry inherit it. In the
event that there are no surviving sons, heiresses may pass nobility on
to their children according to the patterns mentioned supra along with
their paternal arms to be quartered with their husbands'. Indeed Queen
Elizabeth herself has a multitude of common albeit armigerous distant
cousins. Whether or not yeomen or oblique ranks are "nobles" depends on
the historical period under discussion, but as Pinches notes, even now
the precise position of yeomen (non-knightly ordinary freeholders) is
not entirely clear.


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