Like many things during the Napoleonic Wars/Regency, there were a number of sea-changes in society, but the English gentleman had a long history and was the entry point for the middle class into the upper class…one of the draws to becoming an 'Officer and gentleman'.Our notions of a 'gentleman' are colored by two centuries of subsequent history and evolution of the 'gentleman.'
It does explain the rather confused dealings with Napoleon and whether he deserved to be treated as a 'gentleman.' I've taken the liberty of added portions of a study on the Regency gentleman.
The History of the Gentleman
When the Normans conquered Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, William the Conqueror installed a new hierarchy of titles for the ruling class. These men and their families owned the majority of all available land across England. Those who lived on those lands were ‘subjects' of the ruling class and of the King.
At the same time, the Age of Chivalry was dawning. At its heart was a set of ethical behaviors and heroic ideals expected specifically of the warriors, the knights of Feudal Europe—which included the majority of the nobility. Our notions of ‘fair play', gracious behaviors, being polite and thoughtful of others less fortunate all were encapsulated in the ideals of Chivalry.
A ‘gentleman' originally meant someone at the lowest rung of The upper class, below a squire. The Squire was the knight's apprentice. The Gentleman was the ‘squire in waiting', an officer among a knight's soldier servants. They shared the same expectations of chivalric behavior as any knight. Heredity still held sway…unless they won glory for the king and as a reward, a hereditary title and land.
By the Regency period, Squire was still an honor that could be conferred by the Crown and the title was included with certain offices such as Justice of the Peace. A squire was often the principle landowner in a district.
The rank of gentleman became a distinct title with the statute of Additions in 1413 and remained so into the Regency. This title was given to a man of high rank or birth, with wealth and inherited land, though there were exceptions. At the time, it was an inherited title as well as conferred and 'assumed' by the acquisition of property. A gentleman had his wealth from the land, not 'Trade' or actual work.
In the beginning, chivalric behavior was simply something expected of anyone holding the rank of gentleman or above to the highest ranks of nobility, as most were also 'knighted' as well as titled. William Harrison writing in the late 1500s, noted, "Gentlemen be those whom their race and blood, [birth and family] or at the least their virtues, [accomplishments/achieving glory] do make noble and known."
Even this early, a growing middle class sought entry into the upper classes with their new wealth, not surprisingly, at this lowest rung of nobility. In 1614, John Selden, author of Titles of Honor voiced a growing concern with ‘created' gentlemen:
"…that no Charter can make a Gentleman, which is cited as out of the mouth of some great Princes that have said it." He adds that "they without question understood Gentleman for Generosus in the ancient sense, or as if it came from Genii/is in that sense, as Gentilis denotes one of a noble Family, or indeed for a Gentleman by birth." For "no creation could make a man of another blood more than he is."
The feudal creation of chivalric knighthood, of sensitive, ‘genteel' behavior on the part of warriors grew to be seen as evidence of ‘good breeding',[As in family lineage] a visible distinction setting the upper classes apart from the lower classes.
Not surprising, this set of behaviors had to be clearly defined. Henry Peacham's 1634 treatise The Compete English Gentleman: The Truth in Our Times, was an example of an author delineating these differences to the upper class by one of their own.
The Successful Noble, the Successful Gentleman.
What constituted success and status for men of the European aristocracy from 1600 to 1800 was exemplified by the most successful noble in the middle of that period, Louis XIV, The Sun King. The goal of that French monarch was identical for every aristocrat: Glory. Or as the German princes called it ‘Ruhm.' This was gained fame, admiration and social distinction. "Honor" was existing Glory, and the responsibility of the honorable to defend it. These outward signs of glory and honor were attained by successful wars and battlefield heroics, gaining new territories and personal notoriety among a noble's peers, usually by a conspicuous demonstration of wealth, with clothing, court and social activities, impressive buildings and possessions.
Louis VIX was the model. It didn't matter how small or poor the European principality or duchy, a smaller version of the Versailles palace had to be built, wars fought and personal grandeur bought. The most expensive possessions and extravagant spending remained de rigor, driving many nobles—and their states—into poverty.
This desire for glory on the part of the British upper classes continued into the 19th Century.
In 1812, Colonel George Napier, an officer and a gentleman, speaking of why he went to war wrote, "I should hate to fight out of personal malice or revenge, but have no objection to fighting for fun and glory."
Glory and attendant honor was open to any gentleman in uniform.
Social Challenges to the Upper Classes
The foundational challenge was the ‘Enlightenment.' Newton and Halley were discovering the laws of the universe. Philosophers such as Voltaire and Hume were challenging the intellectual tyranny of established religions. Rational thought and Man's ability to understand the world viewed the arbitrary laws and traditions such as hereditary power and ‘Divine Right of Kings' as hindrances to human progress in all areas of life.
In 1700, Louis XIV had said, "I am the State". Fifty years later, a rational ‘Philosopher King', Frederick the Great, as absolute a ruler as Louis, viewed himself as "The First Servant of the State." Government has moved from the individual to an entity made up of every subject including the king: the state. Chivalry, which had been seen as pertaining to warrior knights grew to be a ‘rational' expectation of any intelligent and educated person in the ruling classes.
The political challenges went deeper. A contemporary of Frederick's, Jean Jacque Rosseau, signed his letters and essays ‘A Citizen.' He was not the subject of a king. He insisted on a different relationship with ‘the state.' All men were equal as members of the ‘social contract.' Those radical views of government and Man's relationship to it led to both the American and French Revolutions. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 is based on this idea. This view saw representative government as the rational model, an idea encouraged in England by a history of civil wars, progressively limiting the power of the monarchy. However, the British upper classes found themselves caught between the power gained through a weakened monarchy and the ideas of representative government, especially the madness of the French Revolution and Napoleon, threatening their hereditary powers.
The Gentleman Redefined
Ancient traditions of what constituted the gentry were challenged in the 18th Century by the Enlightenment ideas. In turn, the Enlightenment ideals were challenged in the late 1700s by Romanticism. Where the Enlightenment held up the intellect, classical thought and reason as the salvation of man, Romanticism challenged that view, turning to the emotions, the individual and the senses as more essential to life. During the Regency period, these two views marched side-by-side, when not mixing in complicated ways. The growth of the wealthy middle class and the reading public spread these views. For instance, British poets at the beginning of the 19th century seemed to exemplify this Enlightenment-Romanticism dichotomy. Coleridge, Wordsworth and Keats spoke to the intellectual approach to beauty, while Blake, Shelly and Byron were the sensual romantics, the arbitrators of ‘the New Man.' This is a basic conflict in Austen's book Sense and Sensibility: Elinor Dashwood holds on to propriety, sensible behavior in spite of her emotions whereas her sister Marianne values the purity of emotions honestly expressed above the artificial strictures of etiquette.'
Even politics were affected: the Tories held to traditional, rational beliefs, the Whigs, the liberal views of representative government, equality and romanticism.
The expectations of gentlemanly behavior also became more democratic under these pressures, however at odds with upper class definitions.
Romanticism took the ideals of Chivalry and their attendant ethical behaviors and made them the ennobling aspect: Behavior defined the gentleman. Books and magazines concerning etiquette appeared detailing the proper behavior of gentlemen. Before the end of the 18th century, The Gentleman's Magazine appeared. One of the first published to both ‘educate and inform' the upper class gentleman—and the ambitious middle class of professionals and businessmen. Popular novels also detailed these expectations in an effort to ‘educate.'
The idea of ‘ennobling' genteel behavior took hold in various ways. A story told at the end of the 18th century, which is probably not true, but indicative of this idea involved King James II. The monarch was petitioned by a lady asking him to make her son a gentleman. He supposedly replied, "I could make him a nobleman, but God Almighty could not make him a gentleman." The ideal of gentlemanly behavior was being separated from any upper class distinction or rank. That is a basic conflict in Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice.
In 1811, four men walk into a ballroom. One is a titled noble, one is a local squire, third is a wealthy and landed businessman and the fourth, a lawyer.
The host walks up to them and says, "Gentlemen, welcome to our ball." Which men is he speaking to? By the Regency, a man could be called a ‘gentleman' for variety of reasons:
•A recognized rank in law and society as a land-owning member of the upper class.
•Any person of the upper class, noble or gentry, the recipient of heredity and tradition.
•A wealthy person of the upper class without land but with family among the gentry or nobility.
•A broad social class that included those who owned land (the country or landed gentry) as well as specific professions who did not (barristers, physicians, military officers and the clergy).
•A hereditary consequence of ‘good breeding.'
•Anyone adhering to a set of social and ethical principles, proper behavior and etiquette. This quality could possibly have any man being referred to as ‘a gentleman.'
•An address applied as a sign of respect to any man.
Any and all of the above might apply or not to the four men mentioned above. If that sounds confusing and rather contradictory, it was.
"You misled me by the term gentleman," observes one character in Austin's Persuasion, "I thought you were speaking of some man of property." This confusion becomes a serious social conundrum for gentlemen of the Regency.
The Regency Upper Class: The realm of the Gentleman
By 1800, The British nobility or peerage included about 300 families of royal parentage as well as non-royal Dukes, Marquis, Earls, Viscounts, and Barons.
The Gentry were ranked lower, being all those who were not nobility, but still considered part of the upper class. This included all the offspring of a titled father except the first born son. However, the gentry also encompassed non-hereditary titles including 540 baronets, 350 knights, 6,000 landed squires and about 20,000 gentlemen.
The families of these nobles and gentry, the Beau Monde, totaled perhaps 1.5% of the British population in 1800 and about 20% of the national income. However, the nobility and gentry combined owned more than 70% of the land across the British Isles. Thus, in 1801, the gentleman was a member of an elite group numbering no more than 100,000 individuals in a nation of 8 million in England and Wales, nearly 16 million counting Scotland and Ireland.
Though industrialization and urbanization had begun to take hold at the end of the eighteenth century, the most influential sector of society during the Regency was the landed gentry through sheer numbers, and not the titled nobility. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this relatively small group retained their hold over the land through a system that encouraged the consolidation and extension of estates by enforcing strict inheritance laws.
Entails of the kind referred to in Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility were established during this period in order to concentrate wealth and enlarge estates by funneling property to male children or male relatives rather than breaking it up and distributing it amongst family members, male and female. The continental kingdoms such as France did not do this, which resulted in the nobility multiplying in number while diluting noble estates, later generations becoming impoverished princes and dukes with ever smaller holdings.
Thus, Mr. Bennett's land is left not to his daughters but to a male member of his extended family, Mr. Collins, ensuring that the property stays in the family line, while disinheriting Elizabeth and her sisters. Large country estates of the kind Mr. Darcy owned and Mr. Bingley desires to purchase, served as a symbol of the wealth and power of the landed gentry. The Gentry was a uniquely British stratum of upper class society not found in continental Europe. Many of the Gentry were far wealthier than dukes and princes on the continent, or even in Britain.
Officially, in order to be a member of the gentry, a man had to own a country house and estate lands which would be rented by tenant farmers or workers. A gentleman did not work his lands or *gasp* do manual labor like a small land owner, the yeoman farmer. His income came from the tenants. All financial ties to business and ‘trade' had to be severed to gain and retain gentry status.
Because of the many changes created by twenty years of war and the attendant economic problems, becoming a gentleman actually grew easier, though buying an estate remained an expensive legal transaction. However, achieving the elevated position of gentleman, whether by wealth or accord, did not necessarily guarantee acceptance by the ranks of the upper class. There was a bottom tier where one was barely acknowledged regardless of wealth and land.
This inner-gentry ranking wasn't enforced by law, per se, but rather by active social strictures. The Beau Monde policed its own. One had to be ‘allowed in' socially, which was difficult without significant support. Jane Austen portrayed this social ‘gate' repeatedly in her novels.
This kind of censor could come from any quarter, but it always sounded the same. For example, Reverend William Holland, the vicar for the parish of Overstowey in Somerset, wrote in his diary in 1799 about a local man, Andrew Guy, "Alias squire Guy, a rich old widower…the son of a grazier [raised cattle] lifted up to the rank of gentleman, but ignorant and illiterate." They would never be fully accepted, and the best hope was for their children to marry ‘above their station', something that also could carry a stigma.
A newly minted gentleman, someone like a wealthy merchant or even successful naval officers such as Admiral Croft and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion, did not have the prestige attached to ‘old families' who inherited landed estates over several generations. The resistance to the ‘new gentry' is portrayed in Austen's novel many times. For example, Anne Elliott's family in the same novel is forced to rent their estate to the far wealthier Admiral Croft, but they still see him as an inferior interloper.
In Pride & Prejudice, Sir William Lucas is a knighted gentleman, but still deferential to the untitled Darcy because his family, far wealthier, comes from a long line of Darcy's whereas Lucas has no inherited land or title. In Emma, the Vicar Philip Elton considers himself a gentleman and therefore capable of marrying Emma, while she, because of her sense of class distinctions, never imagines he would or could seriously consider courting her. It is no accident that Jane Austin gave Darcy [D'Arcy] and Lady de Bourgh ancient family names harking back to the French Normans.
Money and broadening definitions made this access to the upper class possible, but it also threatened the established class system. Weakening boundaries around the gentry saw family history and any such distinctions as evermore critical, defending the class boundaries and a gentleman's rank as an issue of survival, particularly when facing the dictums of the French Revolution. The Tories recognized this danger. Edmund Burke, is seen as the father of modern conservativism.
In his 1791 "Reflections on the Revolution in France", he wrote in detail about the need to uphold tradition, believing a nation's wealth and stability resided in land ownership, the established hierocracy, not business and the fickle marketplace where land is sold and bought like cattle. It is no accident that some of his ideas are today championed by a group called "Chivalry Now."
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paints brigs for the British fleet.
