THE CONFLICT BETWEEN BRITISH & CONTINENTAL CONCEPTS OF NOBILITY

By the later fifteenth century the right to hereditary arms was apparently considered to be the principle evidence of nobility for British postulants for membership of the Order of Saint John. Today it is considered to be the sole evidence thereof by the SMHOM, despite the fact that a right to arms is not necessarily proof of nobility and it is certainly not evidence that a particular family has enjoyed a leading role in society for the past century or more. Not all British nobles are necessarily armigerous. Of the extant titled British nobility there are fifteen hereditary barons (in the UK peerage) _ and twenty-seven baronets who are not technically armigers._ The theoretical method of dating the conferral of nobility for the purposes of the British Association of the SMHOM, for those of British descent, is the date on which arms were conferred upon the family of the postulant, so it would appear that none of these Peers or Baronets would have qualified for the SMHOM as "nobles", a clearly nonsensical result. Since those who received knighthoods from the Crown were entitled to petition for a grant and their primogeniture descendants were Esquires, the descendants of those eighteenth and nineteenth century knights who did not so petition surely cannot be considered disqualified from claiming gentility merely because their ancestor did not choose to spend the few pounds necessary to obtain a grant. One cannot deny the nobility of a person who has been actually "ennobled" by the British Crown but has not received a grant, thus proof of the right to hereditary arms cannot be considered an absolute standard for determining whether a postulant is noble.

When the British Association was founded in the mid-nineteenth century the proof of a right to arms was instituted once again. If membership in the noble grades had been limited to the descendants in the male line of the recipients of hereditary titles or knighthoods bestowed by the Crown, the association could only have been very small. Requiring the same broad standard used by the heralds to determine whether a person was entitled to petition for arms could have lacked the objectivity that is bestowed by demanding proof of actually enjoying such a right. The decision to adopt the qualification of being an Armiger may be attributed at least in part to the need to establish some kind of objective standard but, perhaps inevitably, it has proved to be unsatisfactory. In the British Association (as of 31 December 1994), excluding the eighteen descendants in the male line of the recipients of non-British titles or conferrals of nobility, sixty-three members (of whom twenty are hereditary peers and peeresses and two are baronets) out of the one hundred and eighty-three members of the noble grades, are descended in the male line from the grantees of  hereditary peerages or baronetcies (i.e. who had been ennobled directly by the Crown). Thus one hundred and seven members of the Association in the grades of Justice, Obedience, Honor or Grace and Devotion may be presumed under the regulations to have proved their right to bear legitimate British arms granted more than three hundred years prior to their application or that their four grandparents enjoyed a right to hereditary arms (for Honor and Devotion) or one hundred years (for Grace and Devotion) as the sole evidence of their nobility. An examination of the roll of members demonstrates, however, that this is not actually the case.

For several members in the noble grades, including peers, proof of descent from the recipient of arms living more than three hundred or one hundred years ago (depending on the rank) has not in practice been treated as the absolute test of nobility. The families of several knights of Honor or Grace and Devotion are the first recipients of grants of arms, sometimes conferred retroactively on an ancestor on the basis that that ancestor would have been eligible for a grant if he had applied and to extend the grant to a wider range of members of that family. For some members a recent male ancestor, who was judged to have enjoyed the status of gentleman, may have been the first recipient of a new grant within much less than the one hundred year limit that is the technical requirement for entry into Grace and Devotion or the three hundred year limit for Honor and Devotion._

In those countries in which the nobility enjoyed substantial privileges, the right to confer membership of this class was guarded jealously by the sovereign but, in England, the prerogative of recognizing nobility by according or confirming arms came to be delegated to the discretion of the Earl Marshal and Kings of Arms and, in Scotland, to the Lord Lyon King of Arms and his Court. Thus, while the conferral of a peerage, baronetcy or knighthood was the exclusive privilege of the English or Scottish Crown, it was never necessary to have received such an honor in order to apply to the Earl Marshal or Lord Lyon for a grant. Since 1964 it has actually become less common for those who have been ennobled by the conferral of life peerages, or who have received a knighthood or other such royal favor, to apply for grants, while many of those who have received grants over the past two centuries may never have received any notable mark of distinction or honorific directly from the Sovereign. Although the Earl Marshal holds his authority from the Crown and members of the College of Arms are officers of the Sovereign's household, the recognition of gentility by a grant of arms is not initiated by the Crown but is a privilege conferred upon the request of a petitioner, subject to the personal sanction of the Earl Marshal. The British Crown has never attempted to restrict entry to the gentry or lesser noble class, leaving it up to the Kings of Arms to define its extent, despite the considerable reluctance of every Monarch until George III to increase the size of the peerage.

Until the early sixteenth century, the spiritual peers were generally in the majority but Henry VIII, in order to ensure passage of his measures against the Queen and against the Church, considerably increased the size of the lay peerage. In 1523 twenty-eight lay peers were summoned to Parliament, in 1529 the number had increased to forty-four and, in 1536, to fifty-three, putting the lay peers in the majority._  From the mid-sixteenth century until 1700, the size of the English peerage expanded to one hundred and sixty, thanks in part to the creations made to reward changes of political allegiance. This number remained more or less constant until 1783 but was much smaller in the size of the continental privileged nobility. The considerable changes in the size of the English and British peerage (excluding Scottish and Irish titles) after that date can best be demonstrated by detailing the expansion of the different degrees of the peerage over the following twenty-five years -  as of the end of 1808 all eighteen Ducal titles had been created before 1783, but eleven of the twelve Marquesses, twenty-nine (or 31.5%) of the ninety-two Earls, ten (or 45.5%) of the twenty-two Viscounts and an astonishing eighty-nine (or 63%) of the one hundred and forty-one barons, making one hundred and thirty-nine (or 48.9%) of the two hundred and eighty-five peers, were created during this quarter century.

During the period from 1815 to 1964, the British peerage expanded nearly four times, although the number of British peers was proportionately always much less than the titled continental nobility, since a peerage accorded the right to a seat in the nation's parliament. The French Peerage founded in 1814/15 and which continued through the Orléanist Monarchy was of a comparable size and indeed established in imitation of the British. The lesser British nobility or gentry likewise increased enormously during the same period with the establishment of an entrenched upper class whose wealth derived from business or the professions rather than land and whose interest in petitioning for arms was stimulated by Victorian historical revivalism. No longer were hereditary titles conferred in  recognition of a family's wealth, standing and power, however, but rather as tokens of regard for meritorious service. Thus the heirs of such titles no longer necessarily represented the leading elite.

Sixteenth and Seventeenth century English writers, as Sayer has demonstrated,_ established a distinctive hierarchy in the English nobility. The privileges of a peer were always restricted to the peer himself while his sons (irrespective of the courtesy title and precedence they enjoyed as a result of their father's dignity) were by birth all “Esquires,” a title which would descend by male primogeniture to the descendants of the peer's younger sons. The same title likewise descends by male primogeniture to the eldest son of a knight or those who had received the title of Esquire from the Crown by investiture, and is born by right by the eldest son of a baronet until his succession. It later came to be attributed to other classes by virtue of office, but only for the duration of the office or lifetime of the holder._ All the other male descendants in the male line of peers, baronets, knights and esquires were simply “gentlemen,” a very precise term as interpreted by sixteenth and seventeenth century heralds in their visitations, recognizing the fact that such a person was entitled to use or, alternatively, qualified to petition for a grant of arms.

It may be observed that from the late seventeenth century it became increasingly rare for new knights to petition for a grant. Thus, while the descendant of such a knight would be entitled theoretically to the formal style of esquire or gentleman, he would be unable to prove nobility for the Order of Malta. Today the precise meaning of the titles of esquire and gentleman have been lost and they are commonly used without any relation to the armorial status of the person so qualified._

In England and most of Europe from the fifteenth century the possibility of transmission of the right to arms through a female heiress was reduced to the right to quarter the arms, and thus was limited to persons already possessing the right to coat armor. In Scotland and Portugal the transmission unquartered was permitted through the female line (although in the case of Portugal the female arms had to be suitably differenced), but the Order of Malta has resisted recognizing that nobility, as opposed to arms, could be transmitted in this fashion. A case was made by officers of the Scottish Lord Lyon Court for the Order to recognize that "nobility" could be inherited from an "heraldic heiress" and three members of the British Association whose paternal lines were deficient, were treated leniently in the application of the rules because of their inheritance of ancient arms through the female line. Nonetheless, the SMHOM has more recently refused to recognize that proof of a right to Arms inherited from a female could entitle a postulant to claim nobility from the date of the original grant or recognition of those arms. Thus the Order does not automatically accept local nobiliary law when such law conflicts with the general standard (i.e. nobility only passing in the male line)._ The British rules permit entry into the noble ranks of the descendants of families which have received grants relatively recently. Families which  have received grants of arms within the last one hundred and twenty years (when the French Third Republic was instituted), have provided many high officers of the Association in the class of Obedience who would have been ineligible for this class had they been born French. It may be argued that this reflects a more balanced view of society and that there are many continental families which over four or more generations have maintained a status comparable to that of the English gentry.

The jurisdiction of the Lord Lyon King of Arms is more extensive than that of the College of Arms, in both the effect of the Lord Lyon's grant and the penalties that he can impose for improper use of arms. While the grant of arms in England is merely recognition of the gentility of the recipient, the grant or matriculation in Scotland “constitutes” the grantee as a member of the “noblesse”(although this may not be considered the equivalent of “conferring” nobility). As in England, a Scottish grant is made only following the petition of the would-be grantee, thus the Scottish nobility cannot be compared with that of continental Europe whose members owed their status to royal grant or confirmation, after 1815 always initiated by the sovereign. “Constituting” an individual as a member of the noblesse of Scotland, however,  is not the exclusive privilege of the Lord Lyon King of Arms, since there can be no doubt that a non-armiger who inherits a Scottish peerage through the female line, or the recipient of membership in the Order of the Thistle, must be considered to be a Scottish noble whether or not that person receives a grant of arms. Under the present regulations of the British Association of the SMHOM it would appear that not only would the non-armigerous heirs of ancient noble titles who had not petitioned for arms be ineligible for the noble grades, but also their lineal descendants. This is a further example of the deficiency of a proof of a right to Arms being considered the sole qualification for the noble grades.

The authority given to the heralds to confirm and grant arms sometimes led, particularly during the Tudor period, to the confirmation of doubtful arms with fanciful descriptions of the confirmee's ancestors as noble and to increasingly frequent grants to deceased persons and their descendants._ To halt any possible abuses, a prerequisite to each grant came to be the warrant of the Earl Marshal, a consistent practice since 1673 which today does permit grants to deceased persons in exceptional cases with the assent of the Earl Marshal._ Even the Earl Marshal has to rely upon the honesty and impartiality of the officers of the College and this has not always been possible. Since a grant of arms is not of itself creation of nobility but rather recognition of gentility (i.e. of being a "gentleman"), it is logical that the descendant of a person whose immediate ancestor's status was that of a "gentleman", should be able to successfully petition for a grant of arms to that ancestor. This practice has been questioned by continental critics, however, who have misunderstood the fundamental difference between an English grant of arms and a European conferral of nobility. Merely because a person who fell into the definition of "gentleman" had not troubled to petition for arms, should not disqualify a descendant who had maintained the status of "gentleman" from claiming gentility. Such a subjective standard of determining "nobility" (gentility) in England requires careful judgment and creates direct conflict with the standard presently applied in the rest of Europe. But to insist on applying the Continental standard is to misrepresent the nature of the class which is defined as "gentry" in England. The pretense that it is possible today to define this class only by proof of a right to hereditary arms is simply not sustainable.

The English heralds were better organized and armed with greater authority than any of the comparable royal officers in continental Europe. Thus it was possible, through the Heraldic Visitations, to regulate the use of arms and identify the extent of the provincial nobility or gentry. The heralds not only had the right to remove or deface arms used improperly but denounce those who falsely used any title or dignity (other than the arms of peers, which were regulated by Garter King of Arms), including those of Esquire and Gentleman. All who described themselves as Baronet, Knight, Esquire or Gentlemen were summoned by the heralds to prove their right and those who could not prove their right to the style they claimed would be required to sign a disclaimer of arms and gentility (or, if otherwise eligible, petition for a grant) and their names would be published in the local shire town. This duty was taken seriously and the number of disclaimers could be very high - at the 1665-68 Yorkshire Visitation there were two hundred and fifty-seven disclaimers as against four hundred and seventy-two claims entered._

By the mid-seventeenth century the status of "gentleman" was no longer confined to members of county families (the "landed gentry") but also included leading figures in the city of London and other prominent representatives of the merchant and professional classes, without any official differentiation of their status. Indeed, some London merchants were scions of county families who, after amassing a fortune, acquired a country seat and re-established themselves in the landed gentry.

The abandonment of Heraldic Visitations soon after the 1688 revolution was paralleled by a dramatic decline in the number of families petitioning for grants of arms, which it became customary to assume without authority, even though after 1783 new baronets were theoretically required to apply for arms. Thus between 1730 and 1760 there were only one hundred and sixty new English grants, increased tenfold over the next forty years. With eight thousand three hundred and twenty new grants during the nineteenth century and an even greater numbers in the twentieth (there are now approximately one hundred and fifty grants to individuals per annum in England alone), the size of the armigerous gentry has been expanding, while in the rest of Europe the nobility has been steadily decreasing._ After 1688, however, one could no longer define the elite of society, the landed gentry, by a universal right to coat armor. Since there was no compulsion for those styling themselves gentleman or esquire to apply for a grant, many of those who evidently enjoyed that status did not bother to do so just as many assumed Arms who could not properly be styled Gentleman. In the twentieth century a substantial proportion of applications for grants were made for historical or romantic reasons and neither the petitioner nor society saw the conferment of such grants as recognition of any particular social status.

This is particularly relevant since loss of social status did not deprive the descendant of an Armiger of a right to arms and. therefore theoretical membership of the lesser noble class, even if his standing in the community was no longer that of "gentleman". The social changes from the end of seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries, with the growth of larger estates and the conversion of many smaller manors to tenant farmhouses, led to the size of the landed county families being halved. Although many families disappeared through the lack of a male heir, the number of armigers who became absorbed into the masses was considerable. The descendants of such families, with diligent genealogical research, can today prove "nobility" and, if their candidature is otherwise acceptable to the SMHOM, may demand admission into the rank of Honor and Devotion ahead of families which may have played a prominent role in British society for several recent generations._

Sixteenth and seventeenth century heralds required proof of a right to arms to qualify a person as an "esquire" or "gentleman" in order to ensure that persons entitled to this qualification would petition for a grant. But membership of the English class of "gentry" was defined in practice primarily by social and economic standing rather than the right to hereditary arms. An attempt to equate the British gentry with the continental nobility was made by the Stuart kings in exile, who issued many declarations or confirmations of nobility for their adherents to assist them in obtaining preferment for offices for which nobility was a qualification. While most of the recipients of such declarations were armigers, not all were and proof of a right to arms was not seen as a prerequisite for such a declaration.

During the seventeenth century the privilege of nobility came to be conferred almost as broadly in much of continental Europe as grants of arms were conceded in England, although the right to create nobles or confirm nobility in Europe was very rarely delegated to a third party. In the Italian and German city states and in certain Spanish cities, the right to recognize noble status was assumed by the local powers which, in Italy, were often Republican. But by the Reformation these jurisdictions had generally been overturned and replaced by a Monarchical structure, as when the Florentine Republic was succeeded by the Medici Duchy of Florence and Grand Duchy of Tuscany.

Among the several ways in which the later nobility of continental Europe may be distinguished from the English gentry, defined by public achievements, occupation and social and economic standing, is the fact that they owed their status to royal favor. In France nobility was normally conferred or confirmed in a patent signed by the Sovereign himself. Tenure of certain offices, such as Secretaire du Roi, which could be acquired by purchase with the consent of the Sovereign, could also confer personal nobility or with some offices hereditary nobility when the office was enjoyed by three successive generations. This class of nobility, while treated before 1798 as a lower degree by the Order of Malta, was in law nonetheless a specific noble status, recognized by the addition of the particule to the name. Until Colbert's reformations, the responsibility of examining claims to nobility was consigned to the Juge d'Armes, but afterwards the responsibility was delegated to the Intendants of each province who, by confirming such claims, could occasionally authenticate the spurious; generally, however, the French nobility was carefully regulated and its privileges closely guarded.

Within the French privileged nobility there was a small hereditary elite, the Peers, who enjoyed the right to a seat in the Parlement of Paris (not a political assembly but a superior law court), and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries numbered between forty and fifty. Their numbers were considerably extended under the Restoration and July Monarchies (in the latter case being nominated for life), when they were given a similar function to the British House of Lords. In Spain, the "grandees of the first class" were likewise a specially privileged elite with precedence before all other titled nobles from the date of the grandeeship, but without political privileges. A politically privileged Sicilian peerage was established during the British protectorate but was abolished in 1815 and only revived briefly during the 1848 revolution. Both Austria and Prussia established different forms of peerages during the nineteenth centuries, but more akin to a nominated Senate.

Elsewhere in Europe, when a sovereign wished to buy support, nobility might be granted more widely. The quarrels between the Bourbons and Habsburgs over possession of the Two Sicilies insured that each side paid-off their partisans with the wholesale conferment of titles and nobility. Meanwhile in the more politically stable states, uninterested in territorial expansion, the noble class remained more exclusive. In Russia a hierarchy was established by which the military and the bureaucracy were automatically ennobled according to the rank they held, vastly increasing the size of the nobility as a proportion of the population in the years between 1700 and 1900. In Poland the nobility was approximately ten per cent of the population, having expanded substantially in the seventeenth century (any Jew who converted to Catholicism would be automatically ennobled, for example), although there was a tremendous gulf between the great nobles (such as the Czartoryski and Zamoyski families) and the lesser nobles, some of whom were just one step away from the peasantry and would often not qualify as "gentlemen" by the British definition.

The Order's nobiliary authorities were generally keen to protect what was considered to be the "purity" of noble blood, and each Langue had different concerns. In France and Italy there was a continuing controversy over the acceptance of descent from noblesse de robe families in any of the required noble quarters, many knights considering that each quarter should be a noblesse de l'epée family._ The three French Langues, until the mid-seventeenth century, required  proof of nobility in four quarters for two hundred years but, on 24 November 1673, an alternative requirement of proof of eight quarters for more than one hundred years was introduced._ With the exception of the Nobilities of the Republics of Lucca and Genoa and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Italian Langue excluded those urban noble families which had amassed fortunes in trade or banking, making such participation a total bar to membership of the Order of Saint John. The Italian proofs still require proof of nobility in four quarters for more than two hundred years, this latter restriction having been introduced by the Chapter-General of 1598._ Vertot complained that in the states of the Church, which purported to exclude banking and business families, this rule was not enforced with sufficient strictness._ He complimented the Germans, however, for continuing to exclude nobles whose wealth derived from business although he ignored the fact the Germans actually did accept such families if their nobility had been granted by the Emperor prior to 1582 (the Thurn und Taxis and Fugger families for example). Whatever the ideals of a purist such as Vertot, in practice there was much greater flexibility and, despite sometimes bitter resistance, the need to find qualified recruits meant that compromises were not infrequently made.

In Spain proof of nobility in four quarters for four generations_ was required. Considering the size of the Spanish nobility, this was a much more modest standard than that prevailing in France and Germany, but an additional requirement was that none of the four families could have been of non-Christian descent._ The examination of proofs was confined mainly to the testimony of witnesses and less weight was given to documentary proofs. In Portugal, which as part of Langue of Castille subscribed to the Spanish rules, the Crown had long established a public register of noble families and provided the four families were included therein, no further inquiry was necessary. The German Langue was the most rigorous of all, with illegitimate sons, even of royal houses, being excluded (unlike the other Langues) and each postulant having to prove that the families of all sixteen great-great-grandparents were born into the military nobility. The majority of German Swiss knights, part of the German Langue, had received their grant from the Emperor or some other German Sovereign. Postulants who were unable to prove nobility could instead provide evidence that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were born legitimate and of "honorable estate" and that none of them had practiced any of the "vile offices or sordid or mechanical arts."_ Today the rules of the Swiss Association require candidates to prove nobility according to the rules of the German, French or Italian Associations, depending on the canton from which their family originates.

The French Revolution marked the beginning of an end of a privileged noble class in most of Europe, but the conferment of noble titles actually increased dramatically, since nobility no longer carried any significant prerogative (such as exemption from taxation) but was an inexpensive means for sovereigns to reward their prominent subjects. The new nobility was no longer an identifiable class, however. With the exception of the hereditary lay peerage in Great Britain and its short-lived equivalents in France and Sicily, and the still-extant Spanish grandeeships, each of which elites were only a minority of the whole noble class, it enjoyed neither prerogatives nor responsibility; the assumption of the particule became a mark of social achievement rather than a sign of privilege. Only in Russia did the noble class enjoy any substantive privileges but these were gradually diminished during the course of the century. In France, Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Charles X together more than doubled the size of the titled nobility in a period of only twenty-two years, while during the later nineteenth century the Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Savoy Monarchies likewise recognized the new social realities by the widespread conferment of nobility on bankers, industrialists, bureaucrats and local and national politicians.

The differing numbers of the nobility as a proportion of the population and the disparity in relative status in the formerly sovereign states that compose united Spain, Italy and Germany,  has led to some strange anomalies where similar regulations for noble proofs apply to all. There are far fewer noble families in northern Italy than in the south, making the proofs more arduous for some than others. A typical anomaly resulting from the varied histories of different parts of the same country is that one of Italy's most prominent and distinguished citizens, Avvocato Giovanni Agnelli, whose mother was born a Bourbon del Monte of the Princes of San Faustino and whose paternal family's position in early 19th century Piedmont would certainly have been recognized by ennoblement in southern Italy (two later nineteenth century ancestors declined offers of noble titles from the Savoy kings). Nonetheless he was only entitled to be admitted to the Order in the rank of Magistral Grace, in which he holds the grade of knight.

The disparity in the rules between different national associations has meant that two members of the Stagno dei principi di Alcontres family, noble in the direct male line since the 14th century, the hereditary Prince of Oettingen-Oettingen und Oettingen-Wallerstein, whose mother is a Countess Schenck von Stauffenberg and who is noble in the male line since the tenth century, and Princess Huberta von Croy, born a Baroness of Wolff-Metternich and noble in the male line for more than five hundred years, are all enrolled in Grace and Devotion, although under the British rules they would have been eligible for Honor and Devotion. In North America, almost all the members of the second class are the first grantees of arms (often retroactive) or recipients of confirmations from the Chief Herald of Ireland, having undertaken this expense in order to fulfill the requirement of proving nobility according to the European standard, as they wished to make a deeper spiritual commitment to the Order by seeking promotion to the rank of Obedience. There are now proposals to reform the class of Obedience with both Knights and Dames of all three lay ranks of the third class being able to make this special promise.

In Spain a higher proportion of northern than southern families and all Navarre families established before a certain date are technically noble (although this class of nobility is unrecognized by the four military Orders), while in some German states nobility was more common than in others. In the Netherlands it is necessary only to prove nobility in the paternal line for one hundred and fifty years to be eligible for Honor and Devotion, while in Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland that would be insufficient for Grace and Devotion. Being a noble in Sicily generally meant something very different to being a noble in much of northern Europe, just as most Sicilian princes rarely enjoy the same prestige, status and wealth, even in Sicily, as the heads of German mediatized princely houses or French or English dukes do in their countries.