Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/116

 76 THE ANCESTOR before the king in person in May or June, 1414,^ but the pre- sentments themselves are undated, and as several included in the same bundle refer to acts committed in 14 14-5, I hesitate to accept the date suggested. It is one of those cases where local knowledge is required, and if the learned editor has used his to good purpose the premier gentleman of England, as the matter now stands, is ' Robert Erdeswyke of Stafford, gentilman.' ^ Fortunately — for the gentle reader will no doubt be anxious to follow in his footsteps — some particulars of his life may be gleaned from the public records. He was charged at the Staffordshire Assizes with house-breaking, wounding with intent to kill, and procuring the murder of one Thomas Page, who was cut to pieces while on his knees begging for his life. * Robert Erdeswyke of Sondon, gentilman,' who I sup- pose was a near relation, was indicted at the same time for a number of similar offences, including attempted murder and the torture, in a manner too revolting to be described, of a young man named John Bykley, in order to compel the latter to disclose the place in which his brother was concealed. If any earlier claimant to the 'grand old name of gentle- man ' be discovered, I venture to predict that it will be within the same year and in connection with some disreputable pro- ceeding — assault, murder, robbery, or housebreaking — of a kind which would not now be accepted as an introduction to polite society. It was a way the earliest gentlemen had, as far as my experience of them goes, and I only mention it because it shows who these earliest gentlemen were. This is just the moment when the problem of the younger son was first mak- ing itself disagreeably prominent. In the thirteenth century, when every landlord, great and small, was an agriculturist, younger sons at the death of their father had a share of his farming stock, which was often worth three times the fee simple of the land. They were thus never left entirely unprovided for. In those earlier days, as Ferne tells us,^ one would be ' bestowed in a college, another in the church, another to the fielde, another to the kinge's house,' while the law and the collegiate churches and chapters furnished a worthy mainten- ance for many. But undoubtedly, in the greater number of 1 m//. Salt. Archa. Soc. xvii. 5. 2 Robert Erdeswyke served among the * lances,' or men-at-arms, in the retinue of Lord Talbot at Agincourt (Nicolas, Agtncourty p. 345). 3 Blazon o/Gentrie (1586), p. 93.