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 THE ANCESTOR 91 able of receiving that honour.^ A constitution of the Emperor Frederick IL, which is also attributed to Conrad IV., directs that no one is to be dubbed a knight unless descended from a family of milites? Selden makes a gallant attempt to show that here miles denotes a gentleman, but has to admit that it includes also ' the great Free-holders of the Countrie,' and undoubtedly the word in Germany, as in England and Scotland, is used of all free-tenants in feodoy small as well as great.^ In Scotland every free-holder was the peer of a knight.^ In England also, there was the same theoretic equality between all tenants in chivalry. Every one was on the same footing as regards disparagement in marriage, the duel, the ordeal, and trial by his peers. Every one, if his income were sufficient, might be compelled to take up knighthood. Every one who was not a knight, or esquire, was a ' free-tenant ' or a ' valet.' ^ 1 think I have furnished evidence strong enough to prove that, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was only a distinction of rank and not a difference of class between barons, knights and free-tenants, and that the terms nohilis and gentilis were, at least in theory, applicable to all who held their lands in franc tenure. I may now advance a step further, and leaving tenure altogether out of account, point out that in early times there was some strange connection between free- dom and gentility. In France, francus^ which is said to be derived from fry^ or free, and anck a young man,^ conveyed from the eighth century the idea not only of freedom but of nobility. Thus in 1 1 5 1 we met with the sentence superuenit Francus vere re et nomine nohilis!' We have already noticed that the phrases francum et honoratum and francum et gentile were applicable to franc fief, and the same words, ' franc et gentil ' are often linked together in the old French romances. In the Roman de Garin, we have the line — Garin mes peres fu Frans horn et gentis ; ^ Du Cange, under 'Mi/es' ; Selden's Titles 0/ Honour, p. 549. 2 Selden, p. 436. 3 Skene, De Verb Sign, under * Miles ' ; Skene's Scotland, iii. 242 note. ^ Jets Scot. i. 318, 400, 403 ; Skene's Scotland, iii. 241. ^ Tcedera, viii. 313; Skene's Celtic Scotland, i. 240 ; Langmead's Constit. Hist. (1896), p. 288. In the fourteenth century a knight in England could claim to be tried by a jury of knights, but I do not believe that this was so in earlier times. A freeholder was certainly the peer of the lord of a manor. See the Tear-book of 30-1 Edward I. p. 531. ^ Du Cange, under * Franci.^ ^ Ibid.