NOBILITY, that distinction of rank in civil society which raises a man above the condition of the mass of the people.
The ancient Romans were divided into nobiles and ignobiles, a distinction at first corresponding to that of patricians and plebeians. A new nobility afterward sprang out of the plebeian order, and obtained (336 B. C. ) the right to rise to high offices in the state; and in course of time the descendants of those who had filled curule magistracies inherited the ins intaginum, or right of having images of their ancestors—a privilege which, like the coat-of-arms in later ages, was considered the criterion of nobility. The man entitled to have his own image was a novas home, while the ignobilis could neither have his ancestor's image nor his own.
The origin of the feudal aristocracy of Europe is in part connected with the accidents which influenced the division of conquered lands among the leaders and warriors of the nations that over threw the Roman empire, and is out lined in the article FEUDAL SYSTEM ; and the evolution of the dignities of baron, count, earl, marquis, duke, and other ranks will be found under those several heads. In the subinfeudations of the greater nobility, originated a secondary sort of nobility under the name of vava sors, castellans, and lesser barons; and a third order below them comprised vas sals, whose tenure, by the military obli gations known in England as knight's service, admitted them within the ranks of the aristocracy. In France the allegi ance of the lesser nobles to their inter mediary lord long continued a reality; in England, on the other hand, William the Conqueror obliged not only his barons who held in chief of the crown, but their vassals also, to take an oath of fealty to himself; and his successors altogether abolished subinfeudation. The military tenant, who held but a por tion of a knight's fee, participated in all the privileges of nobility, and an im passable barrier existed between his order and the common people. Over con tinental Europe in general the nobles, greater and lesser, were in use, after the 10th century, to assume a territorial name from their castles or the principal town or village on their demesne ; hence the prefix "de," or its German equivalent "von," still considered over a great part of the Continent as the criterion of nobil ity or gentility.
After the introduction of HERALDRY (q. v.), and its reduction to a system, the possession of a coat-of-arms was a recognized distinction between the noble and the plebeian. On the Continent who ever has a shield of arms is a nobleman; and in every country of continental Eu rope a grant of arms, or letters of no bility, is conferred on all such a noble's descendants. In England, on the other hand, the words noble and nobility are restricted to the five ranks of the peer age constituting the greater nobility, and to the head of the family, to whom alone the title belongs. Gentility, in its more strict sense, corresponds to the nobility of continental countries.
The higher nobility, or nobility in the exclusive sense, of England consist of the five temporal ranks of the peerage— duke, marquis, earl, viscount, and baron, who are members of the Upper House of Parliament. Archbishops and bishops are lords temporal, but not peers. The dignity of the peerage is hereditary, but in early times was territorial, the dig nity originally being attached to the pos session of lands held directly from the crown in return for services to be per formed to the sovereign. Later, peers were created by writ of summons to at tend the king's council or parliament, but now the creation of a new peer is al ways made by letters-patent from the crown. In order to the efficient carrying out of the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords there are now a limited number of life peers, styled Lords of Appeal in Ordinary. By the Appellate Jurisdiction Act, 1876, as amended 1887, it is enacted that every such lord, unless he is otherwise entitled to sit in the House of Lords, shall by virtue and ac cording to the date of his appointment be entitled during his life to rank as a baron, and shall be entitled to a writ of summons to attend and to sit and vote in the House of Lords. But his dignity is not to descend to his heirs. A peerage is forfeited by attainder for high trea son; attainder for felony forfeits a peer age by writ, not by patent; on attainder, peerage cannot be restored by the crown, only by an act of Parliament. Ladies may be peeresses in their own right, eitherby creation or by inheritance. The wives of peers are also styled peer esses.