KNIGHT. In Continental Europe, the nobles, after the tenth rentury, assumed territorial names from their castles or the principal town or village on their demesne; 'hence the prefix de, or its German equivalent ron, still considered over a great part of the Continent as the cri terion of nobility or gentility. In England, on the eontrary, many of the most distinguished family names of the aristocracy had no terri torial origin. In the later Carolingian Empire the powerful nobles encroached more and more on the royal authority; and in course of time many of them openly asserted an indeiwndenee and sovereignty with little more than a nominal reservation of superiority to the King. By the end of the ninth century the Empire had been pa reeled into separate and princi palities, under the dominion of prayerful nobles. During the entire history of the Holy Iloman Empire the Crown never succeeded in vindicating its power against the feudal primps. In France the royal authority gradually revived under the ('apetians. the great. fiefs of the higher nobility being one by one absorbed by the Crown. In Eng land the resistance of the nobles to royal en croachments was the means of rearing the great fabric of constitutional liberty. All those who, after the Conquest, held in ropitc from William belonged to the nobility. Such of them as held by barony (the highest form of tenure) are enumerated in Domesday. Their dignity was territorial. not personal. having no existenee apart. from baronial possession. The comes was a baron of superior dignity and greater estates; and these were in England the only names of dignity till the time of Henry III. The rest. of the landholders, who held by other tenures than barony, also belonged to the nobility or gentry.
After the introdnetion of heraldry, 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 Onitinent the term noble still generally refers to those to whom or their aneestors arms have been granted. In England it, is now more common to restriet the words noble and nobility to the live ranks of the peerage eonstituting the greater nobility, and to the head of the family, to whom alone the title belongs. I fentility. in its more strict sense, corresponds to the nobility of Continental coun tries.
The higher nobility. or nobility in the exelit sive sense. of England. consists of the five tem poral ranks of the peerage—duke. marquis, earl, viseonnt, and baron (in the restricted significa tion of the word), who are members of the pper House of Parliament. See PARLIAMENT.
The olive powerful feudal nobility of France had been reduced in the time of Louis XI V. to a mere aristocracy of courtiers through the steady growth of the royal power. Immediately before the 1Zexidution 80.000 families claimed nobility. many of them of obAeure stadia), and less than 31100 of ancient lineage. The 1:evolu tion overthrew all distinction of rank. On June IS. 1790, the National Assembly ds.erced that hereditary nobility was an institution incompati ble with a free State, and that titles, arms, and liveries should be abolished. Two years later the records of the nobility were burned. A new nobility was created by the Emperor Napoleon I. in 1808, with titles descending to the eldest son. The old nobility was revived at the Restoration.
All marquises and viscounts are of pre-Revolu tion titles. none having been created in later 1 imes.
Commercial pursuits have in different coun tries been considered more or less incompatible with nobility. in England this was less the ease than in France and Germany, where for long a gentleman could not engage in any trade without losing his rank. A sort of eommercial 'Biirger Adel,' or half-gentleman class, was eonstituted out of the pat rieian families of some of the great particularly Augsburg, berg, and Frankfort, on whom the emperors be stowed CORI, of arms. (See FUOCER ; WELSER. ) In semi-feudal Italy there was on the whole less antagonism between nobility and trade than north of the Alps. The aristocracy of Venice had its origin in commerce; and though untitled, they were the most distinguished class of nobles in Europe. On the other hand, in Flor ence, in the fourteenth century. under a con stitution purely mercantile, nobility becalms a disqualitieation from holding any olive of the State. In order to be admitted to the enjoyment of political honors the nobleman had to be struts]: off the rolls of nobility; and an unpopular ple beian was sometimes ennobled in order to dis franchise 1 . A little later there grew up. side by side with the old nobility, a race of plebeian nobles—as the Ricci, the Medici—whose preten sions were originally derived from wealth, and who eventually value to he regarded as aristo crats by the democratic party.
In Spain the term hidalgo (hijo d'algo, son of somebody, Ind filinx indicates nobility. The hidalgo alone has in strictness a right to the title /hs, which, like sir of the British knights and baronets. requires the adjuncts of the Chris t hut name. \Viten the C'hristian mine is omitted the title ss•ilor instead is prefixed with the addi tion of 1/e. :Ilembers of the higher nobility hear the title of grandee 1/1.8.) formerly the title was and the of (-realism eon sistesl in granting the right of the pent1011 and caldron (pecy;n y one the rallying ensign of eommand. the other of maintenance of followers. In eontradistinetion to the grailess., the class of nobility- below them are called toss: titultolos de In Russia what nobility existed before Peter the Great was of a partriarelml, not a feudal, Is Ind /see Itov sots, hut, in his anxiety to as similate everything to 11 IVestern standard. the I Z01' look the existing aristocracies of States quite dillerently situated as the model to which to approximate the fortunate of his own sub jects. Consult.: M6nestrier, Les direrses espeees de la noblesse (Paris, 1653) ; id., Le blason de In noblesse (ib., 1683) ; Eseberny, Essai stir la noblesse (ib., 1814) ; Duvergier, Mentorial his turbine de la noblesse (ib., Magny, 1,e nobiliaire des maisons nobles de l'Europe (ib., ; Kotzebue, lout .I del ( Leipzig, 1792) : Laine. Noblesse dr• France (Paris, ; Langlois, Lea oriyincs de la noblesse in France (ib., Cerini, Ln noblesse onetaande et sr s origint's (ib., 1899) : Strattz. atschiehte des Adels (new ed., Waldenburg. 1831) ; Rose, Der Adel Deutschlands (Berlin, 1883) : Vehse, Geschichtc des Osterreiehischen Hojs and Adds (Hamburg, 18.51) ; Cneist. Adel and Rit tersehajt in &gland (Berlin, 1833) ; Lawrence, Ott the Nobility of the British Gentry (London, 1824; 4th ed. 1840).