The gentry finally crystallised during the first half of the fourteenth century. How should we account for this? Clearly, a full explanation has to encompass both social and institutional factors. I intend to approach the subject first by examining the structure of the gentry, and secondly by looking again at the characteristics of the gentry as outlined at the beginning of this study.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE GENTRY

When the gentry finally took shape towards the middle of the fourteenth century the county knights became its highest gradation. Their history has sometimes been written, however, as though they had occupied this position long before: as the highest grade in advance of gradation. On this reading the corpus of thirteenth-century knights was simply subdivided to form the fourteenth-century ranks. But this is to read history backwards. Moreover, it simplifies a complex evolution and it assumes a predetermined outcome. Among other things, it fails to account for the delay in the emergence of a second rank, the esquires. In fact, a sociologist observing the English nobility around the year 1300, and without the value of hindsight, could be forgiven for thinking that it was evolving along the same lines as the French noblesse, so intense was the sense of difference expressed by and around knighthood.

Nevertheless there were factors pulling this exclusive knighthood asunder. Most obviously, there was the existence of a higher nobility. The line of demarcation between higher and lower nobility had never been particularly clear.