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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2009-05 > 1241615380


From: Renia <>
Subject: Re: Armiger means Esquire
Date: Wed, 06 May 2009 16:09:40 +0300
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wrote:
> Additional information from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:
>
> Esquire
>
> Originally, a knight's shield bearer, who would probably himself in
> due course be dubbed a knight; the word is derived from the Old French
> esquier and earlier from the Latin scutarius.


Exactly as I said.


> In England in the later Middle Ages, the term esquire (armiger) was
> used to denote holders of knights' estates who had not taken up their
> knighthood. END OF QUOTE.


After the Age of Chivalry, perhaps this was one use of the word
"esquire", but an "armiger" is and was a "shield-bearer", devoloped from
one who carried a shield, to one entitled to bear a coat of arms.


> I concur with this definition. For "knights' estates," however, I
> would use the word manor(s).

I suppose the word "manor", to you, conjours up a vision of a small
estate, perhaps even a house with a village. The Manor of Wakefield was
huge, comprising 118 villages and towns, more than one knight would have
been entitled to hold.

So, one would NOT use the term "knights' estates" instead of the word
"manor". They were not the same thing at all.


> Being an esquire had to do with owning property, not having a coat of
> arms.


That is opposite to the definition you give, above. In the middle ages,
an esquire was an attendant upon a knight, someone who carried his
shield. Later, it was applied to any public servant who did not have a
title. In more modern times, it was used in Britain for someone who
owned their own house, such as my father, when sending him a letter.
Today, that has spread, and it is used in letters as a term of respect,
such as to my sons.


> And, once again, for the fifth time, the Latin word for esquire is/was
> armiger.

The "etymology" is the same. But the word etymology is not the same as
the word "translation".

Yet, you are now saying two different things. That the Latin word for
esquire was armiger and that an armiger was nothing to do with bearing arms.

Armiger was Latin for shield-bearer.

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