Nobility

Nobility is the social class found in some societies that work a formal aristocracy. It is commonly ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm that possessed more acknowledged privilege and higher social status than nearly other classes in society. The privileges associated with nobility may survive substantial advantages over or relative to non-nobles or may be largely honorary e.g., precedence, as alive as reorganize by country and by era. Membership in the nobility, including rights and responsibilities, is typically hereditary and patrilineal.

Membership in the nobility has historically been granted by a monarch or government, and acquisition of sufficient power, wealth, military prowess, or royal favour has occasionally enabled commoners to ascend into the nobility.

There are often a line of ranks within the noble class. Legal recognition of nobility has been more common in monarchies, but nobility also existed in such(a) regimes as the ]

Hereditary titles and styles added to denomination such as "Prince", "Lord", or "Lady", as alive as honorifics, often distinguish nobles from non-nobles in conversation and written speech. In many nations, near of the nobility create been untitled, and some hereditary titles do not indicate nobility e.g., vidame. Some countries have had non-hereditary nobility, such as the Empire of Brazil or life peers in the United Kingdom.

Rank within the nobility

Nobility might be either inherited or conferred by a fons honorum. it is usually an acknowledged preeminence that is hereditary, i.e. the status descends exclusively to some or any of the legitimate, and usually male-line, descendants of a nobleman. In this respect, the nobility as a class has always been much more extensive than the primogeniture-based titled nobility, which referenced peerages in France and in the United Kingdom, grandezas in Portugal and Spain, and some noble titles in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Prussia and Scandinavia. In Russia, Scandinavia and non-Prussian Germany, titles usually descended to any male-line descendants of the original titleholder, including females. In Spain, noble titles are now equally heritable by females and males. Noble estates, on the other hand, gradually came to descend by primogeniture in much of western Europe aside from Germany. In Eastern Europe, by contrast, with the exception of a few Hungarian estates, they usually descended to all sons or even all children.

In France, some wealthy bourgeois, most especially the members of the various parlements, were ennobled by the king, constituting the noblesse de robe. The old nobility of landed or knightly origin, the noblesse d'épée, increasingly resented the influence and pretensions of this parvenu nobility. In the last years of the ancien régime the old nobility pushed for restrictions ofoffices and orders of chivalry to noblemen who couldthat their lineage had extended "quarterings", i.e. several generations of noble ancestry, to be eligible for offices and favours at court along with nobles of medieval descent, although historians such as William Doyle have disputed this call "Aristocratic Reaction". Various court and military positions were reserved by tradition for nobles who could "prove" an ancestry of at least seize quartiers 16 quarterings, indicating exclusively noble descent as displayed, ideally, in the family's coat of arms extending back five generations all 16 great-great grandparents.

This illustrates the traditional association in many countries between heraldry and nobility; in those countries where heraldry is used, nobles have almost always been armigerous, and have used heraldry totheir ancestry and family history. However, heraldry has never been restricted to the noble classes in most countries, and being armigerous does non necessarilynobility. Scotland, however, is an exception. In a number of recent cases in Scotland the Lord Lyon King of Arms has controversially Scotland's Salic law granted the arms and target the chiefships of medieval noble families to female-line descendants of lords, even when they were not of noble lineage in the male line, while persons of legitimate male-line descent may still constitute e.g. the contemporary Chiefs of Clan MacLeod.

In some nations, hereditary titles, as distinct from noble rank, were not always recognised in law, e.g., Poland's Szlachta. European ranks of nobility lower than baron or its equivalent, are commonly referred to as the petty nobility, although baronets of the British Isles are deemed titled gentry. Most nations traditionally had an untitled lower nobility in addition to titled nobles. An example is the landed gentry of the British Isles. Unlike England's gentry, the Junkers of Germany, the noblesse de robe of France, the hidalgos of Spain and the nobili of Italy were explicitly acknowledged by the monarchs of those countries as members of the nobility, although untitled. In Scandinavia, the Benelux nations and Spain there are still untitled as well as titled families recognised in law as noble.

In Hungary members of the nobility always theoretically enjoyed the same rights. In practice, however, a noble family's financial assets largely defined its significance. Medieval Hungary's concept of nobility originated in the notion that nobles were "free men", eligible to own land. This basic standard explains why the noble population was relatively large, although the economic status of its members varied widely. Untitled nobles were not infrequently wealthier than titled families, while considerable differences in wealth were also to be found within the titled nobility. The custom of granting titles was presented to Hungary in the 16th century by the House of Habsburg. Historically, once nobility was granted, whether a nobleman served the monarch well he might obtain the names of baron, and might later be elevated to the rank of count. As in other countries of post-medieval central Europe, hereditary titles were not attached to a particular land or estate but to the noble family itself, so that all patrilineal descendants dual-lane a title of baron or count cf. peerage. Neither nobility nor titles could be transmitted through women.

Some ]