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Medieval Society

Lesser Nobility

There's no clear break here, though there are a few defining points. One was a title. It was impossible to be considered anything other than a minor noble if the only title you bore was "sir".

Land was also a factor. It was possible to be a landless noble, but being landless meant that you could never be independent. You owed your standing to some position you held at court and so served mainly at the whim of the monarch.

Beyond that all we have is a wide spectrum of individual experiences. Some nobles were only recently noble, having been raised to that status or married into it within living memory. Such a noble could never have the standing of a family that had been noble "since time immemorial" as the phrase went.

Wealth was less important, but it was still a factor. In the first place, nobles rarely had the slightest idea of their overall wealth; indeed, the very concept of "net worth" was unknown. They knew what estates they had (usually), but could never estimate how much income they might produce, still less know whether the operation was running at a profit or a loss. All they really knew was how much coin and jewelry they had in the treasure box; that is, how much tangible currency and valuables they had in their direct possession.

But if a noble operated at too severe a loss for too long, he usually found he was losing his landed properties, mortgaging them and then unable to redeem them. They found their jewels and coins were gone. Should this go on long enough—say two or three generations—the noble family might find they were living on little more than a scrap of land, in an ordinary home, unable to repair what little armor might remain to them, and doing planting and harvesting right along with their peasant neighbors. In such circumstances, marriage to local commoners might be the only alternative. Let that go on for a generation or two, and noble status would become only a memory, a shadowy claim. Thus could wealth come into play.

In the later Middle Ages the lesser nobility also found that the economic changes and changes in warfare marginalized them socially. They had a lessened role to play militarily as armies were comprised more and more of peasant levies and hired mercenaries. Indeed, many lesser nobles found becoming a hired sword was the best way to preserve family fortunes. They also found that living nobly was becoming increasingly burdensome. One result of this was that the lower nobility swarmed to the growing royal courts to become functionaries and pensionaries there.