We next come to the “Ungentle Gentle.” In the definition of this term, the author, with all his reverence for nobility, is compelled to allow that there is a nobility of condition as well as a nobility of birth; but others who contested this fact, gave a new word to the English tongue, or made a new application of an old word in order to support their theory and assail those whom they sought to lower. “Ungentle Gentle,” says our author, “is he which is born of a low degree--which man, taking his beginning of a poor kindred, by his virtue, wit, policy, industry, knowledge in laws, valiancy in arms, or such like honest means, becometh a well-behaved and high-esteemed man, preferred then to great office, put in great charge and credit, even so much as he becometh a post or stay of the commonwealth, and so growing rich, doth thereby advance and set up the rest of his poor line or kindred. They are the children of such one commonly called gentleman; of which sort of gentleman we have now in England very many, whereby it should appear that virtue flourisheth among us. These gentlemen are now called ‘Up-starts,’ a term lately invented by such as pondered not the grounds of honest means of rising or coming to promotion.” Nevertheless, says our censor, there be upstarts enough and to spare. The worshipful unworthies, he tells us, abound; and the son of good-man Thomas, or good-man John, have obtained the name of gentlemen, the degree of esquires or knights, and possessing “a little dunghill forecast to get lands, by certain dark augmentative practices,” they are called “worshipful” at every assize. He dates the origin of this sort of nobility, knighthood and esquirearchy, from the time of the suppression and confiscation of abbeys and abbey-estates. He has a curious passage on this subject:-- “They have wrongfully intruded into gentry, and thrust themselves therein, as Bayard, the cart-jade, might leap into the stable of Bucephalus, and thrust his head into the manger with that worthy courser. The particular names of whom, if I should go about to rehearse, it would require long labor, and bring no fruit to the readers thereof. And it is well known that such intruders, such unworthy worshipful men, have chiefly flourished since the putting down of abbeys, which time is within my remembrance.”