Ideas of barbaric pearl and gold, glittering armour, plumes, tortures, blood-shedding, and lust, should always be connected with it, Wace, in his grand Norman poem, calls the Baron genteel:-- "La furent li gentil Baron," etc.
And he certainly could not have applied the word better than to the strong Norman thief, armed cap-a-pie, without one particle of ruth or generosity; for a person to be a pink of gentility, that is heathenism, should have no such feelings; and, indeed, the admirers of gentility seldom or never associate any such feelings with it.

It was from the Norman, the worst of all robbers and miscreants, who built strong castles, garrisoned them with devils, and tore out poor wretches' eyes, as the Saxon Chronicle says, that the English got their detestable word genteel.

What could ever have made the English such admirers of gentility, it would be difficult to say, for, during three hundred years, they suffered enough by it.

Their genteel Norman landlords were their scourgers, their torturers, the plunderers of their homes, the dishonourers of their wives, and the deflowerers of their daughters.
Perhaps, after all, fear is at the root of the English veneration for gentility.
{316} Gentle and gentlemanly may be derived from the same root as genteel; but nothing can be more distinct from the mere genteel, than the ideas which enlightened minds associate with these words.

Gentle and gentlemanly mean something kind and genial; genteel, that which is glittering or gaudy.