virtue but to his birth. Not all children could succeed to their father's eminence and so from the outset the term was not synonymous with greatness because lands might be partitioned or descend to only one child, whereas the qualification of nobility passed to all the children. This view of nobility continued to have force in the twelfth century, even though it was evident that ignoble men had sometimes gained great wealth and power. One such family was that of the Erlembaldi in Flanders, who acquired the hereditary castellanship of Bruges and a network of marriage relations with many Flemish nobles. When Count Charles of Flanders wished to break them, he threatened to investigate their servile origins, thus at once challenging their own position and demeaning the noble families into which they had married; it was an unwise move for it provoked them successfully to plot his assassination in 1127. Later in the twelfth century it became more acceptable to claim humble origins. As one family history put it, 'At the time of Charles the Bald many new men, better capable of good and honour than the nobles, became great and famous.' Sometimes humble origins were even invented. The counts of Anjou vaunted their own ability by claiming descent from a forester and overlooking their close marriage ties with leading figures in the Carolingian nobility; perhaps it helped them feel easier when they were at war with the king of France.

As nobility became less rigidly defined by birth alone, so it extended to a much wider group of men than it had previously. On occasion the word might be used to describe all freemen, though so wide a usage was unusual. Its use for those who held castles was common, even from the tenth century, and it might also be employed, though less frequently and less exclusively, for knights. Thus one of those who had married into the Erlembaldi and who faced dishonour when their social origins became known was a knight. Uncertainty about the proper application of the term noble was not simply a reflection of social mobility; it also reflected widespread change in society, occurring with differing forces and to differing degrees in different parts of Europe, and often recognized only after it had already taken place.

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