[f. SQUIRE sb.]
1. The position or status of a squire or esquire; squireship. Also used as a title.
a. 1680. Butler, Rem. (1759), II. 91. To which Purpose he brings his Squirehood and Groom to vouch.
1721. Swift, Lett. King at Arms, Wks. 1841, II. 70/2. If this should be the test of squirehood, it will go hard with a great number of my fraternity.
1801. Spirit Pub. Jrnls., V. 376. The rage of Squire-hood is now so universal, that one of my humble race, a simple Gent. is hardly to be met with in his Majesty’s dominions!
1814. Scott, Chivalry (1874), 34. The sumptuary laws of squirehood were not particularly attended to.
2. The body of squires; the squirearchy.
1792. Burke, Corr. (1844), III. 438. In the governing people, the old false principles were quite worn out. In the squirehood, the pretence of them … still existed.
1831. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 331. Neither the squirehood nor the priesthood can persuade anybody to prop open his gates, that the pigs may run into his potato-field.
1835. W. P. Scargill, Provincial Sketches, 15. Both these gentlemen had their intimacies among the squirehoods of their respective neighbourhoods.
