"The Right to Bear Arms" in Elizabethan times

 

I was reading up about Shakespeare’s background (http://www.william-shakespeare.info/william-shakespeare-biography-mother-and-father.htm) and found this interesting information about what it meant to “bear arms” in his time.  It was something both Shakespeare and his father aspired to and eventually accomplished, and I just thought it was interesting.

 

During the Elizabethan era, the right to bear arms meant that people could be counted as part of the gentry.  When they had a coat of arms, they were allowed to call themselves gentlemen, but they could only receive it by paying a lot of money and receiving the sanction of (I think) the town officials.  Now we are freely entitled to the right to bear arms in America—which, if we read it with the Elizabethan interpretation, means that we’re entitled to be gentlemen and -women in America—to show proper and equal respect for others and to receive it of them in everything we do.  Even in the case of Sir Thomas More, whose political opponents went so far as to conspire against his life, he was treated with (relative) respect although he was in jail.  Like Mark DeMoss said in his BYU forum address, it’s important not to be uncivil toward anybody.