In this article, I will examine a special social group within the lesser nobility in the Kingdom of Hungary. The history of the European lesser nobility, especially in the Western Europe, is a well-researched field and has a great historiography. For instance, it is a known fact that the English gentry was a much more open class than the French nobility. However, Edouard Perroy – after the reconstruction of the noble society of Forez County – observed that neither was the French lesser nobility closed; there were opportunities for the newcomers to establish a new noble linage. Philippe Contamine has several works about the French noble society and examined the differences between the English ‘gentleman’ and the French ‘gentilhomme’. In the UK, the followers of K.B. McFarlane published several books about the local nobility of the English shires. In Germany, Joachim Scheider wrote a comprehensive monograph wherein he compared the ‘niederadel’ of Bayern, Saxony, Brandenburg and Austria and made important remarks. Furthermore, I have to mention a volume of studies of the West European gentry and lesser nobility edited by Michael Jones wherein the most important researchers of the field interpreted and compared the lesser nobles of England, Scotland, France, Castile, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire. These essays show the great diversity of the characteristics of the lesser noble society which depend on the country or region.

It is generally agreed that the nobles were more numerous in the kingdoms of East Central Europe (especially in Hungary-Croatia and Poland), than in Western Europe. In the Kingdom of Hungary-Croatia about 3% of the population belonged to the nobles, most of them were poor petty nobles with only a few tenant-peasant plots. The problem can be perceived at a different level as well. Some nobles were present at the royal court and had special privileges, while a much greater part of nobility was formed by groups of local nobles who managed their own estates, served a wealthier noble or baron, and took part in the county administration. The most characteristic members of the latter group were the noble judges (Lat. iudices nobilium, Hung. szolgabírók) and their families.