According to the old wife in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, gentilesse comes from God alone. Ancestry and birth have no bearing on an individual's nobility. The first book of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene focuses on an oafish man called Redcrosse who slowly matures into a chivalrous knight. Though Redcrosse does not fit exactly into the old wife's mold of a gentleman, he certainly possesses many qualities of nobility by the end of Book One of The Faerie Queene.
             When Redcrosse first appears, he is presented as a common man, or as Spenser calls him in his letter to Raleigh, a "clownish person" (626). Since the armor Una lets him try on is representative of the armor Saint Paul describes as the armor of a Christian man, it is only natural to assume that if it does indeed fit, then God willed that Redcrosse be some sort of holy emissary. The armor does in fact fit perfectly; therefore, Redcrosse is equipped with "loins girt about with truth, breastplate of righteousness, feet shod with the gospel of peace, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the spirit, which is the word of God" (626). Though Redcrosse hoards this massive potential, he is still susceptible to mistakes and poor judgment. His first mistake is his entering the den of Error, where he is forced to combat several monsters. Not all Redcrosse's transgressions result in physical confrontations-he is tricked by an evil shape-shifting woman named Duessa who seduces him into intimate contact, causing Redcrosse's gentilesse to be compromised. The next blow to Redcrosse's nobility comes when Duessa escorts him to the house of Pride. Lucifera, whose name has obvious connotations, manages to put another metaphorical dent in Redcrosse's holy armor. Fortunately, the knight recognizes his peril and sneaks out of the house of Pride. The fall of Redcrosse climaxes w
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