Bloch traces how "noble" hardened from a loose comparative term into the name of a class. In the first feudal age it could mean little more than standing above one's neighbours, and it turns up constantly in the comparative form; it carried no legal content. What it marked was a manner of living and a dominance that grew as government broke down and ties of protection spread through society.

What defined the group was less landholding as such than the shape of its wealth. Tolls, market dues and fines on local trade were prized alongside the soil, and the constant was that a noble's income came from work performed by other people. He was a lord of manors first of all, and anyone holding manors belonged by that fact to the upper ranks. Later chapters take up chivalry, the nobility's way of life, and its eventual conversion into a class defined in law.