On 12 June 1779, thirteen-year-old Prince William Henry joined the navy as a midshipman. George III's instructions to him set a high standard for his behaviour: ‘It must never be out of Your thoughts that more Obedience is necessary from You to Your Superiours [sic] in the Navy, more Politeness to Your Equals and more good nature to Your Inferiors, than from those who have not been told that these are essential to a Gentleman.’ The king made it clear that he was joining a profession in which not all of his brother officers would be gentlemen. Presumably the prince would be, at least by birth. Whether he behaved like a gentleman was another matter, however, as the king – who knew his son well – may have realised. Indeed, the young prince comprehensively failed to follow his father's instructions. Not only did he exchange punches with his shipmates, but his admiral had to bail him out of jail after he brawled with soldiers in Gibraltar. He feuded with his tutor and had affairs in multiple ports. He also drank too much and had a dangerous fondness for gambling. In short, the future William IV, despite being told how to behave as a gentleman, rarely did.

As we have traced officers from birth to death, their families – their social backgrounds – have been noticeably absent. This chapter asks how many officers, both commissioned and warrant, were gentlemen by birth, Prince William Henry certainly was. But Captain Thomas Fife and Lieutenant Robert Baley were not: Fife was the son of a woolcomber and Baley's father was a farmer. They were the men the king warned his son about – men who had not been brought up with the essential qualities of gentility. Whether Fife and Baley were perceived as gentlemen by their peers – in other words, whether they were gentlemen by behaviour – is the subject of Chapter 8.

Now we have established the ways in which princely power was bestowed and legitimised, it is also important to outline how it was physically manifested. As already noted, historians have primarily seen the princes of Antioch as supreme rulers, able to exercise near-complete authority and to demand unrestricted services from fiefholders. In the context of the previous chapter and the realisation that the internal balance of power altered after 1130, this requires further examination. Due to the difficulties of the source material, however, it is impossible to cover all potential avenues. For example, little is known of the ruler's income. It is almost certain that the prince was the single largest landholder, and so the ruler's demesne, in addition to ensuring his military superiority over the other major landholders, would also have formed the basis of princely finances. Monies would have been gathered from landholding rents and taxes, such as the ninth-part of revenues the princes appear to have retained over some fiefs, the payments made on harvests, and even the income from fishing rights at the Lake of Antioch (situated on the Amuq). Of greater significance, though, would have been places along the coast, mainly St Simeon, Latakia and Jabala, as well as river ports like Arzghan, as these would have allowed for trade exactions – an important boon for any ruler. Yet, despite charter evidence which demonstrates that money and commerce were being trafficked through these sites, like the confirmation of a money-fief of two-thousand bezants to Walter II of Sourdeval at Jabala in 1179 and the granting of trade rights to the Italian states of Venice, Genoa and Pisa, there is little specific evidence for exact figures. Therefore, although a severe economic disparity emerged between the prince and the Church at Antioch, which proved a source of great friction throughout this period, it was not recorded how or why this occurred.

James Guthrie was born in Scotland in 1780. Not much more is known about his life before 1798, when he joined the navy as a surgeon's mate. Two years later, he received his first warrant. He was lucky in his appointment: his first ship was the fourteen-gun sloop Speedy, commanded by Thomas Cochrane. The commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean recognised that Cochrane was an aggressive and creative commander and gave him licence to cruise the shipping lanes off the Spanish coast. A typical incident saw Speedy sailing in company with five Danish merchantmen out of Barcelona. When two enemy ships approached, Speedy hoisted a Danish flag and acted as the convoy's escort. Guthrie later recalled, ‘The Spanish brig and French ship came right down upon us suspecting nothing and as we were edging towards the latter he hailed wishing to know what we wanted with him to which his Lordship replied it was just him we wanted.’ Replacing the Danish colours with British, Speedy opened fire and quickly captured both ships. The most famous of Speedy's exploits was the capture of the larger and more heavily armed Spanish xebec frigate El Gamo. At the height of the action, Guthrie volunteered to take the helm while Cochrane led the boarding party. Cochrane later wrote that ‘the doctor placed the Speedy close along with admirable skill’. The crew of Speedy split £1,394 in prize money following the action.

In early 1801, a powerful French squadron finally ended Speedy's amazing run, forcing her to surrender. By Cochrane's calculation, the Speedy had captured fifty prizes in the fifteen months he commanded her. After the capture, Guthrie served briefly with two other captains before re-joining Cochrane in Arab and then Pallas in 1804. Cochrane may have been a vainglorious and unreliable character, as well as a thorn in the side of his colleagues and superiors, but it was undoubtedly the case that service with him was profitable. On 15 February 1805, Pallas captured a Spanish ship from Vera Cruz full of mahogany, logwood, and, best of all, $432,000 of gold and silver coins.

Landholding was an imposing challenge in the principality of Antioch. The fragile military and political world of twelfth-century northern Syria, coupled with the region's unique topographical and religious variances, meant Latin settlers faced multi-faceted threats to their presence and security. For Cahen, and to a large extent Mayer, this allowed the powerful ruling house to keep a strong hold over the nobility through its military and political dominance. Martin has likewise noted Antioch's robust rulership, arguing that effective challenges to supremacy were prevented by the retention of key towns and cities within the princely demesne. Despite this, he also accepts that the Assises dAntioche, created as it was through a process of negotiation (a sentiment echoed by Edbury), reflect an aristocracy heavily focused on their own rights, and that direct princely control over Antioch's landholding, as exercised through the office of the secreta, eventually became more relaxed than elsewhere, particularly Norman Sicily.3 Asbridge went further, as in spite of recognising princely influence over charter creation in the principality's lordships, he also argued for the establishment – before 1130 – of a number of independent seigneuries which he classified as holding ‘marcher’ status: thus echoing the independent lordships seen on the Anglo-Welsh borders during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The holders of these fiefs, in the interests of defence, were thus granted a level of hereditary status and freedom from centralised control. The diversity of opinion here helps to introduce the difficulties inherent to this discussion, yet is not unique to the principality. Indeed, traditional notions of a deeply entrenched and powerful nobility in the kingdom of Jerusalem, such as that proposed by La Monte and Prawer, have since been challenged by Tibble, who instead highlighted the frequency and effectiveness of royal intervention in aristocratic matters. Moreover, modern studies on the interplay between central authority and frontier lordships on the disputed borderlands of the West have also emphasised the varied nature of relations.