William Squire Kenyon

William Squire Kenyon 1869-1933, U.S. Senator (1911-22) from Iowa, b. Elyria, Ohio. He practiced law at Fort Dodge, Iowa, was county prosecutor, and became a state district court judge before serving (1910-11) as assistant to the U.S. Attorney General. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1911 and served there until 1922. Kenyon immediately joined the Republican insurgents, was the co-author of the Webb-Kenyon Act (1913) prohibiting the shipment of intoxicating beverages in interstate commerce, and was the first leader of the Senate farm bloc. Kenyon later served (1922-33) as judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and was (1929-30) a member of the Wickersham Commission (see Wickersham, George Woodward ).

squire is a term which has come down in the world. Originally it applied to a young man attendant on a knight, bearing his shield, and, by the late 14th cent., entitled to his own coat of arms. By Tudor times, the terminology was changing. William Harrison (1577) referred to ‘esquire, which we commonly call squire’. In the 17th cent. it developed into a general term for the lord of the manor, well below the level of nobility, but far above yeomen. The term ‘esquire’, like that of ‘gentleman’, was gradually applied to any man as a suffix, and its final degradation was as a 20th‐cent. term of pert familiarity. See gentry.

squire is a term which has come down in the world. Originally it applied to a young man attendant on a knight, bearing his shield, and, by the late 14th cent., entitled to his own coat of arms. Chaucer's Squire, a dapper young man, served his father. By Tudor times, the terminology was changing. William Harrison (1577) referred to ‘esquire, which we commonly call squire’. In the 17th cent. it developed into a general term for the lord of the manor, well below the level of nobility, but far above yeomen. Addison offered an idealized version in the Spectator (1711/12) in the form of Sir Roger de Coverley, worshipped by his servants and tenants: in the Freeholder (1715–16) he drew the antithesis in Squire Foxhunter, an ignorant boor, cursing the Hanoverians and complaining that there had been no good weather since the days of Charles II. Fielding's Squire Western in Tom Jones (1749) offered support for Macaulay's much-criticized portrait of the squirearchy as drunken clowns. The term ‘esquire’, like that of ‘gentleman’, was gradually applied to any man as a suffix, and its final degradation was as a 20th-cent. term of pert familiarity. See gentry.

J. A. Cannon