squireen

plural squireens

1. A minor squire; a small landowner.

   About 1730 the poet and squireen Huw Hughes wrote to the great scholar Lewis Morris that all the defenders of the old language had gone to sleep.

   1983, Prys Morgan, “From a Death to a View”, in The Invention of Tradition

   2 more examples

   Probably no other country could produce such a degraded type as the squireen or buckeen, the drunken, gambling, profligate descendant of the Cromwellian or Williamite settler.

   1917, William Francis Thomas Butler, Confiscation in Irish history, page 248

   By blending entertainment and instruction, the Spectator taught ease and affability to squireens and tradesmen with time on their hands, money in their pockets but little breeding.

   1990, Roy Porter, English Society in the 18th Century, Penguin, published 1991, page 234