An esquire; orig. a young man who attended a knight by carrying his shield. The Latin form was armigerus. The word was used as the title esquire, as knight was used, e.g. when John Leland mentioned in his Itinerary two members of a 14c family, 'Thomas Golaffre, armiger, . . . and Syr Morice Brun, knight'. It was the Latin form for what we know as a country squire, a man with land, well-born but not knighted. [< Lat. armiger = bearing arms, armed]
Cf. Armigerous
Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases. Christopher Coredon with Ann Williams.