It isn't clear to me that the gentlemen and schollers are necessarily the same people in this citation.

Quite true, Faldage. But it is a worthy bit of research, nonetheless, wouldn't you agree, because it suggests that scholars were esteemed as highly as gentlemen in the 1590s, tho I grant it may have been a truly exceptional thing back then to find one and the other embodied in the same individual.

Which raises another question, perhaps. Back then, in the 1590s, the only scholars may have been monks. If so, were scholars esteemed for their scholarship, or for their scholarly pursuits in the livery of the church?

What we need to know is when it became honourable [or fashionable] for a gentleman to pursue studies in the manner of a scholar, rather than simply idle his time away with drinking, and wenching and running with the hounds, or hounding poachers.

I hazard a guess that this day emerged during the reign of Elizabeth I [at least in England], and that, if any single date could be fixed for its inauguration, it would be the day when Lord Francis Bacon, "the father of modern science", published his pivotal work* displaying a ship seabound at the Pillars of Hercules** accompanied by the legend "Plus ultra"***.

* "Novum Organum", 1620 [during the reign of James I]
http://fly.hiwaay.net/%7Epaul/bacon/organum/preface.html

** "Pillars of Hercules" is the ancient name given to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. [According to ancient tradition, these Pillars marked the end of the world.]

*** The Masonic term "Plus Ultra" ("more beyond") appears on a banner between two pillars (representing Masonry) in an emblem from Whitney's Choice of Emblems (1586). (Bacon is said to have published this book.)
http://www.sirbacon.org/links/whitneyemblem.html

For the frontispiece itself, see:

http://www.crs4.it/Ars/arshtml/conclusion1.html
The Latin quotation at the foot of the waves, taken from the Book of Daniel, reads: "Many will pass through and knowledge will be increased."