What is "doyens"

Usage examples of "doyens".

He consulted often with the doyens who commanded their companies and with merchants whose judgment he respected.

He listened attentively, first calling around him the doyens as well as Lucca and Johannes.

Flandrin, one of the doyens, had been injured, and we had scarcely room to carry them in the carts.

The lure of hazard had drawn all but one other of the club’s doyens from the room, and that one, Lord Petersham, was lost in one of his fits of deep abstraction.