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Esquire is not a title of nobility. It is, if anything, a title of commonality, below knight. See, e.g., Blackstone's Commentaries and Coke's Institutes. It is not inherited, and in English law at the time of the Founders and since, hasn't been "bestowed" by the monarch on anybody. British courts have held that "esquire" has no official significance, is unregulated, and anyone can simply use it without getting any sort of permission.
By English practice, dating IIRC to the 16th century, barristers were all called esquires to maintain a sort of equal footing in court - rather than calling attention to any class distinctions between opposing lawyers. In the US it appears that this custom - as a custom - was continued, at least partly because American lawyers, before World War One, very often trained for the profession by apprenticeship and not by formal education, and therefore they had no academic degrees to put after their names. They never got the "esquire" from any govt, foreign or domestic, they simply attached it to their names as a matter of tradition (and nowadays a great many US lawyers use their legal degrees after their name instead of "esq.").
Oddly enough, judging from letters surviving from the Federalist era, the Founders didn't seem to have any problem about attaching "esq." to their own or other men's names.
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