[28] See Du Cange, Dissertation 9. on Joinville. This learned commentator seems inclined to confound knights-banneret with barons, chivalry with nobility; and a herd of subsequent writers, refining on his error, have gravely placed knights-banneret as an order or class of society mediate between Nobility and Knighthood.
[29] Some fortune was, however, always thought necessary for the support of the dignity of knight-banneret. In the 28th of Edward III. John de Cobham was made a banneret, and had a grant of an annuity of 100 marks, out of the issues of the county of Norfolk, expressly for the better support of that dignity. Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 66. Many similar instances are mentioned in the Parliamentary Rolls.
[30] A note of Waterhouse on Fortescue will illustrate this. “The title of franklein is ‘good man;’ and yet they have oft knights’ estates. Many are called by courtesy ‘masters,’ and even ‘gentlemen;’ and their sons are educated in the inns of court, and adopted into the orders of knights and squires.”
[31] Illegitimacy seems not to have been a matter of the slightest consequence. Froissart. ii. 26.
[32] Favyn. i. 6.
[33] When Don Quixote was dubbed a knight, the landlord asked him whether he had any money. “Not a cross,” replied the knight; “for I never read in any history of chivalry, that any knight-errant ever carried money about him.”—“Respondio Don Quixote que no traia blanca, porque él nunca habia leido en las historias de los caballeros andantes, que ninguno los hubiese traido.” This was a very singular error in Cervantes, for in Amadis de Gaul, which he characterizes as the best work of its class, and which is evidently one of his textbooks, we read that the queen gave Adrian the Dwarf enough money to last Amadis de Gaul his master for a whole year. Book III. c. 6.
[34] Froissart, i. c. 448.
[35] Froissart, ii. c. 49.
[36] Thus, as Bracton observes, if a villain be made a knight, he is thereby immediately enfranchised, and consequently accounted a gentleman, l. iv. f. 198. b.
[37] Froissart, i. 384.