[n] St. Palaye, part i.
[o] Du Cange, 5me Dissertation sur Joinville. St. Palaye, t. i. p. 87, 118. Le Grand, t. i. p. 14.
[p] St. Palaye, t. i. p. 191.
[q] Godfrey de Preuilly, a French knight, is said by several contemporary writers to have invented tournaments; which must of course be understood in a limited sense. The Germans ascribe them to Henry the Fowler; but this, according to Du Cange, is on no authority. 6me Dissertation sur Joinville.
[r] St. Palaye, part ii. and part iii. au commencement. Du Cange, Dissert. 6 and 7: and Glossary, v. Torneamentum. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t. i. p. 184.
[] St. Palaye, part iv. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 806. There was not, however, so much distinction in England as in France.
[t] St. Palaye, vol. i. p. 70, has forgotten to make this distinction. It is, however, capable of abundant proof. Gunther, in his poem called Ligurinus, observes of the Milanese republic:
Quoslibet ex humili vulgo, quod Gallia fœdum
Judicat, accingi gladio concedit equestri.
Otho of Frisingen expresses the same in prose. It is said, in the Establishments of St. Louis, that if any one not being a gentleman on the father's side was knighted, the king or baron in whose territory he resides, may hack off his spurs on a dunghill, c. 130. The count de Nevers, having knighted a person who was not noble exparte paternâ, was fined in the king's court. The king, however, (Philip III.) confirmed the knighthood. Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Françoise, p. 98. Fuit propositum (says a passage quoted by Daniel) contra comitem Flandriensem, quod non poterat, nec debebat facere de villano militem, sine auctoritate regis. ibid. Statuimus, says James I. of Aragon, in 1234, ut nullus faciat militem nisi filium militis. Marca Hispanica, p. 1428. Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 592, produces other evidence to the same effect. And the emperor Sigismund having conferred knighthood, during his stay in Paris in 1415, on a person incompetent to receive it for want of nobility, the French were indignant at his conduct, as an assumption of sovereignty. Villaret, t. xiii. p. 397. We are told, however, by Giannone, 1. xx. c. 3, that nobility was not in fact required for receiving chivalry at Naples, though it was in France.
The privilege of every knight to associate qualified persons to the order at his pleasure, lasted very long in France; certainly down to the English wars of Charles VII. (Monstrelet, part ii. folio 50), and, if I am not mistaken, down to the time of Francis I. But in England, where the spirit of independence did not prevail so much among the nobility, it soon ceased. Selden mentions one remarkable instance in a writ of the 29th year of Henry III. summoning tenants in capite to come and receive knighthood from the king, ad recipiendum a nobis arma militaria; and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by whomsoever they pleased, ad recipiendum arma de quibuscunque voluerint. Titles of Honour, p. 792. But soon after this time, it became an established principle of our law that no subject can confer knighthood except by the king's authority. Thus Edward III. grants to a burgess of Lyndia in Guienne (I know not what place this is) the privilege of receiving that rank at the hands of any knight, his want of noble birth notwithstanding. Rymer, t. v. p. 623. It seems, however, that a different law obtained in some places. Twenty-three of the chief inhabitants of Beaucaire, partly knights, partly burgesses, certified in 1298, that the immemorial usage of Beaucaire and of Provence had been, for burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of noblemen, without the prince's permission. Vaissette, Hist. de Languedoc, t. iii. p. 530. Burgesses, in the great commercial towns, were considered as of a superior class to the roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi-nobility. Charles V. appears to have conceded a similar indulgence to the citizens of Paris. Villaret, t. x. p. 248.