There is a muskyte; and he is for an holy-water clerk.”
To this list the ‘Jewel for Gentre’ adds,
“A kesterel for a knave or servant.”[241]
Occupying a kind of intermediate rank between the peerage and the commons stands the order of Baronets. These, though really commoners, participate with peers the honour of transmitting their title to their male descendants. James I, the founder of this order, pledged himself to limit its number to two hundred, but successive sovereigns, possessing the same right to enlarge as he had to establish it, have more than quadrupled the holders of this dignity.
Baronets are in reality nothing more than hereditary knights, and some families who have been invested with the honour have gained little by it, seeing that their ancestors regularly, in earlier times, acquired that of knighthood. It is no unusual thing in tracing the annals of an antient house, to find six or seven knights in the direct line, besides those in the collateral branches. In the family of Calverley, there was, if I mistake not, a succession of SIXTEEN knights. This was a ‘knightly race’ indeed.
Of knighthood Nares remarks, “Since it was superseded by the order of Baronets, it has incurred a kind of contumely that is certainly injurious to its proper character. It has been held cheaper by the public at large, and I fear also by the sovereign himself. How often do we hear the remark when a Sir or Lady is mentioned, ‘He is only a Knight,’ or ‘She is only a Knight’s lady.’”
We have seen that knight is synonymous with servant. So also is theign or thane, one of the oldest titles of Northern nobility. Bede translates it by Minister Regis. Sometimes these thanes were servientes regis more literally than would suit the ambition of modern courtiers, for in Doomsday Book we find them holding such offices as Latinarius, Aurifaber, Coquus, interpreter, goldsmith, cook. Lord Ponsonby bears three combs in his arms, to commemorate his descent from the Conqueror’s barber!
Sir John Ferne traces the origin of knighthood to Olybion, the grandson of Noah; and Lydgate and Chaucer speak of the knights of Troy and Thebes. But the honour is not older than the introduction of the feudal system. When the whole country was parcelled out under that system, the possessor of each feu or fee (a certain value in land) held it by knight’s service, that is, by attending the summons of the king, whenever he engaged in war, properly equipped for the campaign, and leading on his vassals. Knighthood was obligatory, as the possessor of every fee was bound to receive the honour at the will of his sovereign or other feudal superior. Such knights were, in reference to their dependants, styled lords. Greater estates, consisting of several knights’ fees, were denominated Baronies, and the possessor of such an estate was called a Baron, or Banneret, on account of his right to display a square banner in the field—an honour to which no one of inferior rank could pretend.
Military aid was commonly all the rent which was required of a vassal. Sometimes, however, sums of money which now appear ludicrously small, or provisions for the lord’s household, were also demanded; and not unusually these payments were commuted for a broad arrow, a falcon, or a red rose. From such rents numerous coats of arms doubtless originated.
Knights are addressed as Sir, derived from the French Sire or Sieur, which was primarily applied to lords of a certain territory, as Le Sieur de Bollebec. This title was not limited to knighthood, for the great barons also used it. So also did ecclesiastics, even those holding very small benefices. I have found no instances of priests being called Sir, since the Reformation, except Shakspeare’s Sir Hugh Evans, in the Merry Wives of Windsor, and there the dramatist evidently alludes to the practice of earlier times than his own. Two other applications of the expression may be noticed—Sire is a very respectful mode of address to a king; but what shall we say of the Scots, who apply it in the plural to women, and even to an individual of that sex—Eh Sirs?