Around the Anglo-Saxon magnates were collected a crowd of retainers and dependants of all ranks and conditions; and there is evidence enough to show that among them were some called cnihtas who were not always the humblest or least considerable of their number.[5] The testimony of Domesday also establishes the existence in the reign of Edward the Confessor of what Stubbs describes as a “large class” of landholders who had commended themselves to some lord, and he regards it as doubtful whether their tenure had not already assumed a really feudal character. But in any event it is manifest that their condition was in many respects similar to that of a vast number of unquestionably feudal and military tenants who made their appearance after the Norman Conquest. If consequently the former were called cnihtas under the Anglo-Saxon régime, it seems sufficiently probable that the appellation should have been continued to the latter—practically their successors—under the Anglo-Norman régime. And if the designation of knights was first applied to the military tenants of the earls, bishops and barons—who although they held their lands of mesne lords owed their services to the king—the extension of that designation to the whole body of military tenants need not have been a very violent or prolonged process. Assuming, however, that knight was originally used to describe the military tenant of a noble person, as cniht had sometimes been used to describe the thegn of a noble person, it would, to begin with, have defined rather his social status than the nature of his services. But those whom the English called knights the Normans called chevaliers, by which term the nature of their services was defined, while their social status was left out of consideration. And at first chevalier in its general and honorary signification seems to have been rendered not by knight but by rider, as may be inferred from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, wherein it is recorded under the year 1085 that William the Conqueror “dubbade his sunu Henric to ridere.”[6] But, as E. A. Freeman says, “no such title is heard of in the earlier days of England. The thegn, the ealdorman, the king himself, fought on foot; the horse might bear him to the field, but when the fighting itself came he stood on his native earth to receive the onslaught of her enemies.”[7] In this perhaps we may behold one of the most ancient of British insular prejudices, for on the Continent the importance of cavalry in warfare was already abundantly understood. It was by means of their horsemen that the Austrasian Franks established their superiority over their neighbours, and in time created the Western Empire anew, while from the word caballarius, which occurs in the Capitularies in the reign of Charlemagne, came the words for knight in all the Romance languages.[8] In Germany the chevalier was called Ritter, but neither rider nor chevalier prevailed against knight in England. And it was long after knighthood had acquired its present meaning with us that chivalry was incorporated into our language. It may be remarked too in passing that in official Latin, not only in England but all over Europe, the word miles held its own against both eques and caballarius.
Concerning the origin of knighthood or chivalry as it existed in the middle ages—implying as it did a formal assumption of and initiation into the profession of arms—nothing beyond more or less probable conjecture is possible. Origin of Medieval Knighthood. The medieval knights had nothing to do in the way of derivation with the “equites” of Rome, the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, or the Paladins of Charlemagne. But there are grounds for believing that some of the rudiments of chivalry are to be detected in early Teutonic customs, and that they may have made some advance among the Franks of Gaul. We know from Tacitus that the German tribes in his day were wont to celebrate the admission of their young men into the ranks of their warriors with much circumstance and ceremony. The people of the district to which the candidate belonged were called together; his qualifications for the privileges about to be conferred upon him were inquired into; and, if he were deemed fitted and worthy to receive them, his chief, his father, or one of his near kinsmen presented him with a shield and a lance. Again, among the Franks we find Charlemagne girding his son Louis the Pious, and Louis the Pious girding his son Charles the Bald with the sword, when they arrived at manhood.[9] It seems certain here that some ceremony was observed which was deemed worthy of record not for its novelty, but as a thing of recognized importance. It does not follow that a similar ceremony extended to personages less exalted than the sons of kings and emperors. But if it did we must naturally suppose that it applied in the first instance to the mounted warriors who formed the most formidable portion of the warlike array of the Franks. It was among the Franks indeed, and possibly through their experiences in war with the Saracens, that cavalry first acquired the pre-eminent place which it long maintained in every European country. In early society, where the army is not a paid force but the armed nation, the cavalry must necessarily consist of the noble and wealthy, and cavalry and chivalry, as Freeman observes,[10] will be the same. Since then we discover in the Capitularies of Charlemagne actual mention of “caballarii” as a class of warriors, it may reasonably be concluded that formal investiture with arms applied to the “caballarii” if it was a usage extending beyond the sovereign and his heir-apparent. “But,” as Hallam says, “he who fought on horseback and had been invested with peculiar arms in a solemn manner wanted nothing more to render him a knight;” and so he concludes, in view of the verbal identity of “chevalier” and “caballarius,” that “we may refer chivalry in a general sense to the age of Charlemagne.”[11] Yet, if the “caballarii” of the Capitularies are really the precursors of the later knights, it remains a difficulty that the Latin name for a knight is “miles,” although “caballarius” became in various forms the vernacular designation.
Before it was known that the chronicle ascribed to Ingulf of Croyland is really a fiction of the 13th or 14th century, the knighting of Heward or Hereward by Brand, abbot of Burgh (now Peterborough), was accepted from Selden to Hallam as Knighthood in England. an historical fact, and knighthood was supposed, not only to have been known among the Anglo-Saxons, but to have had a distinctively religious character which was contemned by the Norman invaders. The genuine evidence at our command altogether fails to support this view. When William of Malmesbury describes the knighting of Athelstan by his grandfather Alfred the Great, that is, his investiture “with a purple garment set with gems and a Saxon sword with a golden sheath,” there is no hint of any religious observance. In spite of the silence of our records, Dr Stubbs thinks that kings so well acquainted with foreign usages as Ethelred, Canute and Edward the Confessor could hardly have failed to introduce into England the institution of chivalry then springing up in every country of Europe; and he is supported in this opinion by the circumstance that it is nowhere mentioned as a Norman innovation. Yet the fact that Harold received knighthood from William of Normandy makes it clear either that Harold was not yet a knight, which in the case of so tried a warrior would imply that “dubbing to knighthood” was not yet known in England even under Edward the Confessor, or, as Freeman thinks, that in the middle of the 11th century the custom had grown in Normandy into “something of a more special meaning” than it bore in England.
Regarded as a method of military organization, the feudal system of tenures was always far better adapted to the purposes of defensive than of offensive warfare. Against invasion it furnished a permanent provision both in men-at-arms and strongholds; nor was it unsuited for the campaigns of neighbouring counts and barons which lasted for only a few weeks, and extended over only a few leagues. But when kings and kingdoms were in conflict, and distant and prolonged expeditions became necessary, it was speedily discovered that the unassisted resources of feudalism were altogether inadequate. It became therefore the manifest interest of both parties that personal services should be commuted into pecuniary payments. Then there grew up all over Europe a system of fining the knights who failed to respond to the sovereign’s call or to stay their full time in the field; and in England this fine developed, from the reign of Henry II. to that of Edward II., into a regular war-tax called escuage or scutage (q.v.). In this way funds for war were placed at the free disposal of sovereigns, and, although the feudatories and their retainers still formed the most considerable portion of their armies, the conditions under which they served were altogether changed. Their military service was now far more the result of special agreement. In the reign of Edward I., whose warlike enterprises after he was king were confined within the four seas, this alteration does not seem to have proceeded very far, and Scotland and Wales were subjugated by what was in the main, if not exclusively, a feudal militia raised as of old by writ to the earls and barons and the sheriffs.[12] But the armies of Edward III., Henry V. and Henry VI. during the century of intermittent warfare between England and France were recruited and sustained to a very great extent on the principle of contract.[13] On the Continent the systematic employment of mercenaries was both an early and a common practice.
Besides consideration for the mutual convenience of sovereigns and their feudatories, there were other causes which materially contributed towards bringing about those changes in the military system of Europe which were finally The Crusades. accomplished in the 13th and 14th centuries. During the Crusades vast armies were set on foot in which feudal rights and obligations had no place, and it was seen that the volunteers who flocked to the standards of the various commanders were not less but even more efficient in the field than the vassals they had hitherto been accustomed to lead. It was thus established that pay, the love of enterprise and the prospect of plunder—if we leave zeal for the sacred cause which they had espoused for the moment out of sight—were quite as useful for the purpose of enlisting troops and keeping them together as the tenure of land and the solemnities of homage and fealty. Moreover, the crusaders who survived the difficulties and dangers of an expedition to Palestine were seasoned and experienced although frequently impoverished and landless soldiers, ready to hire themselves to the highest bidder, and well worth the wages they received. Again, it was owing to the crusades that the church took the profession of arms under her peculiar protection, and thenceforward the ceremonies of initiation into it assumed a religious as well as a martial character.
To distinguished soldiers of the cross the honours and benefits of knighthood could hardly be refused on the ground that they did not possess a sufficient property qualification—of which perhaps they had denuded themselves in Knighthood independent of Feudalism. order to their equipment for the Holy War. And thus the conception of knighthood as of something distinct from feudalism both as a social condition and a personal dignity arose and rapidly gained ground. It was then that the analogy was first detected between the order of knighthood and the order of priesthood, and that an actual union of monachism and chivalry was effected by the establishment of the religious orders of which the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers were the most eminent examples. As comprehensive in their polity as the Benedictines or Franciscans, they gathered their members from, and soon scattered their possessions over, every country in Europe. And in their indifference to the distinctions of race and nationality they merely accommodated themselves to the spirit which had become characteristic of chivalry itself, already recognized, like the church, as a universal institution which knit together the whole warrior caste of Christendom into one great fraternity irrespective alike of feudal subordination and territorial boundaries. Somewhat later the adoption of hereditary surnames and armorial bearings marked the existence of a large and noble class who either from the subdivision of fiefs or from the effects of the custom of primogeniture were very insufficiently provided for. To them only two callings were generally open, that of the churchman and that of the soldier, and the latter as a rule offered greater attractions than the former in an era of much licence and little learning. Hence the favourite expedient for men of birth, although not of fortune, was to attach themselves to some prince or magnate in whose military service they were sure of an adequate maintenance and might hope for even a rich reward in the shape of booty or of ransom.[14] It is probably to this period and these circumstances that we must look for at all events the rudimentary beginnings of the military as well as the religious orders of chivalry. Of the existence of any regularly constituted companionships of the first kind there is no trustworthy evidence until between two and three centuries after fraternities of the second kind had been organized. Soon after the greater crusading societies had been formed similar orders, such as those of St James of Compostella, Calatrava and Alcantara, were established to fight the Moors in Spain instead of the Saracens in the Holy Land. But the members of these orders were not less monks than knights, their statutes embodied the rules of the cloister, and they were bound by the ecclesiastical vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience. From a very early stage in the development of chivalry, however, we meet with the singular institution of brotherhood in arms; and from it the ultimate origin if not of the religious fraternities at any rate of the military companionships is usually derived.[15] By this institution a relation was created between two or more monks by voluntary agreement, which was regarded as of far more intimacy and stringency than any which the mere accident of consanguinity implied. Brothers in arms were supposed to be partners in all things save the affections of their “lady-loves.” They shared in every danger and in every success, and each was expected to vindicate the honour of another as promptly and zealously as his own. The plot of the medieval romance of Amis and Amiles is built entirely on such a brotherhood. Their engagements usually lasted through life, but sometimes only for a specified period or during the continuance of specified circumstances, and they were always ratified by oath, occasionally reduced to writing in the shape of a solemn bond and often sanctified by their reception of the Eucharist together. Romance and tradition speak of strange rites—the mingling and even the drinking of blood—as having in remote and rude ages marked the inception of these martial and fraternal associations.[16] But in later and less barbarous times they were generally evidenced and celebrated by a formal and reciprocal exchange of weapons and armour. In warfare it was customary for knights who were thus allied to appear similarly accoutred and bearing the same badges or cognisances, to the end that their enemies might not know with which of them they were in conflict, and that their friends might be unable to accord more applause to one than to the other for his prowess in the field. It seems likely enough therefore that there should grow up bodies of knights banded together by engagements of fidelity, although free from monastic obligations; wearing a uniform or livery, and naming themselves after some special symbol or some patron saint of their adoption. And such bodies placed under the command of a sovereign or grand master, regulated by statutes, and enriched by ecclesiastical endowments would have been precisely what in after times such orders as the Garter in England, the Golden Fleece in Burgundy, the Annunziata in Savoy and the St Michael and Holy Ghost in France actually were.[17]
During the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as somewhat earlier and later, the general arrangements of a European army were always and everywhere pretty much the same.[18] Under the sovereign the constable and the marshal Grades of Knighthood. or marshals held the chief commands, their authority being partly joint and partly several. Attendant on them were the heralds, who were the officers of their military court, wherein offences committed in the camp and field were tried and adjudged, and among whose duties it was to carry orders and messages, to deliver challenges and call truces, and to identify and number the wounded and the slain. The main divisions of the army were distributed under the royal and other principal standards, smaller divisions under the banners of some of the greater nobility or of knights banneret, and smaller divisions still under the pennons of knights or, as in distinction from knights banneret they came to be called, knights bachelors. All knights whether bachelors or bannerets were escorted by their squires. But the banner of the banneret always implied a more or less extensive command, while every knight was entitled to bear a pennon and every squire a pencel. All three flags were of such a size as to be conveniently attached to and carried on a lance, and were emblazoned with the arms or some portion of the bearings of their owners. But while the banner was square the pennon, which resembled it in other respects, was either pointed or forked at its extremity, and the pencel, which was considerably less than the others, always terminated in a single tail or streamer.[19]
If indeed we look at the scale of chivalric subordination from another point of view, it seems to be more properly divisible into four than into three stages, of which two may be called provisional and two final. The bachelor and the banneret were both equally knights, only the one was of greater distinction and authority than the other. In like manner the squire and the page were both in training for knighthood, but the first had advanced further in the process than the second. It is true that the squire was a combatant while the page was not, and that many squires voluntarily served as squires all their lives owing to the insufficiency of their fortunes to support the costs and charges of knighthood. But in the ordinary course of a chivalrous education the successive conditions of page and squire were passed through in boyhood and youth, and the condition of knighthood was reached in early manhood. Every feudal court and castle was in fact a school of chivalry, and although princes and great personages were rarely actually pages or squires, the moral and physical discipline through which they passed was not in any important particular different from that to which less exalted candidates for knighthood were subjected.[20] The page, or, as he was more anciently and more correctly called, the “valet” or “damoiseau,” commenced his service and instruction when he was between seven and eight years old, and the initial phase continued for seven or eight years longer. He acted as the constant personal attendant of both his master and mistress. He waited on them in their hall and accompanied them in the chase, served the lady in her bower and followed the lord to the camp.[21] From the chaplain and his mistress and her damsels he learnt the rudiments of religion, of rectitude and of love,[22] from his master and his squires the elements of military exercise, to cast a spear or dart, to sustain a shield, and to march with the measured tread of a soldier; and from his master and his huntsmen and falconers the “mysteries of the woods and rivers,” or in other words the rules and practices of hunting and hawking. When he was between fifteen and sixteen he became a squire. But no sudden or great alteration was made in his mode of life. He continued to wait at dinner with the pages, although in a manner more dignified according to the notions of the age. He not only served but carved and helped the dishes, proffered the first or principal cup of wine to his master and his guests, and carried to them the basin, ewer or napkin when they washed their hands before and after meat. He assisted in clearing the hall for dancing or minstrelsy, and laid the tables for chess or draughts, and he also shared in the pastimes for which he had made preparation. He brought his master the “vin de coucher” at night, and made his early refection ready for him in the morning. But his military exercises and athletic sports occupied an always increasing portion of the day. He accustomed himself to ride the “great horse,” to tilt at the quintain, to wield the sword and battle-axe, to swim and climb, to run and leap, and to bear the weight and overcome the embarrassments of armour. He inured himself to the vicissitudes of heat and cold, and voluntarily suffered the pains or inconveniences of hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleeplessness. It was then too that he chose his “lady-love,” whom he was expected to regard with an adoration at once earnest, respectful, and the more meritorious if concealed. And when it was considered that he had made sufficient advancement in his military accomplishments, he took his sword to the priest, who laid it on the altar, blessed it, and returned it to him.[23] Afterwards he either remained with his early master, relegating most of his domestic duties to his younger companions, or he entered the service of some valiant and adventurous lord or knight of his own selection. He now became a “squire of the body,” and truly an “armiger” or “scutifer,” for he bore the shield and armour of his leader to the field, and, what was a task of no small difficulty and hazard, cased and secured him in his panoply of war before assisting him to mount his courser or charger. It was his function also to display and guard in battle the banner of the baron or banneret or the pennon of the knight he served, to raise him from the ground if he were unhorsed, to supply him with another or his own horse if his was disabled or killed, to receive and keep any prisoners he might take, to fight by his side if he was unequally matched, to rescue him if captured, to bear him to a place of safety if wounded, and to bury him honourably when dead. And after he had worthily and bravely, borne himself for six or seven years as a squire, the time came when it was fitting that he should be made a knight. This, at least, was the current theory; but it is specially dangerous in medieval history to assume too much correspondence between theory and fact. In many castles, and perhaps in most, the discipline followed simply a natural and unwritten code of “fagging” and seniority, as in public schools or on board men-of-war some hundred years or so ago.
Two modes of conferring knighthood appear to have prevailed from a very early period in all countries where chivalry was known. In both of them the essential portion seems to have been the accolade or stroke of the sword. Modes of conferring Knighthood. But while in the one the accolade constituted the whole or nearly the whole of the ceremony, in the other it was surrounded with many additional observances. The former and simpler of these modes was naturally that used in war: the candidate knelt before “the chief of the army or some valiant knight,” who struck him thrice with the flat of a sword, pronouncing a brief formula of creation and of exhortation which varied at the creator’s will.[24]
In this form a number of knights were made before and after almost every battle between the 11th and the 16th centuries, and its advantages on the score of both convenience and economy gradually led to its general adoption both in time of peace and time of war. On extraordinary occasions indeed the more elaborate ritual continued to be observed. But recourse was had to it so rarely that in England about the beginning of the 15th century it came to be exclusively appropriated to a special king of knighthood. When Segar, garter king of arms, wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this had been accomplished with such completeness that he does not even mention that there were two ways of creating knights bachelors. “He that is to be made a knight,” he says, “is striken by the prince with a sword drawn upon his back or shoulder, the prince saying, ‘Soys Chevalier,’ and in times past was added ‘Saint George.’ And when the knight rises the prince sayeth ‘Avencez.’ This is the manner of dubbing knights at this present, and that term ‘dubbing’ was the old term in this point, not ‘creating.’ This sort of knights are by the heralds called knights bachelors.” In our days when a knight is personally made he kneels before the sovereign, who lays a sword drawn, ordinarily the sword of state, on either of his shoulders and says, “Rise,” calling him by his Christian name with the addition of “Sir” before it.