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.[1] 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.[2]
From the chaplain and his mistress and her damsels he learnt
the rudiments of religion, of rectitude and of love,[3] 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.[4]
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. But while in the one the accolade constituted the Modes of conferring Knighthood. 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.[5]
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.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, i. 36; Froissart, bk. iii. ch. 9.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, pt. i. and Mills, History of Chivalry, vol. i. ch. 2.
- ↑ See the long sermon in the romance of Petit Jehan de Saintré, pt. i. ch. v., and compare the theory there set forth with the actual behaviour of the chief personages. Even Gautier, while he contends that chivalry did much to refine morality, is compelled to admit the prevailing immorality to which medieval romances testify, and the extraordinary free behaviour of the unmarried ladies. No doubt these romances, taken alone, might give as unfair an idea as modern French novels give of Parisian morals, but we have abundant other evidence for placing the moral standard of the age of chivalry definitely below that of educated society in the present day.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, i. 11 seq.: “C’est peut-être à cette cérémonie et non à celles de la chevalerie qu’on doit rapporter ce qui se lit dans nos historiens de la première et de la seconde race au sujet des premières armes que les Rois et les Princes remettoient avec solemnité au ieunes Princes leurs enfans.”
- ↑ There are several obscure points as to the relation of the longer and shorter ceremonies, as well as the origin and original relation of their several parts. There is nothing to show whence came “dubbing” or the “accolade.” It seems certain that the word “dub” means to strike, and the usage is as old as the knighting of Henry by William the Conqueror (supra, pp. 851, 852). So, too, in the Empire a dubbed knight is “ritter geschlagen.” The “accolade” may etymologically refer to the embrace, accompanied by a blow with the hand, characteristic of the longer form of knighting. The derivation of “adouber,” corresponding to “dub,” from “adoptare,” which is given by Du Cange, and would connect the ceremony with “adoptio per arma,” is certainly inaccurate. The investiture with arms, which formed a part of the longer form of knighting, and which we have seen to rest on very ancient usage, may originally have had a distinct meaning. We have observed that Lanfranc invested Henry I. with arms, while William “dubbed him to rider.” If there was a difference in the meaning of the two ceremonies, the difficulty as to the knighting of Earl Harold (supra, p. 852) is at least partly removed.
