was thus indiscriminately enjoyed even in the earlier days
of chivalry. It is true that as much might be inferred from
Persons empowered to confer Knighthood.
the testimony of the romance writers; historical
evidence, however, tends to limit the proposition, and
the sounder conclusion appears to be, as Sir Harris
Nicolas says, that the right was always restricted
in operation to sovereign princes, to those acting under their
authority or sanction, and to a few other personages of exalted
rank and station.[1] In several of the writs for distraint of knighthood
from Henry III. to Edward III. a distinction is drawn
between those who are to be knighted by the king himself or
by the sheriffs of counties respectively, and bishops and abbots
could make knights in the 11th and 12th centuries.[2] At all
periods the commanders of the royal armies had the power of
conferring knighthood; as late as the reign of Elizabeth it was
exercised among others by Sir Henry Sidney in 1583, and Robert,
earl of Essex, in 1595, while under James I. an ordinance of
1622, confirmed by a proclamation of 1623, for the registration
of knights in the college of arms, is rendered applicable to all
who should receive knighthood from either the king or any of
his lieutenants.[3] Many sovereigns, too, both of England and
of France, have been knighted after their accession to the
throne by their own subjects, as, for instance, Edward III. by
Henry, earl of Lancaster, Edward VI. by the lord protector
Somerset, Louis XI. by Philip, duke of Burgundy, and Francis I.
by the Chevalier Bayard. But when in 1543 Henry VIII.
appointed Sir John Wallop to be captain of Guisnes, it was
considered necessary that he should be authorized in express
terms to confer knighthood, which was also done by Edward VI.
in his own case when he received knighthood from the duke of
Somerset.[4] But at present the only subject to whom the right
of conferring knighthood belongs is the lord-lieutenant of
Ireland, and to him it belongs merely by long usage and
established custom. But, by whomsoever conferred, knighthood
at one time endowed the recipient with the same status
and attributes in every country wherein chivalry was recognized.
In the middle ages it was a common practice for sovereigns and
princes to dub each other knights much as they were afterwards,
and are now, in the habit of exchanging the stars and
ribbons of their orders. Henry II. was knighted by his great-uncle
David I. of Scotland, Alexander III. of Scotland by
Henry III., Edward I. when he was prince by Alphonso X. of
Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal by Edmund of Langley,
earl of Cambridge.[5] And, long after the military importance
of knighthood had practically disappeared, what may be called
its cosmopolitan character was maintained: a knight’s title was
recognized in all European countries, and not only in that
country in which he had received it. In modern times, however,
by certain regulations, made in 1823, and repeated and
enlarged in 1855, not only is it provided that the sovereign’s
permission by royal warrant shall be necessary for the reception
by a British subject of any foreign order of knighthood, but
further that such permission shall not authorize “the assumption
of any style, appellation, rank, precedence, or privilege
appertaining to a knight bachelor of the United Kingdom.”[6]
Since knighthood was accorded either by actual investiture or its equivalent, a counter process of degradation was regarded as necessary for the purpose of depriving anybody who had once received it of the rank and condition it implied.[7] The cases in Degradation.which a knight has been formally degraded in England are exceedingly few, so few indeed that two only are mentioned by Segar, writing in 1602, and Dallaway says that only three were on record in the College of Arms when he wrote in 1793. The last case was that of Sir Francis Michell in 1621, whose spurs were hacked from his heels, his sword-belt cut, and his sword broken over his head by the heralds in Westminster Hall.[8]
Roughly speaking, the age of chivalry properly so called may be said to have extended from the beginning of the crusades to the end of the Wars of the Roses. Even in the way of pageantry and martial exercise it did not long survive the middle ages. In England tilts and tourneys, in which her father had so much excelled, were patronized to the last by Queen Elizabeth, and were even occasionally held until after the death of Henry, prince of Wales. But on the Continent they were discredited by the fatal accident which befell Henry II. of France in 1559. The golden age of chivalry has been variously located. Most writers would place it in the early 13th century, but Gautier would remove it two or three generations further back. It may be true that, in the comparative scarcity of historical evidence, 12th-century romances present a more favourable picture of chivalry at that earlier time; but even such historical evidence as we possess, when carefully scrutinized, is enough to dispel the illusion that there was any period of the middle ages in which the unselfish championship of “God and the ladies” was anything but a rare exception.
It is difficult to describe the true spirit and moral influence of knighthood, if only because the ages in which it flourished differed so widely from our own. At its very best, it was always hampered by the limitations of medieval society. Moreover, many of the noblest precepts of the knightly code were a legacy from earlier ages, and have survived the decay of knighthood just as they will survive all transitory human institutions, forming part of the eternal heritage of the race. Indeed, the most important of these precepts did not even attain to their highest development in the middle ages. As a conscious effort to bring religion into daily life, chivalry was less successful than later puritanism; while the educated classes of our own day far surpass the average medieval knight in discipline, self-control and outward or inward refinement. Freeman’s estimate comes far nearer to the historical facts than Burke’s: “The chivalrous spirit is above all things a class spirit. The good knight is bound to endless fantastic courtesies towards men and still more towards women of a certain rank; he may treat all below that rank with any decree of scorn and cruelty. The spirit of chivalry implies the arbitrary choice of one or two virtues to be practised in such an exaggerated degree as to become vices, while the ordinary laws of right and wrong are forgotten. The false code of honour supplants the laws of the commonwealth, the law of God and the eternal principles of right. Chivalry again in its military aspect not only encourages the love of war for its own sake without regard to the cause for which war is waged, it encourages also an extravagant regard for a fantastic show of personal daring which cannot in any way advance the objects of the siege or campaign which is going on. Chivalry in short is in morals very much what feudalism is in law: each substitutes purely personal obligations devised in the interests of an exclusive class, for the more homely duties of an honest man and a good citizen” (Norman Conquest, v. 482). The chivalry from which Burke drew his ideas was, so far as it existed at all, the product of a far later age. In its own age, chivalry rested practically, like the highest civilization of ancient Greece and Rome, on slave labour;[9] and if many of its
- ↑ Orders of Knighthood, vol. i. p. xi.
- ↑ Selden, Titles of Honor, p. 638.
- ↑ Harleian MS. 6063; Hargrave MS. 325.
- ↑ Patent Rolls, 35th Hen. VIII., pt. xvi., No. 24; Burnet, Hist. of Reformation, i. 15.
- ↑ Spelman, “De milite dissertatio,” Posthumous Works, p. 181.
- ↑ London Gazette, December 6, 1823, and May 15, 1855.
- ↑ On the Continent very elaborate ceremonies, partly heraldic and partly religious, were observed in the degradation of a knight, which are described by Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, i. 316 seq., and after him by Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 60 seq. Cf. Titles of Honor, p. 653.
- ↑ Dallaway’s Heraldry, p. 303.
- ↑ Even in 13th century England more than half the population were serfs, and as such had no claim to the privileges of Magna Carta; disputes between a serf and his lord were decided in the latter’s court, although the king’s courts attempted to protect the serf’s life and limb and necessary implements of work. By French feudal law, the villein had no appeal from his lord save to God (Pierre de Fontaines, Conseil, ch. xxi. art. 8); and, though common sense and natural good feeling set bounds in most cases to the tyranny of the nobles, yet there was scarcely any injustice too gross to be possible. “How mad are they who exult when sons are born to their lords!” wrote Cardinal Jacques de Vitry early in the 13th century (Exempla, p. 64, Folk Lore Soc. 1890).
