area or value of the lands granted (or retained), but was based upon the unit of the feudal host, the constabularia of ten knights. Of the tenants-in-chief or barons (i.e. those who held directly of the crown), the principal were called on to find one or more of these units, while of the lesser ones some were called on for five knights, that is, half a constabularia. The same system was adopted in Ireland when that country was conquered under Henry II. The baron who had been enfeoffed by his sovereign on these terms could provide the knights required either by hiring them for pay or, more conveniently when wealth was mainly represented by land, by a process of subenfeoffment, analogous to that by which he himself had been enfeoffed. That is to say, he could assign to an under-tenant a certain portion of his fief to be held by the service of finding one or more knights. The land so held would then be described as consisting of one or more knights’ fees, but the knight’s fee had not, as was formerly supposed, any fixed area. This process could be carried farther till there was a chain of mesne lords between the tenant-in-chief and the actual holder of the land; but the liability for performance of the knight-service was always carefully defined.
The primary obligation incumbent on every knight was service in the field, when called upon, for forty days a year, with specified armour and arms. There was, however, a standing dispute as to whether he could be called upon to perform this service outside the realm, nor was the question of his expenses free from difficulty. In addition to this primary duty he had, in numerous cases at least, to perform that of “castle ward” at his lord’s chief castle for a fixed number of days in the year. On certain baronies also was incumbent the duty of providing knights for the guard of royal castles, such as Windsor, Rockingham and Dover. Under the feudal system the tenant by knight-service had also the same pecuniary obligations to his lord as had his lord to the king. These consisted of (1) “relief,” which he paid on succeeding to his lands; (2) “wardship,” that is, the profits from his lands during a minority; (3) “marriage,” that is, the right of giving in marriage, unless bought off, his heiress, his heir (if a minor) and his widow; and also of the three “aids” (see Aids).
The chief sources of information for the extent and development of knight-service are the returns (cartae) of the barons (i.e. the tenants-in-chief) in 1166, informing the king, at his request, of the names of their tenants by knight-service with the number of fees they held, supplemented by the payments for “scutage” (see Scutage) recorded on the pipe rolls, by the later returns printed in the Testa de Nevill, and by the still later ones collected in Feudal Aids. In the returns made in 1166 some of the barons appear as having enfeoffed more and some less than the number of knights they had to find. In the latter case they described the balance as being chargeable on their “demesne,” that is, on the portion of their fief which remained in their own hands. These returns further prove that lands had already been granted for the service of a fraction of a knight, such service being in practice already commuted for a proportionate money payment; and they show that the total number of knights with which land held by military service was charged was not, as was formerly supposed, sixty thousand, but, probably, somewhere between five and six thousand. Similar returns were made for Normandy, and are valuable for the light they throw on its system of knight-service.
The principle of commuting for money the obligation of military service struck at the root of the whole system, and so complete was the change of conception that “tenure by knight-service of a mesne lord becomes, first in fact and then in law, tenure by escuage (i.e. scutage).” By the time of Henry III., as Bracton states, the test of tenure was scutage; liability, however small, to scutage payment made the tenure military.
The disintegration of the system was carried farther in the latter half of the 13th century as a consequence of changes in warfare, which were increasing the importance of foot soldiers and making the service of a knight for forty days of less value to the king. The barons, instead of paying scutage, compounded for their service by the payment of lump sums, and, by a process which is still obscure, the nominal quotas of knight-service due from each had, by the time of Edward I., been largely reduced. The knight’s fee, however, remained a knight’s fee, and the pecuniary incidents of military tenure, especially wardship, marriage, and fines on alienation, long continued to be a source of revenue to the crown. But at the Restoration (1660) tenure by knight-service was abolished by law (12 Car. II. c. 24), and with it these vexatious exactions were abolished.
Bibliography.—The returns of 1166 are preserved in the Liber Niger (13th cent.), edited by Hearne, and the Liber Rubeus or Red Book of the Exchequer (13 cent.), edited by H. Hall for the Rolls Series in 1896. The later returns are in Testa de Nevill (Record Commission, 1807) and in the Record Office volumes of Feudal Aids, arranged under counties. For the financial side of knight-service the early pipe rolls have been printed by the Record Commission and the Pipe Roll Society, and abstracts of later ones will be found in The Red Book of the Exchequer, which may be studied on the whole question; but the editor’s view must be received with caution and checked by J. H. Round’s Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer (for private circulation). The Baronia Anglica of Madox may also be consulted. The existing theory on knight-service was enunciated by Mr Round in English Historical Review, vi., vii., and reissued by him in his Feudal England (1895). It is accepted by Pollock and Maitland (History of English Law), who discuss the question at length; by Mr J. F. Baldwin in his Scutage and Knight-service in England (University of Chicago Press, 1897), a valuable monograph with bibliography; and by Petit-Dutaillis, in his Studies supplementary to Stubbs’ Constitutional History (Manchester University Series, 1908). (J. H. R.)
KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN CIRCLE, a semi-military secret
society in the United States in the Middle West, 1861–1864, the
purpose of which was to bring the Civil War to a close and restore
the “Union as it was.” There is some evidence that before the
Civil War there was a Democratic secret organization of the same
name, with its principal membership in the Southern States.
After the outbreak of the Civil War many of the Democrats of
the Middle West, who were opposed to the war policy of the
Republicans, organized the Knights of the Golden Circle, pledging
themselves to exert their influence to bring about peace. In
1863, owing to the disclosure of some of its secrets, the organization
took the name of Order of American Knights, and in 1864
this became the Sons of Liberty. The total membership of this
order probably reached 250,000 to 300,000, principally in Ohio,
Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky and south-western
Pennsylvania. Fernando Wood of New York seems to have
been the chief officer and in 1864 Clement L. Vallandigham
became the second in command. The great importance of the
Knights of the Golden Circle and its successors was due to its
opposition to the war policy of the Republican administration.
The plan was to overthrow the Lincoln government in the
elections and give to the Democrats the control of the state and
Federal governments, which would then make peace and invite
the Southern States to come back into the Union on the old footing.
In order to obstruct and embarrass the Republican administration
the members of the order held peace meetings to influence
public opinion against the continuance of the war; purchased
arms to be used in uprisings, which were to place the peace party
in control of the Federal government, or failing in that to establish
a north-western confederacy; and took measures to set free the
Confederate prisoners in the north and bring the war to a forced
close. All these plans failed at the critical moment, and the most
effective work done by the order was in encouraging desertion
from the Federal armies, preventing enlistments, and resisting
the draft. Wholesale arrests of leaders and numerous seizures
of arms by the United States authorities resulted in a general
collapse of the order late in 1864. Three of the leaders were
sentenced to death by military commissions, but sentence was
suspended until 1866, when they were released under the decision
of the United States Supreme Court in the famous case Ex parte
Milligan.
Authorities.—An Authentic Exposition of the Knights of the Golden Circle (Indianapolis, 1863); J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York, 1905) vol. v.; E. McPherson, Political History of the Rebellion (Washington, 1876); and W. D. Foulke, Life of O. P. Morton (2 vols., New York, 1899). (W. L. F.)
