KNIGHTHOOD 111
itself, that is, when it was used as the description of an attendant of the king, appears to have meant more especially a military attendant. As Dr Stubbs says, "the thegn seems to be primarily the warrior gesith" – the gesithas forming the chosen band of companions (comites) of the German chiefs (principes) noticed by Tacitus – "he is probably the gesith who had a particular military duty in his master's service"; and he adds that from the reign of Athelstan "the gesith is lost sight of except very occasionally, the more important class having become thegns, and the lesser sort sinking into the rank of mere servants of the king."[1] It is pretty clear, therefore, that the word cniht could never have superseded the word thegn in the sense of a military attendant, at all events of the king. But besides the king, the ealdormen, bishops, and king's thegns themselves had their thegns, and to these it is more than probable that the name of cniht was applied. Under the singular system of joint responsibility and suretyship which was characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon government, the practice of commendation had attained to extraordinary dimensions. He who was unattached to some superior – the lordless man – was indeed regarded as a kind of outlaw; and, if he refused or neglected to choose a lord for himself, his kindred were bound to present him to the county court and select a lord for him. Hence a relation which was for the most part merely personal, but which only required the addition of land holding – an addition, it can scarcely be doubted, sometimes made – to render it in all respects feudal, was widely and firmly established in England long before the Norman Conquest. The mutual rights and obligations of lord and man, in a far more advanced condition than they appear as between hlaford and gesith at an earlier period, were perfectly familiar to the Anglo-Saxons, and it was only in part due to the influence of the Normans that they were subsequently transformed into the mutual rights and obligations of lord and tenant. 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.[2] The testimony of Domesday also establishes the existence in the reign of Edward the Confessor of what Dr 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 Saxon Chronicle, wherein it is recorded under the year 1085 that William the Conqueror "dubbade his sunu Henric to ridere."[3] But, as Mr 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."[4] 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.[5] In Germany the chevalier was called Ritter, but neither rider nor chevalier prevailed against knight among ourselves. 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, miles held its own against both eques and caballarius.
Origin of mediæval knighthood.
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. The mediæval 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. Another custom apparently common to the Goths and the Franks was the ceremony of adoption by arms. By means of a solemn investiture with warlike weapons, the two parties to the formality or rite thenceforth acquired the artificial characters of father and son, not, as in the Roman practice of adoption, for any purpose of succession or inheritance, but in a purely honorary and complimentary manner. Selden and Du Cange concur in tracing the ceremony of "dubbing to knighthood" directly to the ceremony of the "adoptio per arma." Among the Lombards the sons of their kings were forbidden to sit at the tables of their fathers until they had been invested with arms, and this, it is further said, by some foreign prince or potentate.[6] But among the Franks we find, from the authorities cited by Du Cange, 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.[7] These cases can hardly be referred, as the Lombard usages may, to the "adoptio per arma." Yet it is indisputable that in the investiture of Louis and Charles with the sword some ceremony was observed which was deemed worthy of record,
- ↑ Stubbs, Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 156.
- ↑ Stubbs, vol. i. pp. 156, 366; Turner, vol. iii. pp. 125-129.
- ↑ Ingram's edition, p. 290.
- ↑ Comparative Politics, p. 74.
- ↑ Baluze, Capitularia Regum Francorum, vol. ii. pp. 794, 1069.
- ↑ Mills, History of Chivalry, vol. i. p. 36.
- ↑ Gloss., s.v. "Arma."
