KNIGHTHOOD popularly and in an uncritical age, but by writers of weight from Selderi to Hallam. But 60,000 knights fees at 20 a year gives about twelve times the whole national income from land as it appears in Domesday ; or, if the knight s fee is reckoned at five hides, the aggregate amounts to thirty millions of acres, leaving something more than two millions for royal demesnes, all other tenures, forests, waste, and the rest, 1 The Red Book of the Exchequer, which dates from the first third of the 13th century, mentions a tradition, which the compiler himself rejects as unsupported by evidence, that William I. created not 60,000 but 32,000 knights fees. 2 According to the Black Book of the Exchequer the number of knights furnished at the date of its compilation by the tenants iu chief of twenty counties taken at random was 3991, and of the ten counties south of the Thames and Avon 2047. 3 As it is probable that these ten counties contained about a fourth of the population, and as the proportion of knights fees is not very materially departed from in the twenty unselected counties, we should not be far wrong in assuming perhaps that the entire number of knights fees in the kingdom was between eight and nine thousand. 4 Knight- All tenure in chivalry was founded on homage and fealty, service, to which were added the various services and liabilities under which the different fiefs or tenements were held. Homage consisted in the mutual acknowledgment by the lord and tenant that the latter was the vassal or man of the former, accompanied as evidence thereof by certain solemn acts of obeisance on the one hand and of accept ance and patronage on the other. Hence homage could be done only by the tenant in person to the lord in person. Connectsd with and following on homage was fealty, which was an undertaking or oath on the part of the tenant that he would be true and faithful to his lord in consideration of the lands which he held of him, and that he would duly and fully observe the several conditions of his tenure, which declaration might be received on behalf of the lord by anybody whom he might appoint for the purpose. Every tenant in chivalry owed service to his lord in peace as well as in war, and was bound to attend him in his court not less than in the field. The civil obligations of tenants by knight-service were to assist their lords in the adminis tration of justice and to support them on occasions of ceremony and display. The chief vassals of the king, the earls and barons, were the homagers and peers of the great court-baron of the kingdom, and in turn their under-tenants were the homagers and peers of their palatine and baronial courts. The military obligations of tenants by knight- service were discharged either in the king s armies or in the castles of the king and his principal feudatories. In the first case the holder of a knight s fee was bound to serve in the royal host fully equipped and on horseback at his own expense for forty days in every year when called upon, a tenant in chief serving under the direct command of the sovereign or his officers, and an under tenant in the martial retinue of his immediate lord. But in the second case the duties of the tenant were not defined by any general rule or custom, and the terms of his service of " castle guard " depended on the special stipulations of his grant or feoffment. 5 Besides all this, however, tenants by knight-service were subjected to various other burdens which in course of time became the most important incidents of their tenure. On the death of a tenant, his 1 Pearson, Early and Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 496. 2 Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 30. 3 Pearson, lib. cit., vol. ii. 209 sq. 4 Pearson, lib. cit., vol. i. p. 375. Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 264. 5 Mayna Carta, sect. 29 ; Stubbs, Select Charters, p. 300 ; Selden, Titles of Honor, p. 611. heir, if he was of full age, was compelled on taking up his inheritance to pay a fine to his lord. This was called a relief if he was an under tenant, or " primer seisin " if he was a tenant in chief, and amounted in the first instance to one quarter s profits, and in the second to one whole year s profits, of his estate. 6 The tenant was also liable to render what were called aids to his lord for three purposes, namely, to ransom him from captivity, to make his eldest son a knight, and to provide a portion for his eldest daughter on her marriage. Of these three aids ransom was only a very rare and exceptional demand, while those "pur faire fitz chivaler" and " pur file marier " were of course of frequent and ordinary occurrence. Wardship and marriage, however, were the main incidents of tenure by knight-service after the military obligations which formed its essential characteristic, and they were always the most unpopular and oppressive of them. When on the death of the tenant the heir was under the age of twenty-one or the heiress under the age of fourteen, the lord became the " guardian in chivalry " of his or her person and lands until he reached the age of twenty-one or she reached the age of sixteen, when on the payment of half a year s income of their estate in lieu of all reliefs and " primer seisins " the wards were entitled to sue out their livery or " ouster- lemain." In the meantime the lord had all the profits of the lands, and was not bound to render any account of them, while he was at liberty to assign or sell his guardian ship with its attendant rights and immunities unimpaired. Moreover, he was entitled to dispose of his male, as well as his female, wards in marriage to any person of equal or similar rank to their own, and if they rejected the match recommended by him, or married without his consent, they incurred the forfeiture to him of a sum of money equivalent to what was termed the value of their marriage, that is, the price which was to have been given or might have been reasonably expected to be given for it. Nor could the tenant by knight-service part with his lauds without the payment of a fine on alienation to his lord, to whom they altogether passed on his neglect to fulfil his feudal obli gations or on the extinction of his heirs. Again, whether he was an under tenant or a tenant in chief, his lands escheated to the king if he was convicted of treason, while if he was convicted of any other felony they escheated to his immediate lord, the king if he were not the imme diate lord entering into possession of them for a year and a day. It had also become customary from a comparatively early period to compel the tenants of knights fees to take upon themselves the honorary distinction of knighthood, and it is remarkable that this appears to have been most systematically insisted on after the actual render of military service had been universally commuted to a money equi valent, and when even that money equivalent itself under its original name of escuage or scutage was passing or had passed away. 7 Neglect or refusal to be knighted by any 6 Magna Carta, sect. 2. 7 " In the nineteenth of Henry III., all the sheriffs of England were commanded by close writs under the great seal to make proclamation that all they who held of the king in chief one knight s fee or more and were not as yet knighted should get themselves knighted before the ensuing Christmas, as they loved the tenements and fees they held of the king. Two years before the king had seized the lands and chattels of Roger de Sumery, including the honour of Dudley, because he did not come to the king to be girded with the belt of knighthood " (Madox, Baronia Anglica, p. 130). "There can be no doubt," Dr Stubbs says, " that this practice was one of the influences which blended the minor tenants-in-chief with the general body of the free holders ; possibly it led also to the development of the military spirit which in the following century [he is speaking of the reign of Edward I.] sus tained the extravagant designs of Edward III., and was glorified under the name of chivalry" (Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 282). The statute " De Militibus " was passed in the reign of Edward II. , just at the period when scutage was being abandoned as a special mode of taxation (Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 522).
