KNIGHTHOOD 117
which was theoretically exacted even in England, and which was rigorously exacted abroad. Nobody could be legitimately created a knight who was not a gentleman of "name and arms," that is, who was not descended on both sides at the least from grandparents who were entitled to armorial bearings. And this condition is embodied in the statutes of every order of knighthood, religious or military, which can trace its origin to a period when chivalry was a social institution.[1]
During the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as somewhat earlier and later, the general arrangements of a European army were always and everywhere pretty much the same.[2] Under the sovereign the constable and the marshal or marshals held the chief commands, their authority being partly joint and partly several. Attendant on them were the heralds, who were the officers of their military court, wherein offences committed in the camp and field were tried and adjudged, and among whose duties it was to carry orders and messages, to deliver challenges and call truces, and to identify and number the wounded and the slain. The main divisions of the army were distributed under the royal and other principal standards, smaller divisions under the banners of some of the greater nobility or of knights banneret, and smaller divisions still under the pennons of knights or, as in distinction from knights banneret they came to be called, knights bachelors. All knights whether bachelors or bannerets were escorted by their squires. Bat the banner of the banneret always implied a more or less extensive command, while every knight was entitled to bear a pennon and every squire a pencel. All three flags were of such a size as to be conveniently attached to and carried on a lance, and were emblazoned with the arms or some portion of the bearings of their owners. But while the banner was square the pennon, which resembled it in other respects, was either pointed or forked at its extremity, and the pencel, which was considerably less than the others, always terminated in a single tail or streamer.[3] As we have already indicated, it became the custom from the time of the crusades to seek out and as far as possible to establish analogies between the institutions of chivalry and the church. In the military grades of the squire, the knight, and the banneret, therefore, were of course seen the representatives of the clerical grades of the deacon, the priest, and the bishop.[4] But despite that the ceremonies of ordination were unquestionably imitated in the ceremonies of knighting, there is no reason for supposing that the resemblance, such as it was, which obtained between the chivalrous and the ecclesiastical series of degrees was otherwise than accidental. Moreover, it failed in at least two material respects, namely, that squirehood although the usual was not the necessary preliminary to knighthood, and that in all the attributes of knighthood as knighthood a knight bachelor was as fully and completely a knight as a knight banneret. If indeed we look at the scale of chivalric subordination from another point of view, it seems to be more properly divisible into four than into three stages, of which two may be called provisional and two final. The bachelor and the banneret were both equally knights, only the one was of greater distinction and authority 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 in which the sons of the sovereign and his vassals, or of the feudatory and his vassals, together commonly with those of some of their allies or friends, were reared in its principles and habituated to its customs and observances. 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.[5] 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.[6] From the chaplain and his mistress and her damsels he learnt the rudiments of religion, of rectitude, and of love;[7] 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
7 "Le petit Jehan de Saintré" is the great example on this point, especially the homily addressed to him by La Dame des Belles-Cousines. Therein she instructs him how he ought to love par amours. But Sir Walter Scott says that "so pure was the nature of the flame which she recommended that she maintained it to be inconsistent even with the seventh sin of chambering and wantonness to which it might seem too nearly allied. The least dishonest thought or action was, according to her doctrine, sufficient to forfeit the chivalrous lover the favour of his lady. It seems, however, that the greater part of her charges concerning incontinence is levelled against such as haunted the receptacles of open vice, and that she reserved an exception (of which in the course of the history she made liberal use) in favour of the intercourse which in all love, honour, and secrecy might take place when the favoured and faithful knight had obtained by long service the boon of amorous mercy from the lady whom he loved par amours" (article CHIVALRY in 7th and 8th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica).
- ↑ Being made to "ride the barriers" was the penalty for anybody who attempted to take part in a tournament without the qualification of name and arms. Hence the importance of the descents in geometrical progression commonly referred to as "sixteen quarters," beginning with "three descents" in England, "four lines" in France, "four quarters" in the empire, and "four branches" in Scotland. The books where this subject may be pursued are far too numerous to mention. Guillim (Display of Heraldry, p. 66) and Nisbet (System of Heraldry, vol. ii. p. 147) speak of it as concerning England raid Scotland. See also Ashmole's Order of the Garter, p. 284. But in England knighthood has always been conferred to a great extent independently of these considerations. At almost every period there have been men of obscure and illegitimate birth who have been knighted. Ashmole cites Sandars's Flandria Illustrata to the effect that "the degree of knighthood is of so great splendour and fame that it bestows gentility not only upon a man meanly born but also upon his descendants, and very much increaseth the honour of those who are well descended." And he adds that "it is a maxim laid down by a learned civilian (Tiraquel, De Nobilitate) that knighthood ennobles, insomuch that whosoever is a knight it necessarily follows that he is also a gentleman (Militia nobilitat ut quisquis est Miles is quoque continuo sit nobilis), for, when a king gives the dignity to an ignoble person whose merit he would thereby recompense, he is understood to have conferred whatsoever is requisite for the completing of that which he bestows." By the common law, if a villain were made a knight he was thereby enfranchised and accounted a gentleman, and if a person under age and in wardship were knighted both his minority and wardship terminated. – Order of the Garter, p. 43; Nicolas, British Orders of Knighthood, vol. i. p. v.
- ↑ Grose, Military Antiq.,# vol i. p. 207 sq.; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 276 sq., and vol. iii. p. 278 sq.
- ↑ Grose's Military Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 256.
- ↑ The same analogy may be drawn between bachelors, masters, and doctors; barristers, Serjeants, and judges; or pursuivants, heralds, and kings of arms.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, vol. i. p. 36; Froissart, bk. iii. chap. 9.
- ↑ Sainte Palaye, Mémoires, part i.; and Mills, History of Chivalry, vol. i. chap. 2.
- ↑ 7
