KNIGHTHOOD 121
now sufficient lands to enable me to do so and maintain the rank which it ought to hold.' The prince, Don Pedro, being present took the banner in his hands, which was blazoned with a sharp stake gules on a field argent; after having cut off the tail to make it square, he displayed it, and returning it to him by the handle said, 'Sir John, I return you your banner; God give you strength and honour to preserve it.' Upon this Sir John left the prince, went back to his men with the banner in his hand, and said to them, 'Gentlemen, behold my banner and yours; you will therefore guard it as it becomes you.' His companions taking the banner replied with much cheerfulness that if it pleased God and St George they would defend it well and act worthily of it to the utmost of their abilities.'"[1] At a later period some distinction appears to have been made between bannerets who were created under the royal standard, the king himself being present with his army in open war, and bannerets who were created only by the king's lieutenants, as Sir John Chandos and Sir Thomas Trivet were created. But no such distinction seems to have existed in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II.; and, although it was doubtless of more ancient origin, the earliest contemporary evidence of its existence is of the reign of James I., when bannerets whether of one or two classes had practically disappeared. Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the 16th century, says, after noticing the conditions to be observed in the creation of bannerets, "but this order is almost grown out of use in England;"[2] and during the controversy which arose between the now order of baronets and the crown early in the 17th century respecting their precedence[3] it was alleged without contradiction in an argument on behalf of the baronets before the privy council that "there are not bannerets now in being, peradventure never shall be."[4] Sir Ralph Fane, Sir Francis Bryan, and Sir Ralph Sadler were created bannerets by the Lord Protector Somerset after the battle of Pinkie in 1547, and the better opinion is that this was the last occasion on which the dignity was conferred. It has been stated indeed that Charles I. created Sir John Smith a banneret after the battle of Edgehill in 1642 for having rescued the royal standard from the enemy. But of this there is no sufficient proof. It was also supposed that George III. had created several naval officers bannerets towards the end of the last century, because he knighted them on board ship under the royal standard displayed.[5] This, however, is unquestionably an error. Knights bannerets were not distinguished from knights bachelors merely because they were created under the standard or banner of the sovereign, but further because their own pennons were converted into or exchanged for banners.
Existing orders of knighthood.
On the Continent the degree of knight bachelor disappeared with the military system which had given rise to it. It is now therefore peculiar to the United Kingdom, where, although very frequently conferred by letters patent, it is yet the only dignity which is still even occasionally created – as every dignity was formerly created – by means of a ceremony in which the sovereign and the subject personally take part. Everywhere else dubbing or the accolade seems to have become obsolete, and no other species of knighthood, if knighthood it can be called, is known except that which is dependent on admission to some particular order. It is a common error to suppose that baronets are hereditary knights. Baronets are not knights unless they are knighted like anybody else; and, so far from being knights because they are baronets, one of the privileges granted to them shortly after the institution of their dignity was that they, not being knights, and their successors and their eldest sons and heirs apparent should, when they attained their majority, be entitled if they desired to receive knighthood.[6] It is a maxim of the law indeed that, as Coke says, "the knight is by creation and not by descent," and, although we hear of such designations as the "knight of Kerry" or the "knight of Glin," they are no more than traditional nicknames, and do not by any means imply that the persons to whom they are applied are knights in a legitimate sense. Notwithstanding, however, that simple knighthood has gone out of use abroad, there are innumerable grand crosses, commanders, and companions of a formidable assortment of orders in almost every part of the world,[7] from that of the Golden Fleece of Spain and Austria to those of St Charles of Monaco and of King Kamehameha of the Sandwich Islands. But, with the exception of the orders of the Golden Fleece founded by Philip II., duke of Burgundy, in 1429, and of the Annunciation founded by Charles III., duke of Savoy, in 1518 – now that the orders of St Michael founded by Louis XI. and of the Holy Ghost founded by Henry III. of France, in 1469 and 1578, are either extinct or in abeyance – none of the foreign military as distinguished from the religious orders of knighthood have any actual historical connexion with chivalry. The orders of the Genet of France and the Oak of Navarre of course are to be classed as mere fictions with the order of the Round Table of Britain. But the pretensions of almost every other foreign order to extreme antiquity, as for example of the Elephant and Danneborg of Denmark, the White Eagle of Poland, or the Seraphim of Sweden, if they are less obviously extravagant, are not more susceptible of verification. It has nearly always been the practice even in modern days to represent the establishment as the revival or reorganization of an order. We ourselves have seven orders of knighthood, the Garter, the Thistle, St Patrick, the Bath, the Star of India, St Michael and St George, and the Indian Empire; and, while the first is undoubtedly the oldest as well as the most illustrious anywhere existing, a fictitious antiquity has been claimed
- ↑ Froissart, bk. i. chap. 241. The other case is that of Sir Thomas Trivet in 1380 (Froissart, bk. ii. chap. 53).
- ↑ Commonwealth of England, p. 48, ed. 1640.
- ↑ By the decree of 1612 on the precedence of baronets they are placed after the younger sons of viscounts and barons, who came next to "bannerets made by the sovereign in person under the royal standard displayed in an army royal in open war," and immediately before "bannerets not made by the sovereign in person," and are still so ranked in all the "Tables of Precedence" (see Selden, Titles of Honor, p. 749, 750).
- ↑ State Papers, Domestic Series, James the First, vol. lxvii. p. 119.
- ↑ "Thursday, June 24th: His Majesty was pleased to confer the honour of knights banneret on the following flag officers and commanders under the royal standard, who kneeling kissed hands on the occasion: Admirals Pye and Sprye, Captains Knight, Bickerton, and Vernon" (Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xliii. p. 299, 1773). Sir Harris Nicolas remarks on these and the other cases (British Orders of Knighthood, p. xliii.), and Sir William Fitzherbert published anonymously a pamphlet on the subject, A Short Inquiry into the Nature of the Titles conferred at Portsmouth, &c., which is very scarce, but is to be found under the name of "Fitzherbert" in the catalogue of the British Museum Library.
- ↑ "Sir Henry Ferrers, Baronet, was indicted by the name of Sir Henry Ferrers, Knight, for the murther of one Stone whom one Nightingale feloniously murthered, and that the said Sir Henry was present aiding and abetting, &c. Upon this indictment Sir Henry Ferrers being arraigned said he never was knighted, which being confessed, the indictment was held not to be sufficient, wherefore he was indicted de novo by the name of Sir Henry Ferrers, Baronet." Brydall, Jus Imaginis apud Anglos, or the Law of England relating to the Nobility and Gentry, p. 50, London, 1675. After the dispute between the baronets and the younger sons of viscounts and barons for precedence in 1612, it was declared by James I., among other concessions to them, that "his Majesty is pleased to knight the present baronets that are no knights," and that for the future all baronets and their eldest sons and heirs apparent should be knighted if they pleased to apply for knighthood when they came or were of age. – Patent Rolls, 10 Jac. I., part x. No. 18; Selden, Titles of Honor, p. 687.
- ↑ Louis XIV introduced the practice of dividing the members of military orders into several degrees when he established the order of St Louis in 1693.
