Knight's fee

“ The class burdened with knight's service, or payments in lieu thereof, comprised 160 temporal and 26 spiritual lords, 800 barons, 600 knights, and 3000 esquires. The knight's fee was subject to aids, which were paid to the Crown upon the marriage of the king's son or daughter. Upon the death of the possessor, the Crown received primer-seizen a year's rent. If the successor was an infant, the Crown under the name of Wardship, took the rents of the estates. If the ward was a female, a fine was levied if she did not accept the husband chosen by the Crown. ”

“ The Norman Chronicle, p. 995, says that Henry raised only sixty Angevin shillings on each knight's fee in his foreign dominions: this is only a fourth of the sum which Gervase says he levied on England; an inequality nowise probable. A nation may, by degrees, be brought to bear a tax of fifteen shillings in the pound, but a sudden and precarious tax can never be imposed to that amount, without a very visible necessity, especially in an age so little accustomed to taxes. In the succeeding reign the rent of a knight's fee was computed at four pounds a year. ”

“ Henry III. took 20s. and Edward I. 40s. for a similar purpose. For Richard’s ransom, 20s. had been exacted from each knight’s fee (save those owned by men actually serving in the field) ; and Henry III. took 40s. in his thirty-eighth year at the knighting of his son. Probably there existed, at an early date, some understanding as to the limits within which “reasonableness” should be reckoned, but the amount was never stated in black and white before the third year of Edward I. The Statute of Westminster I. [113] fixed the “reasonable” aid payable, not to the Crown but, to mesne lords at 20s. ”

“ We firmly enjoin you to compel without delay all the men in your bailiwick who have twenty librates of land, or a complete knight's fee of the annual value of twenty pounds, and who hold from us in chief and ought to be knights, but are not, to receive from us the arms of a knight before or at the approaching Festival of Christmas ”

“ We will not for the future grant to anyone that he may take aid of his own free tenants, unless to ransom his body, and to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and for this there shall be only paid a reasonable aid. 16. No man shall be distrained to perform more service for a knight's fee, or other free tenement, than is due from thence. ”

“ The captivity of the superior lord was one of the cases provided for by the feudal tenures; and all the vassals were in that event obliged to give an aid for his ransom. Twenty shillings were therefore levied on each knight’s fee in England; but as this money came in slowly, and was not sufficient for the intended purpose, the voluntary zeal of the people readily supplied the deficiency. The churches and monasteries melted down their plate, to the amount of thirty thousand marks; the bishop, abbots, and nobles, paid a fourth of their yearly rent ”

“ Henry loved the sport, and especially such feats as this exhibited by Cromwell, whom he summoned to his presence. The king said, “You have hitherto been my Dick, now be my diamond;” and taking a diamond ring from his own finger, and placing it on that of Cromwell, he bade the latter always carry it for his crest. The king, moreover, knighted Richard, and what was better, conferred on him Romney Abbey, “on condition of his good service, and the payment of £4,663 4s. 2d. held in capite by the tenth part of a knight’s fee, paying £29 16s.” ”

“ The king shall not seize any baron's land for a debt to the crown if the baron possesses as many goods and chattels as are sufficient to discharge the debt. No man shall be obliged to perform more service for his fee than he is bound to by his tenure. No governor or constable of a castle shall oblige any knight to give money for castle guard, if the knight be willing to perform the service in person, or by another able-bodied man ”

“ If thou greate nedë have.’
20 THE SECOND FYTTE (82-143)
Argument.—The knight goes to York to pay down his four hundred pounds to the abbot of St. Mary Abbey, who has retained the services of the high justice of England ‘with cloth and fee,’ an offence defined as conspiracy by statutes of the first three Edwards (see Notes and Queries, First Series, vol. vi. p. 479) . The knight, pretending he has not brought the money, requests an extension of time; but the abbot will not hear of it, and is supported in his refusal by the justice: the knight’s lands will be forfeited. ”

“ His military liability once ascertained, a tenant would commonly proceed to enfeof some of his knights on portions of his estate, keeping the remainder in attendance on his person. As time went on the number of landless knights continually became less and less, and by the end of the Conqueror’s reign, the greater part of every fief was divided into knight’s fees, whose holders were bound by the circumstances of their tenure to serve with their lord in the discharge of the military service which he owed the crown. ”

“ Some of them seem to start from The Tribal Hidage and take the number of hides to be 303,201 (Liebermann, Leges Anglorum, 10) . Divide this by 5 to find the knight’s fees. You have 60,640. In MS. Camb. Univ. Ii. vi. 25, f. 108 we find 60,215 knight’s fees, 45,011 parish churches, 52,080 vills. Another note, printed by Hearne, Rob. of Avesbury, 264, gives 53,215 knight’s fees, 46,822 parish churches, 52,285 vills.
[1707] Bede, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24 (p. 178) : ‘donatis insuper xii. ”

“ This honor, however, costs every knight who submits to the demand, not less than one hundred and eight pounds sterling, in fees. It [Pg 169] is, in itself, a heavy fine inflicted on those who render extraordinary service to the country, and to whom are presented the order of the Garter, and an order from the Garter King-at-arms to pay something more than a hundred guineas in return. The fine, however, is generally paid with alacrity; for, though the non-payment does not unmake a knight, it has the effect of keeping his name from the register. ”

“ It is but proper to set society right as to those gallant days of chivalry, when knights fought for the love of ladies' eyes and glory that lived for ever. More practical men are hardly to be found in business to-day, for they never lost sight of that grand maxim, to 'get money.' 'Quærenda pecunia primum, virtus post nummos' was a motto each knight might have much more truly borne upon his shield than the charming bits of brag and sentiment cunningly designed for that purpose by accommodating heraldry. ”

“ Sometime diverse ancient gentlemen, burgesses, and lawyers are called unto knighthood by the prince, and nevertheless refuse to take that state upon them, for which they are of custom punished by a fine, that redoundeth unto his coffers, and (to say truth) is oftentimes more profitable unto him than otherwise their service should be, if they did yield unto knighthood. And this also is a cause wherefore there be many in England able to dispend a knight's living, which never come unto that countenance, and by their own consents. ”

“ Eglantine—"And then they ruin you with their solicitations after copes and alms. There is nothing too brilliant for them. They are always a-begging on the sly."
Marphise—"But the knights are also quite expensive luxuries! If the clerk loves to strut under silks at the altar, the knight loves to shine at the tourney, and often have we to pay for his swagger, from his spurs to his casque, from the bridle of his horse to the horse itself, besides garnishing his purse with round pieces of silver and gold!" ”

“ This, however, is questionable, if so great an authority as Coke be not in error. That great lawyer declares that a knight, by whomsoever created, can sue and be sued by his knightly title, and that such is not the case with persons holding other foreign titles, similar to those of the English peerage. Let me add that, among other old customs, it was once common in our armies for knighthood to be conferred previous to a battle, to arouse courage, rather than afterward, as is the case now—after the action, in order to reward valor. ”

“ It prohibits any person in the army, beneath the degree of knight, from playing at any sort of game for money: knights and clergymen might play for money, but none of them were permitted to lose more than twenty shillings in one whole day and night, under a penalty of one hundred shillings, to be paid to the archbishops in the army. ”

“ They were also extravagant and improvident and never made money, so the more they spent the more they had to demand from the people. When every one had been squeezed dry for miles around, and had been thumped to make sure, the knights cursed horribly and borrowed from the Church, whether the Church would or no, or got hold of some money-lender and pulled his beard and never paid interest. ”

“ Moreover, since many knights whose property was diminished during the civil wars did not venture to view the games from the fourteen rows through fear of the penalty of the law regarding theatres, he declared that none were liable to its provisions, if they themselves or their parents had ever possessed a knight's estate. He revised the lists of the people district by district, and to prevent the commons from being called away from their occupations too often because of the distributions of grain, he determined to give out tickets for four months' supply three times a year ”

“ I will therefore recite to you some verses, which I made some time since, on what appeared to me a striking specimen of absurdity on the part of the advisers of royalty here—the bestowing the honours of knighthood, which is a purely Christian institution, on Jews and Paynim; very worthy persons in themselves, and entitled to any mark of respect befitting their class, but not to one strictly and exclusively Christian; money-lenders, too, of all callings the most anti-pathetic to that of a true knight. ”

“ On the way he passes through a town where the traffic is diverted from the main street because of a corpse which has long been lying on a bier before a church. He learns that it is the body of a knight, who cannot be buried till his creditors have been paid. At the cost of everything he possesses, save his horse, the hero satisfies the creditors and has the knight buried. When he has gone on two miles, he is joined by a merchant, who promises him money, horses, and weapons if he will give in return half of what he wins in the tourney. ”

“ Robin Demands Payment
The outlaw chief seemed to be affronted by this suggestion, and replied, with a touch of pride in his manner: “Thanks for your proffer, Sir Knight, but, by Heaven! no man has ever yet deemed me a glutton. While I eat one dinner I am not accustomed to look eagerly for another—one is enough for me. But as for you, my guest, I think it only fitting that you should pay before you go; a yeoman was never meant to pay for a knight’s banquet.” ”

“ It would thus appear that the dignity of knighthood was only conferred on men possessing a suitable estate, and that the two grades were based on the extent of estate; which, of course, implied the number of vassals available for military service. Although the pennon was the ensign of a knight-bachelor, we have the authority of Du Fresne that an esquire could also bear one, always providing that he could ride with a sufficient number of vassals.
Orders of knighthood appear to have originated in France, and were introduced into England probably by the Normans. ”

“ Or possibly you have been a usurer or a drunkard, or wasted your life in wickedness and wrong-doing?"
"I am none of those things, by heaven that made me," declared the knight. "For a hundred years my ancestors have been knights. It has often befallen, Robin, that a man may be disgraced, but God who waits in heaven above can amend his state. Within two or three years, my neighbours knew it well, I could spend with ease four hundred pounds of good money. ”

“ So is it great dole that he shall have her, for he will cut her head off on the day of the New Year, sith that such is his custom."
"And one might carry her off," saith Perceval, "would he not do well therein?"
"Yea, Sir!" say the squires, "Our Lord God would be well pleased thereof, for such cruelty is the greatest that ever any knight may have. Moreover, he is much blamed of a good hermit that he hath slain, and every day desireth he to meet the brother of the damsel he is about to take, that is one of the best knights in the world. ”

“ A merchant lends him the thousand marks, on condition that, if he breaks his day, his creditor may take the money's weight of flesh from his body. Feeling what a risk he is now running, the knight consults a philosopher, Virgil, in the English version. The philosopher (who in the Latin version says he ought to know, for he had helped the lady to her trick) tells the knight that between the sheet and coverlet of the bed there is a letter, which causes the sleep; this he must find, and, when found, cast far from the bed. ”

“ The sum so large, the writings drew
That if he failed, or miss'd the day, 25
So many ounces he should pay
Of his own flesh, instead of gold;
[Pg 279] All was agreed, the sum was told.
So he returned immediately
Unto the lord, where he did buy 30
His daughter fine, I do declare,
And paid him down the money there.
He bought her there, it is well known
Unto mankind; she was his own;
By her a son he did enjoy, 35
A sweet and comely handsome boy.
At length the time of pay drew near,
When the knight did begin to fear ”

“ It was resolved that none but really poor knights should belong to the fraternity, whether named, as was their privilege, by a companion of the noble order, or by the sovereign, as came at last to be exclusively the case. If a poor knight had the misfortune to become the possessor of property of any sort realizing twenty pounds per annum, he became at once disqualified for companionship. ”