KNIGHTHOOD and CHIVALRY. These two words, nearly but not quite synonymous, designate a single subject of inquiry, which presents itself under three aspects. It may be regarded in the first place as a mode of feudal tenure, in the second place as a personal attribute or dignity, and in the third place as a scheme of manners. The first aspect is discussed under the headings FEUDALISM and KNIGHT-SERVICE : we are concerned here only with the second and third. For the more important religious orders of knighthood the reader is referred to the head ings ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM, KNIGHTS OF; TEUTONIC ORDER; and TEM PLARS.
"The growth of knighthood" (writes Stubbs) "is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails": and, though J. H. Round has done much to explain the introduction of the system into Eng land, its origin in Europe is still obscure in many details.
The words knight and knighthood are the modern forms of the Old English cniht and cnihthdd. Of these the primary significa tion of the first was a boy or youth, and of the second the period of life between childhood and manhood. But before the middle of the 12th century they had the meaning of the French chevalier and chevalerie. In a secondary sense cniht meant a servant answering to the German Knecht, and in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels a disciple is a leorning cniht. In a tertiary sense the word was occasionally employed as equivalent to the Latin miles—usually translated by thegn—which in the earlier middle ages was used for the domestic as well as the martial officers or retainers of princes or great per sonages. Thegn itself, used as the description of an attendant of the king, appears to have meant more especially a military attendant. 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.
Around the Anglo-Saxon magnates were a crowd of retainers among whom were some called cnihtas who were not always the humblest of their number. In the reign of Edward the Confessor was a large class of landholders who had commended themselves to some lord; their condition in many respects similar to that of a vast number of unquestionably feudal tenants who appear after the Norman Conquest. If consequently the former were called
cnihtas, it seems probable that the appellation should have been continued to the latter, practically their successors. 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—its extension to the whole body of military tenants need not have been a very violent or prolonged process. Assuming, however, that knight was originally used for 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 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, wherein it is recorded under the year 1085 that William the Conqueror "dubbade his sunu Henric to ridere." But, as E. A. 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." In this perhaps we may behold one of the most ancient of British insular prejudices, for on the Conti nent the importance of cavalry was already understood. From the word caballarius, which occurs in the reign of Charlemagne, came the words for knight in all the Romance languages. In Germany the chevalier was called Ritter, but neither rider nor chevalier pre vailed against knight in England. And it was long after knight hood had acquired its present meaning with us that chivalry was incorporated into our language. It may be remarked too that in official Latin, in England and in all Europe, the word miles held its own against both eques and caballarius.