Knighthood

Grades of Knighthood.

During the 14th and 15th centuries, as well as somewhat earlier and later, the arrangements of a European army were always and everywhere pretty much the same. 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 de liver 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. But 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 was either pointed or forked at its extremity, and the pencel had a single tail or streamer.

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 pro visional 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 farther than the second. It is true that the squire was a com batant 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 of knighthood. But in the ordinary course of a chivalrous education the 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 a school of chivalry, and although princes and great personages were rarely actually pages or squires, the discipline through which they passed was not different from that to which less exalted candidates for knighthood were subjected. In many castles, and perhaps in most, the discipline followed simply a natural and unwritten code of "fagging" and seniority, as in public schools or on board men-of-war some zoo years or so ago.

Modes of Conferring Knighthood.

Two modes of con ferring knighthood appear to have prevailed from a very early period. In the one the accolade constituted the whole or nearly

the whole of the ceremony, in the other it was surrounded with many additional observances. The former and simpler of these modes was naturally that used in war : the candidate knelt before "the chief of the army or some valiant knight," who struck him thrice with the flat of a sword, pronouncing a brief formula of creation and of exhortation which varied at the creator's will.

In this form a number of knights were made before and after almost every battle between the i r th and the i6th centuries, and its advantages gradually led to its general adoption both in time of peace and time of war. On extraordinary occasions indeed the more elaborate ritual continued to be observed. But in Eng land about the beginning of the 15th century it came to be appropriated to a special taking of knighthood. When Segar, garter king of arms, wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, be does not even mention that there were two ways of creating knights bachelors. "He that is to be made a knight," he says, "is stricken by the prince with a sword drawn upon his back or shoulder, the prince saying, `Soys Chevalier,' and in times past was added 'Saint George.' And when the knight rises the prince sayeth `Avencez.' " In our days when a knight is personally made he kneels before the sovereign, who lays a sword drawn, ordinarily the sword of State, on either of his shoulders and says, "Rise," calling him by his Christian name with the addition of "Sir" before it.

Very different were the solemnities which attended the creation of a knight when the complete procedure was observed. "The cere monies and circumstances at the giving this dignity," says Selden, "in the elder time were of two kinds especially, which we may call courtly and sacred. The courtly were the feasts held at the creation, giving of robes, arms, spurs and the like. The sacred were the holy devotions and what else was used in the church at or before the receiving of the dignity." But the full solemnities for conferring knighthood seem to have been so largely and so early superseded by the practice of dubbing or giving the accolade alone that in England it became at last restricted to such knights as were made at coronations and some other occasions of State. And to them the particular name of Knights of the Bath was assigned. It is usually supposed that the first creation of Knights of the Bath under that designation was at the coronation of Henry IV. ; and before the order of the Bath as a companionship or capitular body was instituted the last creation was at the coronation of Charles II. But all knights were also knights of the spur or "equites aurati," because their spurs were golden or gilt—the spurs of squires being of silver or white metal; the spurs together with the sword were always employed as the leading ensigns of knighthood.