With regard to knights banneret, various opinions have been entertained as to both the nature of their dignity and the qualifi cations they were required to possess for receiving it at different periods and in different countries. Du Cange divides the mediaeval nobility of France and Spain into three classes : first, barons or ricos hombres; secondly, chevaliers or caballeros; and thirdly, ecuyers or infanzons; and to the first, the greater nobility of either country, he limits the designation of banneret and the right of leading their followers to war under a banner or square flag. At any rate to commence with, it seems probable that ban nerets were in every country merely the more important class of feudatories, the "ricos hombres" in contrast to the knights bache lors, who in France in the time of St. Louis were known as "pauvres hommes." In England all the barons or greater nobility were entitled to bear banners, but it is clear that from a compara tively early period bannerets whose claims were founded on per sonal distinction rather than on feudal tenure gradually came to the front, and much the same process of substitution appears to have gone on in their case as that which we have marked in the case of simple knights.
The knight bachelor whose services and landed possessions en titled him to promotion would apply formally to the commander in the field for the title of banneret. If this were granted, the heralds were called to cut publicly the tails from his pennon: or the commander, as a special honour, might cut them off with his own hands.
What the exact contingent was which bannerets were expected to supply to the royal host is doubtful. But in the reign of Edward III. and afterwards bannerets appear as the commanders of a military force raised by themselves and marshalled under their banners : their status and their relations both to the Crown and to their followers were mainly the consequences of voluntary contract not of feudal tenure. It is from the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II. also that the two best descriptions we pos sess of the actual creation of a banneret have been transmitted to us. Sir Thomas Smith, writing towards the end of the i6th 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"; and, during the controversy which arose between the new order of baronets and the Crown early in the i 7th century respecting their precedence, it was alleged without contradiction before the privy council that "there are not bannerets now in being, peradventure never shall be." Sir Ralph Fane, 'Sir Francis Bryan and Sir Ralph Sadler were created bannerets by the Lord Pro tector 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.
to have become obsolete, and no other species of knighthood, if knighthood it can be called, is known except that which is de pendent 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. 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. (See the section on "Orders of Knighthood" on P. 434.) Great Britain has nine orders of knighthood—the Garter, the Thistle, St. Patrick, the Bath, the Star of India, St. Michael and St. George, the Indian Empire, the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of the British Empire; and, while the first is undoubt edly the oldest as well as the most illustrious anywhere existing, a fictitious antiquity has been claimed for the second and fourth.