ABSTRACT

The word ‘knight’ had come to signify a member of a superior status group by the end of the eleventh century, indeed, probably some time before that. By the later twelfth century its use was closely restricted and well understood. But another, lesser, social rank shared with it the slow process of definition. We see during the twelfth century the dawning of an idea that there was a social rank lower than that of knight. Indeed, the very process of the social definition of knighthood must needs produce such a rank, by excluding respectable and substantial people from its number. Not every free man in the twelfth century would have wanted to become a knight and commit himself to the growing expense and public responsibility that being a knight entailed. Yet such a man might be as well or better endowed in worldly goods than many of his knightly neighbours. Society in general colluded in awarding a consolation prize that allowed him some of the comfort of rank.