ABSTRACT
WAR was more important to medieval knights than to many of their historians. They have been more concerned to debate shifts in the social status and numbers of knights, than to examine their military role. Post Conquest knights ranged from men of high standing to the comparatively lowly, even, it has been argued, including men of unfree status. Medieval knights must have faced similar difficulties to the cavalrymen of the nineteenth century, though their weapons were probably better than those of Nolan's day. The periods of major change appear, therefore, to have been the later twelfth century, when knights and mounted sergeants became clearly differentiated, and the late fourteenth century when knightly numbers declined dramatically. The evidence of the armies in the field, and of the way that men fought, strongly suggests that there is a need to reconsider and reassess the chronology and nature of the development of knighthood and gentry in medieval England.
