ABSTRACT
The twelfth century was the first medieval century to know the sorryplight of distressed gentlefolk. Western society had, by then, discovered standards of display which the man of blood had to live up to, or fall in dignity. When William Marshal had become a knight these standards of style, dress and display were not as elaborate as they were to become in his later days,1 but they still required that he have: three horses (a sumpter for his baggage, a palfrey for riding about, and a bigboned warhorse for the tournament and battle); the long, rich cloak of a gentleman and the ironmongery of war (a hauberk and hood of mail, mail and plate leggings and a helmet). William Marshal was in the tidal reaches of aristocracy, a younger son with no resources other than his wits. He knew how a man of good family should live, eat, dress and spend, but did not inherit the means to keep up with his more fortunate fellows. In his time there was a social beach to be swept down by the ebb tide of poverty. He might well have known the sad story of Hugh Poer, whom his father would have met at Stephen’s court. He too was the younger son of a baron, but had been raised briefly to the earldom of Bedford, then tumbled to common knight and total obscurity in a few years.
