A Question of Title

[Basil]

Re: A Question of Title

 

You are sort of' date=' technically, right - I've been using the word nobility in the commonly accepted sense. Today "nobility" has essentially replaced peerage in common use. But it's never been true (even in Britain) that all knights were nobles (at the beginning of the feudal period, of course, a knight - from saxon "cnight" meaning servant was just a paid soldier).[/quote']

Etymology is not meaning. The source of a word does not completely define that word. A knight is a knight; a Anglo-Saxon servant is something unrelated.

 

And many of them remained that, right through the medieval era

 

And of course this only applies to a limited era/area. Flemish knights were often wealthy burghers - not noble at all. Many German knights were indentured servants - also not of the noble class - employed by church magnates.[/qoute]

I doubt "ritter", etc., was ever seen as meaning "knight"; "heavy cavalry," yes, but there's a word---OK, a two-word term---for that in English as well. And it is not considered the equivalent of "knight," either.

 

The knights of the condotterie could be of noble birth (like the Sforza) - or like Sir John Hawkwood' date=' of low birth (son of a tanner, reputedly - about as low down the social scale as you could go). He was apparently knighted on the battlefield - a perfect example of a knight who was neither noble nor even of gentle birth.[/quote']

AH HAH! Now, we get down to the problem! Now I see the source of your confusion. While the child of a noble is a noble (unless nobiliary status is stripped away by attainder), one does not need a single noble ancestor to be noble oneself. Further, being knighted makes one noble. Hence, Sir John Hawkwood was noble because he was knighted; that is, because he was SIR John.

 

And this is hardly a restricted incident - nor one limited to war or to the high medival period. Sir Walter Gray (Lord Mayor of London and member of parliament) was the son of smallfarmer before being knighted - and this in the status-obsessed Edwardian age.

As both a knight, and Lord Mayor of London, I can assure you he had all the status any Edwardian could ask for. Perhaps not the parentage some snooty idjits might have preferred, but his status was very, very high.

 

King John employed a great number of knights who were not noble (ie: not of gentle birth' date=' nor of the peerage).[/quote']

I've already dealt with this; there is no id est to it. There were knighted, therefore they were noble.

 

This was major source of friction in his realm - as they were disdained by the knights who were of gentle birth.

They may have been disdained because they were thought to be unworthy of knighthood, but that is a separate matter.

 

They were not just mercenaries either - some of them made it onto his privy council and were superior in rank to families of quite substantial wealth and lineage. Faulkes de Breaute became one of the regents for the next knig - although he was the son of a peasant and got his start by killing a knight with a hay-fork. But however powerful he may have been' date=' he held his castles and fiefs (12 at one point) by the king's pleasure[/quote']

Which (if sometimes only in theory) is/was true of all peers. Any peer may have his titles stripped away, pretty much at the king's pleasure.

 

His nobility, however, is not so easily removed. It can only be stripped away for treason, tried and convicted in court (also all children lose their nobility by falling under attainder).

 

- because he could not pass on his titles and privileges -

Why? Was his title, when granted, a life-peerage? I doubt it; those, IIRC, are a fairly recent invention.

 

and he was always socially inferior. Some of these non-noble lords disappeared (like de Breaute)' date=' their lands being merely lent by the crown - while others managed to get their positions made herditary and hold them long enough that their familes became noble (ie: accepted as legitimately part of the peerage). So, even in Britain, it is true to say that not all knights were noble - [/quote']

Let's not labor this any further. These statements are wrong.

 

and of course, when we use knight to mean fighting man, not all noblemen were knights (though they may hve been in theory).

 

Cheers, Mark

Again, "knight" =/= "heavy cavalry". A few peers were never knighted (women who held titles themselves, minors, a few others), so yes, there were nobles who weren't knights. But never, never, never the other way around (unless you wish to translate "ritter," etc. as knight, in which case non-noble "knights" existed outside Great Britain).

[Markdoc]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Etymology is not meaning. The source of a word does not completely define that word. A knight is a knight; a Anglo-Saxon servant is something unrelated.

 

Well, we did start with "nobilis" for nobility - I was merely pointing out that the origin of the word does not define its current meaning. Thus although knights started as merely paid heavy horse, they evolved into something else. Likewise although - in theory - all knights were noble, in reality, this was not the case. This was formalised in the 13th century in England by the law referred to as "Of Four Quarterings" which defined nobility as having descent from agentle family for all four grandparents. It was strongly believed that much of a person’s character derived from their ‘blood’ that is to say, their heritage. Merely being knighted did not do it.

 

Likewise, being noble did not make you a knight - you had to be specifically knighted and some noble men (clerks, for example) never were. This also restricted their legal privileges, just as being knight - but not noble - offered some, but not all privileges.

 

In medieval times families from the two states were referred to as "de militari progenie" or "de militari sanguine" - of knightly descent, and "sanguine nobilium generata" - born of a noble family. There is a difference between the two states, and it's one which men fought and died for.

 

I doubt "ritter"' date=' etc., was ever seen as meaning "knight"; "heavy cavalry," yes, but there's a word---OK, a two-word term---for that in English as well. And [i']it[/i] is not considered the equivalent of "knight," either.

 

Alas, the germans also differentiated between "ritter" - which does indeed mean something very close to the english knight, and heavy cavalry (actually Germans differentiated between heavy skirmishing and heavy shock cavalry as well as between those groups and knights). In England the non-knightly heavy cavalry was referred to as the sergentry and (confusingly) could contain men of noble birth, since squires often rode with the segeantry. In Germany, the same sort of situation arose, where Rittere (including unfree knights) often brought with them an entourage of non-knightly heavy horse called "companions". By the 15th century German knights were generally required to provide 2-3, depending on their wealth. Unlike the English system, companions, as far as I can work out, never included men of the knightly class.

 

And the Ministerales were Rittere (knights) with the special privileges granted to all knights under law. But unlike the nobility, their status was not automatically hereditary, and they were bound to their manor and could not adminster justice, render accounts or marry without permission from their leige. This different from an English knight (or, as far as I know, the knights of any other region), even one who held an Honour, not a fief.

 

 

AH HAH! Now' date=' we get down to the problem! Now I see the source of your confusion. While the child of a noble is a noble (unless nobiliary status is stripped away by attainder), [u']one does not need a single noble ancestor to be noble oneself.[/u] Further, being knighted makes one noble. Hence, Sir John Hawkwood was noble because he was knighted; that is, because he was SIR John.

 

I think we'll just have to disagree here. As noted above, Sir John, being knighted, was a gentleman* - but he was not "of gentle birth" and therefore acording to the mores of time, was not a noble. Not only did he not have 4 quarterings, he didn't even have one - by the laws of England, he would not have entitled to attend court in his own right, nor could he compete in a formal tournament. He would not have been entitled to wear clothes restricted to nobles in sumptuary laws, and so on. Just as today, being knighted does not make you a peer. Peerage is (and for hundreds of years has been) hereditary, although the sovereign (and only the sovereign) can raise a person to the peerage. In contrast, any noble can make a knight. My godfather (Sir Patrick Moran) was a knight - but he was not a peer.

 

*actually there was an ongoing debate throughout the middle ages whther a man could be come "gentle" by action, or only by birth. There would have been many in his time who would have said he was simply a knight, but not a gentleman.

 

These distinctions were important to the time (and to some people, still today). To take two contrasting examples - I've already mentioned de Breaute, who was a powerful, non-noble knight, raised by King John. It's not merely a matter of speech - he controlled Plympton and Carisbrook, two important and very wealthy fiefs, though his marriage to Margaret Fitzgerold. But although he ruled them, those fiefs *belonged* to the Redvers family. In the language of the time he did not have the fiefs of Plympton and Carisbrook, he had the "honour" of Plympton and Carisbrook. He could not have pass them onto his sons. The fiefs reverted to the Redvers when he died. However the king could not confiscate them unless the Redvers were attainted - de Breaute held them by virtue of marriage, not in gift. He did hold Oxford in gift and that WAS confiscated at the king's pleasure (or displeasure). In contrast, his great rival Hubert De Burgh, though of gentle birth, was from a very minor family, was also raised by King John and also fell into disgrace under Henry III. The difference is that before his disgrace, he had been ennobled - although he also compiled his estates by marriage, he was made the Earl of Dover: and thereby held the fief in his own right. Thus his sons inherited his estates in the West (although the king confiscated the others in France and the Midlands that were held in gift), even though the title of earl was withdrawn by the court.

 

If you are interested in this subject I'd recommend "Feudal Society" by Marc Bloch. Volume 2 is more or less devoted to exactly these questions, with specific sections on knightly and noble privileges, inheritance of knighthood and nobility and even a section on the segeantry and unfree knights (what he calls "serf-knights") - he discusses how they morphed over time into a class equivalent to the English knighthood. It's out of print but any good historical library should have a copy.

 

cheers, Mark

[Basil]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Markdoc: I have been studying heraldry, which is only secondarily the study of coats armour and is primarily the study of rank, inheritance, family, nobility, etc., for 30 years or so. I'm afraid your statements are incorrect to such a degree I can no longer see any sense to correcting them point by point.

 

Mayapuppies: I'd advise the player's character be addressed as "Sir Firstname." I'd also advise you to create whatever system of titles and ranks you want; just be consistant with it. Keep it simple so as to be readily playable, but not so simple it's boring. Take from real world history what you like, but not from too many different sources or it'll get too "patchwork" in feel. Most of all, have fun with it, and don't let us lovers of minutia get you down.

 

And with that, I think I'll bow out of this before I get testy.

[Curufea]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Coats of arms came after knighthood, after all

 

Just to add another spanner to the works - there were "knights" in the Roman empire. A knight-equivalent class known as Equestrians. Although not a bestowed title as such but an actual class.

[sinanju]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Hello all,

 

A player in my group is playing a minor noble who is also a knight. I'm having trouble deciding what his "title" should be and how he would be addressed.

 

He's the second son of a Baron and when his father died the characters brother inherited the Barony. My friends character became a knight of the Barony and lives in the family castle (he has no lands of his own).

 

Now the FH book lists the child of a Baron as a Baronet, would this title still hold even though his father is dead and his brother now occupies the "throne"?

 

Would he be addressed as Sir Whateverhisnameis or Lord Whateverhisnameis?

 

Here are a couple of webpages that can give you lots of information on the subject of peerages, titles, correct usage, etc. (These are primarily aimed at historical British usages...but they're a good place to start.)

 

http://laura.chinet.com/html/titles01.html

 

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/peerage

[tkdguy]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Sinanju posted some good links. Especially look at courtesy titles. Since the PC is the younger son of a baron, he'd go by "The Honourable (first name, last name)." I think that's a more modern convention rather than a medieval one, though. In any case, if he is a knight, he would be called "Sir (first name)."

[Markdoc]

Re: A Question of Title

 

Markdoc: I have been studying heraldry' date=' which is only [i']secondarily[/i] the study of coats armour and is primarily the study of rank, inheritance, family, nobility, etc., for 30 years or so. I'm afraid your statements are incorrect to such a degree I can no longer see any sense to correcting them point by point.

 

Basil, I'm sorry if I'm making you testy, but I am actually interested in the topic: like you I have been studying it (admittedly as an enthusiatsic amateur) for more than thirty years. If I'm wrong, I'd like to know, and would appreciate some pointers as to sources. I'm not being snarky, I'd *genuinely* like to know. It may be that my sources with regard to the UK are outdated (and it could well be - history is a very flexible subject!).

 

If so, it's a very widespread error - with regard to online sources, the BBC lists knights under gentry and states that baron is the lowest rank of nobility (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2791929). The abbreviated version from Debretts, which I had always taken to be authorative, says the same, namely "Baron (and baroness): The lowest rank of nobility .... If you have a life peerage this is the highest title you can carry". They also list Knight under gentry - although they also use the name lower nobility, which may be where the confusion arises.

 

In France the same seems to be true - as Francois Velde (one of the moderators of rec.heraldry) says "Thus, knights were not necessarily nobles, nor were nobles necessarily knights." (http://www.heraldica.org/topics/orders/knights.htm). The same site reproduces some of the original texts (http://www.heraldica.org/topics/france/chevalier.htm) which confirm that "chevalier" although a mark of honour and of knighthood was not a mark of nobility until the late 18th century and the law regarding the making of unfree men into knights only with the king's permission indicates that in France, this could happen.

 

With regard to Denmark (and to the rest of the North - see for example, this raher swedish-biased discussion on Soc.cult.nordic at http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/scn/adel.html) there's no question: here people distinguished (and to some extent still do - the special naming privileges of the noble familes were only recently revoked) between "friherre" (Free Lords or Free Men - basically gentry) and "aedelslagtene" (Noble Kin: basically the aristocracy or herditary peers). All knights (Riddere) were either friherre or aedelesmænd, but there was a sharp and strongly enforced line between friherre and aedelslagtene over which one could not lightly tread - though it was possible to go from commoner to Frihere if you were rich and powerful enough. And of course not all friherre or aedelesmænd were riddere: that was a quasi-military title, not a social class. This was a social and legal distinction, not an economic or military one. Some friherre were wealthier and more powerful than aedelslagtene. At the same time there were commoners who were as powerful and wealthy as either. Such commoners might fight as armoured shock cavalry, but they were never "riddere" (ie: not knights). They were numerous and competent though - in the 16th century war called "Grevens Fejde" - the baron's war - the common shock cavalry several times defeated the knights in straight combat.

 

Hopefully this indicates where I'm coming from in the statements made previously.

 

cheers, Mark