Before c. 1180, the knights did not constitute a class categorized by their wealth or social standing. Instead, they were defined by their function as warriors for hire, and their violence seemed symptomatic of the eleventh-century breakdown of law and order. Although free, many knights in post-Conquest England held relatively low social status, clearly inferior to their lords; and their military service could consist of castle guard or service in a lightly armed cavalry force as well as fighting in heavy armour on a warhorse. Often they held plots little larger than peasant holdings, and a number were entirely landless, serving in aristocrats’ armed retinues for a stipend. Throughout the twelfth century, lords continued to retain warriors with whom they had no tenurial connection, and such bands of armed retainers without ties of land to their lord differ little from the noble retinues associated with so-called ‘bastard feudalism’ of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The definition of knights shifted in the course of the twelfth century, and their military function no longer defined them. Their social or economic status as landed proprietors with holdings smaller than those of barons but greater than those of ordinary freeholders (at least an entire manor) came to designate them as a class similar to the late medieval ‘gentry’. Also by the last quarter of the century, the knightly code of conduct, the chivalric ethos of mounted warriors, elevated them to higher social rank. Knighthood and nobility merged in people’s minds, and the aristocrats embraced chivalry; by the third decade of the thirteenth century, they had adopted the honorific title miles (soldier or knight) for themselves. The imitation moved in the other direction as well, for prosperous knights were picking up aristocratic trappings, using seals, painting heraldic devices on their shields and building stone houses.
Paradoxically, this emphasis on martial tradition was taking hold just as English knights’ actual military functions were declining and they were gaining status as landed gentry. Henry Il’s new judicial procedures enhanced their status, protecting their landholdings against their lords and recruiting them as unpaid administrators in the shires. The legal term ‘knights of the county’ was applied to a class that was increasingly dominant as semi-professionals in local government, as the pattern of assizes or juries required them to play an important part in royal justice. In the course of the thirteenth century, many sons of knights refused to undergo the costly ceremony of knighting; and by the next century, they contented themselves with the title of armiger or esquire. The reduced number of eligible men willing to foot the bill for knighting formed a prestigious and powerful country elite below the baronage, around sixty knights in an average-sized shire, or a total of only 1,250 by the late thirteenth century.
Some scholars stress that thirteenth-century knights and gentry formed county communities that encouraged political consciousness, as their participation in shire courts united them by loyalties that transcended their ties of fealty to lords. Other authorities argue that the county courts no longer demanded their regular attendance, with legal professionals and estate managers in the pay of barons dominating the courts’ work. It must be acknowledged, however, that these noble agents came largely from knightly families, and little distinguished them from other ‘country gentlemen with a talent for business’.8 More likely to bind together knights, lesser freemen and elites in nearby towns than some sense of county identity were closer ties of kinship and neighbourhood. Political engagement in the 1258-65 movement against Henry III’s personal rule by some knights, gentry and lesser freemen in all probability resulted more from individual choices than from collective activity of county communities.
Knights began to show signs of collective political consciousness during King John’s reign, when men of some shires joined in petitioning to replace curial sheriffs sent from the royal household with local residents. In 1212 and 1213, with his troubles mounting, John summoned representatives of the knights of the counties to ‘speak with us about the affairs of our kingdom’. Yet he failed to win them to his cause, and many knights followed their rebel lords into revolt in 1215-16 or, if their own lords were royalists, refused to follow them in battle. Half-hearted attempts to draw the knights into political life revived early in Henry III’s time. When a great council granted the king a general tax in 1225, the list of those supposedly giving approval included ‘knights and freemen who are not merchants’, although none actually attended the meeting. When parliament approved another tax in 1232, listed along with knights were ‘freemen and villeins’, who certainly had played no part in its authorization; and in 1237 another fraudulent assertion of the knights’ and freemen’s consent was made.9 None the less, such gestures signify that lesser ranks of society were coming to be considered members of the political community, though secondary to magnates.
Social classes in medieval England were never immutable castes, and barriers between knights or gentry, lesser ‘law-worthy men’ and urban elites or burgesses were not impenetrable. Even prosperous peasants occasionally climbed to the lower rungs of gentry, or at least, fled to towns and prospered in trade. At the bottom rungs of the knightly class, unfortunate sons of the gentry slid down the social ladder from gentle status to the level of village freemen; if luckier, they competed for posts as estate stewards or settled in towns in commercial careers. Although tradesmen and town-dwellers had an uncertain status in a largely agrarian society, they developed ties to the knights of their counties, for urban elites served alongside them on government commissions, did business with them, even married into knightly families. Ambitious knights invested in urban rental property, and prosperous businessmen bought land in the country. Contacts between townspeople and knights were not always harmonious, however; for some rich traders became moneylenders, taking mortgages on the manors of impecunious knights. Despite shared experiences, however, knights and townspeople or burgesses did not merge into a single ‘middling’ group. The knights continued to consider themselves a distinct order, their chivalric tradition raising them higher than burgesses in status.
By 1300, many English towns had some measure of self-government, having bargained with the king for status as royal boroughs or purchased charters from intermediate lords. Patterns of urban government were complex with leading citizens active on councils, gaining practice in government comparable to that of the knights in shire courts, strengthening their solidarity and confirming their selfconfidence. Citizens of boroughs, especially of London, were ‘natural advocates of chartered liberties’; and some took part in rebellions and reform movements alongside knights and barons. Since London, along with nearby Westminster, was the centre of royal government, ‘the metropolis and queen of the whole country’, the Londoners proved especially eager and aggressive in seeking rights of self-government.10 The city’s citizens played an occasionally crucial part in disputed successions and civil wars, for example London’s prompt recognition of Stephen’s claim strengthened him in capturing England’s disputed crown in 1135. Great London merchants supplied luxury goods to the royal household, where they mingled with courtiers and noble visitors. Eventually, they invested in country lands and entered the class of manorial lords, blending into the rural gentry. A rich mercantile family such as the Cornhills started as suppliers to the royal household, moved into the king’s service, obtained landed estates, married into the knightly class and eventually climbed into the baronage.
Map 10.1 Counties of England.
World History
