knights. In continental Europe from the 10th cent. onwards, the term miles (knight) was applied to a mounted warrior usually dependent on a greater lord. Domesday evidence suggests that this definition is appropriate for the knights of Norman England. Few held much land, and many were maintained within their lords' households. Their importance was thus derived from their military function, as had been that of the cnichts of Anglo-Saxon England. Over the next two centuries, knights were enfeoffed with land, becoming more fully involved in landed society and royal administration in the localities. Although the term never lost its military connotation, it had become by the late 14th cent. a social rank below the nobility, but above the squirearchy. It has been estimated that there were 4,000–5,000 knights in mid-12th-cent. England, but that the number declined to about 2,000 by 1250. The escalation of warfare from the reign of Edward I onwards may have helped to keep numbers up and even to revivify the military significance of the knight (680 English knights, for instance, served in the French campaign of 1359), but a major decline is evidenced after the end of the reign of Edward III. By the mid-15th cent., knights numbered only a few hundred. The decline has usually been explained in terms of personal preference: men of the requisite wealth and social standing resisted the crown's attempts to force them, by distraint of knighthood, to take up the rank because they feared the additional expense and burden of responsibility. It seems that the rank of esquire became socially acceptable as an alternative indicator of gentility: it too had developed within a military context from the late 13th cent. onwards, and had adopted many of the trappings of knighthood, such as armorial bearings, military effigies, chivalric concepts, and administrative functions. Most knights were knights bachelor; the title was personal, not hereditary, nor did it give noble status, so that knights were represented in Parliament in the Commons not the Lords. The knight banneret emerged in the early 13th cent. as a senior rank, probably relating, in its initial stages, to special military significance. Some bannerets were summoned to attend the Lords, and their titles were passed on to their sons, so that they became, by the early 15th cent., indistinguishable from barons. The creation of baronetcies, which were hereditary, in the early 17th cent. brought about a further decline in the status of knighthood. Though the link with military service did not totally disappear and successful admirals were often knighted, 18th-cent. knights were just as likely to be diplomats, lord mayors of London, or wealthy merchants.

Anne Curry