KNIGHT-SERVICE (servitium militare, and in law French chivalry); a species of TENURE, the origin and nature of which are explained under the articles CHIVALRY, and FEODAL SYSTEM, No. 13—21.
The knights produced by this tenure differed most essentially from the knights described in the preceding article; though the difference seems not to have been accurately attended to by authors (A). The one class of knights was of a high antiquity: the other was not heard of till the invention of a fee. The adorning with arms and the blow of the sword made the act of the creation of the ancient knight; the new knight was constituted by an investiture in a piece of land. The former was the member of an order of dignity which had particular privileges and distinctions; the latter was the receiver of a feudal grant. Knighthood was an honour; knight service a tenure. The first communicated splendour to an army; the last gave it strength and numbers.—The knight of honour might serve in any station whatever; the knight of tenure was in the rank of a soldier.—It is true, at the same time, that every noble
and baron were knights of tenure, as they held their lands by knight service. But the number of fees they possessed, and their creation into rank, separated them widely from the simple individuals to whom they gave out grants of their lands, and who were merely the knights of tenure. It is no less true, that the sovereign, without conferring nobility, might give even a single fee to a tenant; and such vassals in capite of the crown, as well as the vassals of single fees from a subject, were the mere knights of tenure. But the former, in respect of their holding from the crown, were to be called to take upon themselves the knighthood of honour; a condition in which they might rise from the ranks, and be promoted to offices and command. And as to the vassals in capite of the crown who had many fees, their wealth of itself sufficiently distinguished them beyond the state of the mere knights of tenure. In fact, they possessed an authority over men who were of this last description; for, in proportion to their lands were the fees they gave out and the knights they commanded.
By the tenure of knight service the greatest part of the lands in England were holden, and that principally of the king in capite, till the middle of the last century; and which was created as Sir Edward Coke expressly testifies, for a military purpose, viz. for defence of the realm by the king's own principal subjects, which was judged to be much better than to trust to hirelings or foreigners. The description here given is that of knight service proper, which was to attend the king in his wars. There were also some
3 O 2
other
(A) "The terms knight and chivaler (Dr Stuart† observes), denoted both the knight of honour and knight of tenure; and chivalry was used to express both knighthood and knight-service. Hence, it has proceeded, that these persons and these states have been confounded. Yet the marks of their difference are so strong and pointed, that one must wonder that writers should mistake them. It is not, however, mean and common compilers only who have been deceived. Sir Edward Coke, notwithstanding his distinguishing head, is of this number. When estimating the value of the knight's fee at 20l. per annum, he appeals to the statute de militibus, an. 1 Ed. II. and, by the sense of his illustration, he conceives, that the knights alluded to there were the same with the possessors of knights' fees: and they, no doubt, had knights' fees: but a knight's fee might be enjoyed not only by the tenants in capite of the crown, but by the tenants of a vassal, or by the tenants of a sub-vassal. Now, to these the statute makes no allusion. It did not mean to annex knighthood to every landholder in the kingdom who had a knight's fee; but to encourage arms, by requiring the tenants in capite of the crown to take to them the dignity. He thus confounds knighthood and the knight's fee. Coke on Littleton, p. 69.
"If I am not deceived, Sir William Blackstone has fallen into the same mistake, and has added to it. Speaking of the knights of honour, or the equites aurati from the gilt spurs they wore, he thus expresses himself: 'They are also called, in our law, miltis, because they formed a part, or indeed the whole, of the royal army, in virtue of their feudal tenures; one condition of which was, that every one who held a knight's fee (which in Henry II.'s time amounted to 20l. per annum), was obliged to be knighted, and attend the king in his wars, or fined for his noncompliance. The exertion of this prerogative, as an expedient to raise money, in the reign of Charles I. gave great offence, though warranted by law, and the recent example of Queen Elizabeth: but it was, at the Restoration, together with all other military branches of the feudal law, abolished; and this kind of knighthood has since that time fallen into great disrepute.' Book I. ch. 12.
"After what has been said, I need hardly observe, that this learned and able writer has confounded the knight of honour, and the knight of tenure; and that the requisition to take knighthood was not made to every possessor of a knight's fee, but to the tenants of knights' fees held in capite of the crown, who had merely a sufficiency to maintain the dignity, and were thence disposed not to take it. The idea that the whole force of the royal army consisted of knights of honour, or dubbed knights, is so extraordinary a circumstance, that it might have shown of itself to this eminent writer the source of his error. Had every soldier in the feudal army received the investiture of arms? could he wear a seal, surpals in silk and drefs, use ensigns armorial, and enjoy all the other privileges of knighthood? But, while I hazard these remarks, my reader will observe, that it is with the greatest deference I dissent from Sir William Blackstone, whose abilities are the object of a most general and deserved admiration."
Knight. other species of knight service; so called, though improperly, because the service or render was of a free and honourable nature, and equally uncertain as to the time of rendering as that of knight service proper, and because they were attended with similar fruits and consequences. Such was the tenure by grand serjeanty, per magnum servitium, whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the king generally in his wars, to do some special honorary service to the king in person; as to carry his banner, his sword, or the like; or be his butler, champion, or other officer, at his coronation. It was, in most other respects, like knight service, only he was not bound to pay aid or escuage; and when tenant by knight service paid five pounds for a relief on every knight's fee, tenant by grand serjeanty paid one year's value of his land, were it much or little. Tenure by cornage, which was to wind a horn when the Scots or other enemies entered the land, in order to warn the king's subjects, was (like other services of the same nature) a species of grand serjeanty.
These services, both of chivalry and grand serjeanty were all personal, and uncertain as to their quantity or duration. But the personal attendance in knight service growing troublesome and inconvenient in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding for it, by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time making a pecuniary satisfaction to the lords in lieu of it. This pecuniary satisfaction at last came to be levied by assessments, at so much for every knight's fee; and therefore this kind of tenure was called scutagium in Latin, or servitium scuti; scutum being then a well-known denomination of money: and in like manner it was called, in our Norman French escuage; being indeed a pecuniary instead of a military service. The first time this appears to have been taken, was in the 5 Hen. II. on account of his expedition to Toulouse; but it soon came to be so universal, that personal attendance fell quite into disuse. Hence we find in our ancient histories, that, from this period when our kings went to war, they levied scutages on their tenants, that is on all the landholders of the kingdom, to defray their expenses and to hire troops: and these assessments in the time of Henry II. seem to have been made arbitrarily, and at the king's pleasure. Which prerogative being greatly abused by his successors, it became matter of national clamour; and King John was obliged to consent, by his magna charta, that no scutage should be imposed without consent of parliament. But this clause was omitted in his son Henry III.'s charter; where we only find, that scutages or escuage should be taken as they were used to be taken in the time of Henry II.; that is, in a reasonable and moderate manner. Yet afterwards, by statute 25 Edw. I. c. 5. and 6. and many subsequent statutes, it was enacted, that the king should take no aids or taxes but by the common assent of the realm. Hence it is held in our old books, that escuage or scutage could not be levied but by consent of parliament; such scutages being indeed the ground-work of all succeeding subsidies, and the land tax of later times.
Since, therefore, escuage differed from knight service in nothing but as a compensation differs from actual service, knight service is frequently confounded with
it. And thus Littleton must be understood, when he tells us, that tenant by homage, fealty, and escuage, was tenant by knight service: that is, that this tenure (being subservient to the military policy of the nation) was respected as a tenure in chivalry. But as the actual service was uncertain, and depended upon emergencies, so it was necessary that this pecuniary compensation should be equally uncertain, and depend on the assessments of the legislature suited to these emergencies. For had the escuage been a settled invariable sum, payable at certain times, it had been neither more nor less than a mere pecuniary rent; and the tenure, instead of knight service, would have then been of another kind, called SOCCAGE.
By the degenerating of knight service, or personal military duty, into escuage or pecuniary assessments, all the advantages (either promised or real) of the feudal constitutions were destroyed, and nothing but the hardships remained. Instead of forming a national militia composed of barons, knights, and gentlemen, bound by their interest, their honour, and their oaths, to defend their king and country, the whole of this system of tenures now tended to nothing else but a wretched means of raising money to pay an army of occasional mercenaries. In the mean time the families of all our nobility and gentry groaned under the intolerable burdens (which in consequence of the fiction adopted after the conquest) were introduced and laid upon them by the subtlety and finesse of the Norman lawyers. For, besides the scutages to which they were liable in defect of personal attendance, which, however, were assessed by themselves in parliament, they might be called upon by the king or lord paramount for aids, whenever his eldest son was to be knighted, or his eldest daughter married; not to forget the ransom of his own person. The heir, on the death of his ancestor, if of full age, was plundered of the first emoluments arising from his inheritance, by way of relief and primer seisin: and if under age, of the whole of his estate during infancy. And then, as Sir Thomas Smith very feelingly complains, "when he came to his own, after he was out of wardship, his woods decayed, houses fallen down, stock wasted and gone, lands let forth and ploughed to be barren," to make amends, he was yet to pay half a year's profits as a fine for suing out his livery; and also the price or value of his marriage, if he refused such wife as his lord and guardian had bartered for, and imposed upon him; or twice that value, if he married another woman. Add to this, the untimely and expensive honour of knight-hood, to make his poverty more completely splendid. And when, by these deductions, his fortune was so shattered and ruined, that perhaps he was obliged to sell his patrimony, he had not even that poor privilege allowed him, without paying an exorbitant fine for a license of alienation.
A slavery so complicated and so extensive as this, called aloud for a remedy in a nation that boasted of her freedom. Palliatives were from time to time applied by successive acts of parliaments, which assuaged some temporary grievances. Till at length the humanity of King James I. consented, for a proper equivalent, to abolish them all, though the plan then proceeded not to effect; in like manner, as he had formed a scheme, and began to put it in execution, for removing
Knight. ing the feudal grievances of heritable jurisdictions in Scotland, which has since been pursued and effected by the statute 20 Geo. II. c. 43. King James's plan for exchanging our military tenures seems to have been nearly the same as that which has been since pursued; only with this difference, that by way of compensation for the loss which the crown and other lords would sustain, an annual fee-farm rent should be settled and inseparably annexed to the crown, and assured to the inferior lords, payable out of every knight's fee within their respective seignories. An expedient seemingly much better than the hereditary excise which was afterwards made the principal equivalent for these concessions. For at length the military tenures, with all their heavy appendages, were destroyed at one blow by the statute 12 Car. II. c. 24. which enacts, "that the court of ward or liveries, and all wardships, liveries, primer seisins, and ousterleins, values and forfeitures of marriages, by reason of any tenure of the king or others, be totally taken away. And that all fines for alienations, tenures by homage, knights service, and escheat, and also aids for marrying the daughter or knighting the son, and all tenures of the king in capite, be likewise taken away. And that all sorts of tenures, held of the king or others, be turned into free and common soccage: save only tenures in frankalmoign, copyholds, and the honorary services (without the flavish part) of grand serjeanty." A statute which was a greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even magna charta itself: since that only pruned the luxuriances that had grown out of the military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigour: but the statute of King Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches.