or Batchelor, a common term for a man not married, or who is yet in a state of celibacy. The Roman censors frequently imposed fines on bachelors. Dionysius of Halicarnassus mentions an old constitution, by which all persons of full age were obliged to marry. But the most celebrated law of this kind was that made under Augustus, called the Lex Julia de Maritandis Ordinis, by which bachelors were made incapable of taking legacies or inheritances by will, unless from their near relations. By the laws of Lycurgus bachelors were branded with infamy, and excluded from all offices civil and military, nay even from the shows and public sports. At certain feasts they were exposed to public derision, and led round the market-place. In the canon law we find injunctions on bachelors, when arrived at puberty, either to marry, or to turn monks and profess chastity in earnest.

Bachelor was anciently a denomination given to those who had attained to knighthood, but wanted the number of vassals sufficient to entitle them to have their banner carried before them in the field of battle; or who, being of the order of bannerets, were not yet of age to display their own banner, and consequently obliged to march to battle under the banner of another. Bachelor was also a title given to young cavaliers, who having made their first campaign, received the military girdle accordingly; and it further served to distinguish him who had overcome an adversary in a tournament the first time he had ever engaged.

Knights-Bachelors, the most ancient, but the lowest, order of knights in England, known by the name of knights only. They are styled knights-bachelors, either, according to some, as denoting their degree, quasi "bachelors;" or, according to others, because this title does not descend to their posterity. Knights are called in Latin equites aurati; aurati, from the gilt spurs they wore, and equites, because they always served on horseback; for it is observable that almost all nations call their knights by some appellation derived from a horse.