If consequently the former were called cnihtas under the Anglo-Saxon régime, it seems sufficiently probable that the appellation should have been continued to the latter-practically their successors-under the Anglo-Norman régime. But in any event it is manifest that their condition was in many respects similar to that of a vast number of unquestionably feudal and military tenants who made their appearance after the Norman Conquest. The testimony of Domesday also establishes the existence in the reign of Edward the Confessor of what Stubbs describes as a “large class” of landholders who had commended themselves to some lord, and he regards it as doubtful whether their tenure had not already assumed a really feudal character. But besides the king, the ealdormen, bishops and king’s thegns themselves had their thegns, and to these it is more than probable that the name of cniht was applied.Īround the Anglo-Saxon magnates were collected a crowd of retainers and dependants of all ranks and conditions and there is evidence enough to show that among them were some called cnihtas who were not always the humblest or least considerable of their number. As Stubbs says “the thegn seems to be primarily the warrior gesith”-the gesithas forming the chosen band of companions ( comites) of the German chiefs ( principes) noticed by Tacitus-“he is probably the gesith who had a particular military duty in his master’s service” and he adds that from the reign of Athelstan “the gesith is lost sight of except very occasionally, the more important class having become thegns, and the lesser sort sinking into the rank of mere servants of the king.” It is pretty clear, therefore, that the word cniht could never have superseded the word thegn in the sense of a military attendant, at all events of the king. But the word thegn itself, that is, when it was used as the description of an attendant of the king, appears to have meant more especially a military attendant. Sharon Turner suggests that cniht from meaning an attendant simply may have come to mean more especially a military attendant, and that in this sense it may have gradually superseded the word thegn. In a tertiary sense the word appears to have been occasionally employed as equivalent to the Latin miles-usually translated by thegn-which in the earlier middle ages was used as the designation of the domestic as well as of the martial officers or retainers of sovereigns and princes or great personages. In a secondary sense cniht meant a servant or attendant answering to the German Knecht, and in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels a disciple is described as a leorning cniht. But some time before the middle of the 12th century they had acquired the meaning they still retain of the French chevalier and chevalerie. Of these the primary signification of the first was a boy or youth, and of the second that period of life which intervenes between childhood and manhood. The words knight and knighthood are merely the modern forms of the Anglo-Saxon or Old English cniht and cnihthád. Round has done much to explain the introduction of the system into England, its actual origin on the continent of Europe is still obscure in many of its most important details. “The growth of knighthood” (writes Stubbs) “is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails”: and, though J. For the more important religious as distinguished from the military orders of knighthood or chivalry the reader is referred to the headings St John of Jerusalem, Knights of Teutonic Knights and Templars. The first of these aspects is discussed under the headings FeudalismĪnd Knight Service: we are concerned here only with the second and third. It may be regarded in the first place as a mode or variety of feudal tenure, in the second place as a personal attribute or dignity, and in the third place as a scheme of manners or social arrangements. These two words, which are nearly but not quite synonymous, designate a single subject of inquiry, which presents itself under three different although connected and in a measure intermingled aspects.
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