Knight's fee

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knight's fee was a feudal term used in medieval England and Anglo-Norman Ireland to describe the value of land.

Feudalism was the exchange of land for military service, thus everything was based on what was called the knight's fee, which was the amount of money and/or military service a fief was required to pay to support one knight. Thus, either a fief could provide the service of a knight, or an equivalent amount of money to allow a lord to hire a knight. A single fief could have a value of anywhere from 1/5th of a knight's fee to 50 or more knight's fees, depending on its size and resources. Fiefs might also contain sub-fiefs, such that the knight's fee value of the fief is made up for by the value of the smaller fiefs contained within. In this way a hierarchy of lords and vassals lay over the land with the knight's fee as the base unit of denomination.

A knight was expected to be self-sufficient from the proceeds of the fief, to support his family, arm himself, stable a war horse, pay his own taxes and duties, and keep up appearances as a member of the Noble (fighting) class.

The typical knight's fee was around £20 per year circa 1200. The derivation of the amount likely comes from a minor medieval obsession with the number three, based on the Holy Trinity: the three estates, Noble, Church and Peasantry, taxation and fees assessed by thirds - the 'third penny' going to the crown or local Lord - and so on. £20 is 30 Marks, a monetary unit commonly used for assessing taxes, paying ransoms and other such official usage. The Mark was 2/3 of a pound.

A free peasant paid for field work around the same period could expect around 3d per day, or a much as £3-4 in a year, meaning that a knight's fee was about three to five times more than a peasant's average income.

Advanced Search
Included Web Search Engines


Safe Search

close

Top Matching Results

Occasionally Search.com will highlight specialized results that are based on the context of your query. Examples of specialized results include specific links to news, images, or video.

Top Matching Results may highlight information from other Search.com pages, content from the CNET Network of sites, or third party content. The listings are based purely on relevance. Search.com does not receive payment for listings in this section but our partners that provide this data may get paid for listing these products.

Sponsored Links

This section contains paid listings which have been purchased by companies that want to have their sites appear for specific search terms and related content. These listings are administered, sorted and maintained by a third party and are not endorsed by Search.com.

Search Results

Search.com sends your search query to several search engines at one time and integrates the results into one list which has been sorted by relevance using Search.com's proprietary algorithm. You can customize the list of search engines included in your metasearch from the preferences.

The search engines that are used in your metasearch may allow companies to pay to have their Web sites included within the results. To view the Paid Inclusion policy for a specific search engine, please visit their Web site. Search.com does not accept payment or share revenue with any search engine partner for listings in this section.