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Rh than the other. In like manner the squire and the page were both in training for knighthood, but the first had advanced further in the process than the second. It is true that the squire was a combatant while the page was not, and that many squires voluntarily served as squires all their lives owing to the insufficiency of their fortunes to support the costs and charges of knighthood. But in the ordinary course of a chivalrous education the successive conditions of page and squire were passed through in boyhood and youth, and the condition of knighthood was reached in early manhood. Every feudal court and castle was in fact a school of chivalry, and although princes and great personages were rarely actually pages or squires, the moral and physical discipline through which they passed was not in any important particular different from that to which less exalted candidates for knighthood were subjected. The page, or, as he was more anciently and more correctly called, the “valet” or “damoiseau,” commenced his service and instruction when he was between seven and eight years old, and the initial phase continued for seven or eight years longer. He acted as the constant personal attendant of both his master and mistress. He waited on them in their hall and accompanied them in the chase, served the lady in her bower and followed the lord to the camp. From the chaplain and his mistress and her damsels he learnt the rudiments of religion, of rectitude and of love, from his master and his squires the elements of military exercise, to cast a spear or dart, to sustain a shield, and to march with the measured tread of a soldier; and from his master and his huntsmen and falconers the “mysteries of the woods and rivers,” or in other words the rules and practices of hunting and hawking. When he was between fifteen and sixteen he became a squire. But no sudden or great alteration was made in his mode of life. He continued to wait at dinner with the pages, although in a manner more dignified according to the notions of the age. He not only served but carved and helped the dishes, proffered the first or principal cup of wine to his master and his guests, and carried to them the basin, ewer or napkin when they washed their hands before and after meat. He assisted in clearing the hall for dancing or minstrelsy, and laid the tables for chess or draughts, and he also shared in the pastimes for which he had made preparation. He brought his master the “vin de coucher” at night, and made his early refection ready for him in the morning. But his military exercises and athletic sports occupied an always increasing portion of the day. He accustomed himself to ride the “great horse,” to tilt at the quintain, to wield the sword and battle-axe, to swim and climb, to run and leap, and to bear the weight and overcome the embarrassments of armour. He inured himself to the vicissitudes of heat and cold, and voluntarily suffered the pains or inconveniences of hunger and thirst, fatigue and sleeplessness. It was then too that he chose his “lady-love,” whom he was expected to regard with an adoration at once earnest, respectful, and the more meritorious if concealed. And when it was considered that he had made sufficient advancement in his military accomplishments, he took his sword to the priest, who laid it on the altar, blessed it, and returned it to him. Afterwards he either remained with his early master, relegating most of his domestic duties to his younger companions, or he entered the service of some valiant and adventurous lord or

knight of his own selection. He now became a “squire of the body,” and truly an “armiger” or “scutifer,” for he bore the shield and armour of his leader to the field, and, what was a task of no small difficulty and hazard, cased and secured him in his panoply of war before assisting him to mount his courser or charger. It was his function also to display and guard in battle the banner of the baron or banneret or the pennon of the knight he served, to raise him from the ground if he were unhorsed, to supply him with another or his own horse if his was disabled or killed, to receive and keep any prisoners he might take, to fight by his side if he was unequally matched, to rescue him if captured, to bear him to a place of safety if wounded, and to bury him honourably when dead. And after he had worthily and bravely, borne himself for six or seven years as a squire, the time came when it was fitting that he should be made a knight. This, at least, was the current theory; but it is specially dangerous in medieval history to assume too much correspondence between theory and fact. In many castles, and perhaps in most, the discipline followed simply a natural and unwritten code of “fagging” and seniority, as in public schools or on board men-of-war some hundred years or so ago.

Two modes of conferring knighthood appear to have prevailed from a very early period in all countries where chivalry was known. In both of them the essential portion seems to have been the accolade or stroke of the sword. But while in the one the accolade constituted the

whole or nearly the whole of the ceremony, in the other it was surrounded with many additional observances. The former and simpler of these modes was naturally that used in war: the candidate knelt before “the chief of the army or some valiant knight,” who struck him thrice with the flat of a sword, pronouncing a brief formula of creation and of exhortation which varied at the creator’s will.

In this form a number of knights were made before and after almost every battle between the 11th and the 16th centuries, and its advantages on the score of both convenience and economy gradually led to its general adoption both in time of peace and time of war. On extraordinary occasions indeed the more elaborate ritual continued to be observed. But recourse was had to it so rarely that in England about the beginning of the 15th century it came to be exclusively appropriated to a special king of knighthood. When Segar, garter king of arms, wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this had been accomplished with such completeness that he does not even mention that there were two ways of creating knights bachelors. “He that is to be made a knight,” he says, “is striken by the prince with a sword drawn upon his back or shoulder, the prince saying, ‘Soys Chevalier,’ and in times past was added ‘Saint George.’ And when the knight rises the prince sayeth ‘Avencez.’ This is the manner of dubbing knights at this present, and that term ‘dubbing’ was the old term in this point, not ‘creating.’ This sort of knights are by the heralds called knights bachelors.” In our days when a knight is personally made he kneels before the sovereign, who lays a sword drawn, ordinarily the sword of state, on either of his shoulders and says, “Rise,” calling him by his Christian name with the addition of “Sir” before it.