There was, even in small-scale, the knighthood system in England before the Norman Invasion? Why the knighthood system, after the Norman Conquest, wasn't as much as common as it was in France or in Normandy?

Huscarls were, proportionally, less numerous as knights in an eleventh century norman army? Huscarls would be paid on land to be equipped or have their equipment provided by his earl?

One would have to define "knight" first.

Before the 1100's, the term "cniht" simply meant "servant", so yeah there were many of them. That is probably not what you are after. Let's assume knight to be meaning a low ranked noble with a military function..

Huscarls were probably quite a nice simile, they were professional soldiers, with administrative roles in times of peace, they were paid in coin or land, and had high status under the kings or earls. They had good status with their kings or earls, and were well equipped.

The number seems to be a bit fuzzy, but I do not think there were fewer of them than later knights (as a low ranking noble).

Knights (as portrayed by their german term Ritter and dutch term Ridder, meaning rider) do seem to be on horseback more than huscarls are, but a large part of that may be due to the different timeframes where we look upon them.

My focus here is more on the franco-norman sense, "Chevalier" or even "Miles", the lower-nobility which hold lands to afford war horse and armour

By the way, only Earls had their own Huscarls or thegns - which would be a kind of Baron - also had theirs?

First off you should define Knight to make the term more useful for the discussion. Do you mean the late medieval social class or the 12th century squire or perhaps a norman Knight?

I do not have my sources at hand but I believe the levy or fyrd required one armed men per five hides. A hide isn't a set size of land but rather revenue derived from a set piece of land. I believe it was around 1 pound per hide during Anglo-Saxon times with the hide reckoned to hover around 100-120 acres of land. The total acreage of those five hides seems to be relatively inline with demesne land of the high and late medieval manors. Of course all those terms are still quite vague and meaning can differ. Another thing I personally do not know if a village was to provide an armed man for every five hides the village had or that a man with five hides of land was expected to show up when the fyrd was called. If a man personally held five hides of land he would qualify as a landowner or gentry and i'd say that he owns as much land as a high or late medieval gentry/man-at-arms.

So in a way the thegn with five hides of land that showed up for the fyrd is from the same social class as what we commonly define as Knight (or more exact: Man-at-arms). A person who owns a significant share of the land in a single village. Whether the said man chose to fight on foot or on horseback is a rather minor difference and probably comes down to personal or cultural preference rather than cost (though I might be wrong).

I won't have access to my sources until Monday so feel free to correct me wherever you can.


PS, maybe someone who is a bit more knowledgeable on the subject can give us a source that talks about horse use by the fyrd and individual thegns. I vaguely recall reading it was a neccecacity.

(superfluous posting given content of thread)

Niels, Thank you so much for the excellent information. That was a succinct, but really informative post. I was unsure about the hierarchy of the system but I'll be able to remember that explanation easily.

I have been trying to find some sort of "genealogy" for the institution of Knighthood, but never found any satisfactory answer that people can agree on.

It seems that everyone agrees that the basis of what we call knights was rooted in the Roman military system. However, beyond the roots of Knighthood and the appearance of a powerful military class operating as Knights at some point, no real solid information exists.

It almost seems to me that the history of the institution is something like: "Rome fell in the 5th Century, and then a few centuries later knights emerged as the new military/equestrian class."

I really hope someone can clear it all up, because I certainly don't know.

It's an interesting hypothesis.

However, I think it supposes that both Christians and Pagans are significantly more unified than we have evidence for.

Charlemagne is a Frankish king, persecuting the Saxons in northern continental Europe.

Lindisfarne, meanwhile, is on the Northumbrian coast (and this is before Anglo-Saxon England has unified, so it's at least two or three major kingdoms away from the Franks). The most likely source of raiders here is Norway, based on the later patterns of invasion.

So there is a major geographic and political separation between both the raiders and the persecuted saxons, and the monks and the Frankish oppressors.

Distinctly more evidence would need to be produced to suggest a direct connection between these sorts of events. As it stands there's not even anything to suggest that the Pagan world was unified in a way that would make that sort of collective response possible at this point (and, to be fair, neither is the Christian part of northwestern Europe).

To my mind, the ideas which focus on population growth and land shortage as the main driving force for the western Viking activity are much more plausible. In particular, this fits nicely with the multiple waves of colonisation, along with the later shift to a larger scale campaign of invasion and conquest, as well as explaining smaller raids for booty such as Lindisfarne.