KNIGHT (eques), amongst the Romans, a person of the second degree of nobility, following immediately that of the senators.

Knight (or Cnecht, Germ.), in feudal history, was originally an appellation or title given by the ancient Germans to their youth after being admitted to the privilege of bearing arms. See Chivalry.

There is scarcely a prince in Europe who has not thought fit to institute an order of knighthood; and the simple title of knight, which the kings of Britain confer on private subjects, is a derivation from ancient chivalry, although very remote from its source.

Knight- Service (servitium militare, and in law French chivalry), a species of feudal tenure. The knights created by this tenure differed most essentially from the knights of chivalry, though the difference seems not to have been accurately attended to by authors. The one class of knights was of a high antiquity, the other was not heard of till the invention of a fee. The adorning with arms and the blow of the sword made the act of the creation of the ancient knight; the new knight was constituted by an investment in a piece of land. The former was the member of an order of dignity which had particular privileges and distinctions; the latter was the receiver of a feudal grant. Knighthood was an honour, knight-service a tenure. The first communicated splendour to an army, the last gave it strength and numbers. The knight of honour might serve in any station whatever, the knight of tenure was in the rank of a soldier. By the tenure of knight-service the greater part of the lands in England were ht>lden, and that principally of the king in capite, till the middle of the seventeenth century; and it was created, as Sir Edward Coke expressly testifies, for a military purpose, viz. for defence of the realm by the king’s own principal subjects, which was judged to be much better than to trust to hirelings or foreigners. The description here given is that of knightservice proper, which was to attend the king in his wars. There were also some other species of knight-service, so called, though improperly, because the service or render was of a free and honourable nature, and equally uncertain as to the time of rendering as that of knight-service [7:12:746]proper, and because they were attended with similar fruits and consequences. Such was the tenure by grand serjeanty, per magnum servitium, whereby the tenant was bound, instead of serving the king generally in his wars, to do some special honorary service to the king in person, as to carry his banner, his sword, or the like, or be his butler, champion, or other officer, at his coronation. It was, in most other respects, like knight-service, only he was not bound to pay aid or escuage; and when tenant by knightservice paid five pounds for a relief on every knight’s tee, tenant by grand serjeanty paid one year’s value of his land, were it much or little. Tenure by cornage, which was to wind a horn when the Scotch or other enemies entered the land, in order to warn the king’s subjects, was, like other services of the same nature, a species of grand serjeanty.

These services, both of chivalry and grand serjeanty, were all personal, and uncertain as to their quantity or duration. But the personal attendance in knight-service growing troublesome and inconvenient in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding for it, by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time making a pecuniary satisfaction to the lords in lieu of it. By the degenerating of knight-service, or personal military duty, into escuage or pecuniary assessments, all the advantages, either promised or real, of the féodal constitutions were destroyed, and nothing but the hardships remained. Instead of forming a national militia composed of barons, knights, and gentlemen, bound by their interest, their honour, and their oaths, to defend their king and country, the whole of this system of tenures now tended to nothing else but a wretched means of raising money to pay an army of occasional mercenaries. The military tenures, with all their heavy appendages, were at length destroyed at one blow, by the statute 12 Charles II. c. 24; a statute which was a greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even magna charta itself, since that only pruned the luxuriances which had grown out of the military tenures, and thereby preserved them in vigour; but the statute of King Charles extirpated the whole, and demolished both root and branches.

KNIGHTS-Errant. During the prevalence of chivalry, the ardour of redressing wrongs seized many knights so powerfully, that, attended by esquires, they wandered about in search of objects whose misfortunes and misery required their assistance and succour. Andas ladies engaged more particularly their attention, the relief of unfortunate damsels was the achievement they most courted. This gave birth to knights-errant, whose adventures produced romances. These were originally told as they happened. But the love of the marvellous came to interfere; fancy was indulged in the wildest exaggerations; and poetry lent her charms to the most monstrous fictions, and to scenes the most unnatural and grotesque.

Knights, in a ship, two short, thick pieces of wood, commonly carved like a man’s head, having four shivers in each, three for the haulyards, and one for the top to run in. One of them stands fast bolted on the beams abaft the foremast, and is therefore called the fore-knight ; and the other, standing abaft the mainmast, is called the main-knight. Knight’s Island, in the Pacific Ocean, the largest of three islands called the Snares by Vancouver. It was discovered in 1791. The south point is situated in Long. 166. 44. E. Lat. 48. 15. S.