Knight's fee was a feudal term used in mediæval England and Anglo-Norman Ireland to describe the value of land. It is also sometimes called scutage.
Feudalism was a system under which the land was exchanged 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 necessary 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 his appearance of gentility 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 mediæval obsession with the number three, based on the Holy Trinity: the three estates, the Church, the nobility, and the 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.
See also
- Feudalism (examples) for a historic example of knight's fees.
References
- Sally Harvey, "The Knight and Knight's Fee in England", Past and Present, No. 49. (Nov., 1970), pp. 3-43. Available online through JSTOR.
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