Where did knights live?

Answer 1

What constituted a medieval knight differed in various countries. In Western Europe, knights were connected with nobility and royalty, often the sons of lords. They lived in a castle or manor of their own. When the king called upon their service, then they were mustered with other knights for war. Otherwise, they lived normal lives as a noble, tending to their properties and businesses.

However, in eastern Europe, knights could come from lower ranks or even be unfree people (aka serfs). These sorts of knights obviously lived a much different life from the royal ones.

Some eastern knights were sworn to a lord and lived in their castle. These were dependent upon the lord and were practically servants, if not outright unfree persons. Rising through the ranks of the army to become a knight was a good way for a person of low station to make a name for themselves.

Depending upon the time period and wealth of the lord of the castle, knights and soldiers could live within a barracks, where they were crammed together, sometimes with beds/cots but often sleeping on the floor or on pallets of straw. In poorer or older castles, soldiers slept where they could. Only the lord's family had beds, and everyone else, servants and soldiers, curled up wherever it was warm, often sleeping in the kitchens, the great hall, around fire pits in the courtyard, or wherever they were stationed for guard duty.

There is a great scene in "The Lion in Winter" where King Henry II is waking up his household to take a trip to Rome, and Peter O'Toole runs through halls, kitchens, corridors, throughout the courtyard, and all around the castle, shouting and kicking the sleeping soldiers and servants awake, who are all curled together for warmth. It's crude, but that's how life was back then.