mans ascribe them to Henry the
Fowler; but this, according to Du Cange, is on no authority. 6me
Dissertation sur Joinville.

[784] St. Palaye, part ii. and part iii. au commencement. Du Cange,
Dissert. 6 and 7: and Glossary, v. Torneamentum. Le Grand, Fabliaux, t.
i. p. 184.

[785] St. Palaye, part iv. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 806. There was
not, however, so much distinction in England as in France.

[786] St. Palaye, vol. i. p. 70, has forgotten to make this distinction.
It is, however, capable of abundant proof. Gunther, in his poem called
Ligurinus, observes of the Milanese republic:

Quoslibet ex humili vulgo, quod Gallia foedum
Judicat, accingi gladio concedit equestri.

Otho of Frisingen expresses the same in prose. It is said, in the
Establishments of St. Louis, that if any one not being a gentleman on
the father's side was knighted, the king or baron in whose territory he
resides, may hack off his spurs on a dunghill, c. 130. The count de
Nevers, having knighted a person who was not noble exparte paterna, was
fined in the king's court. The king, however, (Philip III.) confirmed
the knighthood. Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francoise, p. 98. Fuit
propositum (says a passage quoted by Daniel) contra comitem
Flandriensem, quod non poterat, nec debebat facere de villano militem,
sine auctoritate regis. ibid. Statuimus, says James I. of Aragon, in
1234, ut nullus faciat militem nisi filium militis. Marca Hispanica, p.
1428. Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 592, produces other evidence to the
same effect. And the emperor Sigismund having conferred knighthood,
during his stay in Paris in 1415, on a person incompetent to receive it
for want of nobility, the French were indignant at his conduct, as an
assumption of sovereignty. Villaret, t. xiii. p. 397. We are told,
however, by Giannone, 1. xx. c. 3, that nobility was not in fact
required for receiving chivalry at Naples, though it was in France.

The privilege of every knight to associate qualified persons to the
order at his pleasure, lasted very long in France; certainly down to the
English wars of Charles VII. (Monstrelet, part ii. folio 50), and, if I
am not mistaken, down to the time of Francis I. But in England, where
the spirit of independence did not prevail so much among the nobility,
it soon ceased. Selden mentions one remarkable instance in a writ of the
29th year of Henry III. summoning tenants in capite to come and receive
knighthood from the k