Knights Sentence Examples

You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de Souza's novels.

In 1309 it was conquered by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at the instigation of the pope and the Genoese, and converted into a great fortress for the protection of the southern seas against the Turks.

The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on the walls.

But the piratical acts of these traders, in which the knights themselves sometimes joined, and the strategic position of the island between Constantinople and the Levant, necessitated its reduction by the Ottoman sultans.

These fortifications are all the work of the Knights of St John.

Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Treviso, Venice entered into a compact to defend their liberties; and when he came again in 1163 with a brilliant staff of German knights, the imperial cities refused to join his standards.

It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me.

There are several fine public buildings, as the governor's palace, the new opera-house, the public library and museum of Maltese antiquities, and the auberges or lodges of the Knights of Malta (especially the Auberge de Castile) which are now used for military offices, club-rooms, and other purposes.

These must be heard in the county courts before two visiting justices and four knights of the shire.

The knights, who as farmers of the taxes had suffered heavy losses during the disturbances in Syria, were greatly embittered against Gabinius, and, when he appeared in the senate to give an account of his governorship, he was brought to trial on three counts, all involving a capital offence.

When feudal possessions, instead of being purely personal, were vested in the families of the holder after the death of Charlemagne, Tournai was specially assigned to Baldwin of the Iron Arm by [[Charles (disambiguation)|Charles Knights Jousting With Cronells On Tt-Tfir Lances]].

After the Norman Conquest the thegns appear to have been merged in the class of knights.

Twelve knights in each county are to make a thorough inquiry into all evil customs connected with the forests, and these are to be utterly abolished.

The esquires, knights, lesser barons, even the remote descendants of peers, that is, the noblesse of other countries, in England remained gentlemen, but not noblemen - simple commoners, that is, without legal advantage over their fellowcommoners who had no jus imaginum to boast of.

He thought of going on the crusade to Barbary; but instead, in July 1390, went to serve with the Teutonic knights in Lithuania.

Besides many hundreds of princes, dukes, marquesses, counts, barons and viscounts, there are a large number of persons of patrician rank, persons with a right to the designation nobile or signor-i, and certain hereditary knights or cavalieri.

Florus actually dared to scourge and crucify Jews who belonged to the Roman order of knights.

In 1305 it came into the hands of the knights of Wartenberg, who held it for two hundred years.

Witowt, however, convinced himself that the German knights were far more dangerous than his Lithuanian rival; he accepted pacific overtures from Jagiello and became his ally.

Nevertheless, subsequent attempts on the part of Poland to subordinate Lithuania drove Witowt for the third time into the arms of the Order, and by the treaty of Salin in 1398, Witowt, who now styled himself Supremus Dux Lithuaniae, even went so far as to cede his ancestral province of Samogitia to the knights, and to form an alliance with them for the conquest and partition of Pskov and Great Novgorod.

The result was a whole series of wars with the Teutonic Order, which now acknowledged Swidrygiello, another brother of Jagiello, as grand-duke of Lithuania; and though Swidrygiello was defeated and driven out by Witowt, the Order retained possession of Samogitia, and their barbarous methods of "converting" the wretched inhabitants finally induced Witowt to rescue his fellow-countrymen at any cost from the tender mercies of the knights.

As the sentence is about to be carried into execution Lancelot and his kinsmen come to her rescue, but in the fight that ensues many of Arthur's knights, including three of Gawain's brothers, are slain.

Chretien de Troyes' treatment of him is contradictory; in the Erec, his earliest extant poem, Lancelot's name appears as third on the list of the knights of Arthur's court.

Among the fifteen knights selected by Arthur to accompany him to Chastel Orguellous he only ranks ninth.

Like the knights of other orders, the Teutonic knights lived a semi-monastic life under the Augustinian rule; and in the same way they admitted priests and half-brothers (servientes) into their ranks.

Besides the knightly Order founded by Christian, there was already another still farther east, which had served as Christian's model, the Knights of the Sword of Livonia.

The pope gave to those who joined in the work of the Order the privileges of Crusaders; and the knights, supported by numerous donations and large accessions to their ranks, rapidly increased their territories.

The defeat which the Polish king Ladislaus inflicted upon the knights at Tannenberg in 1410 was crushing.

The League naturally sympathized with Poland, not only because Poland was the enemy of the knights, but also because under Poland it hoped to enjoy the practical liberty which Polish anarchy already seemed to offer.

The intrigues of the French envoy in corrupting the knights of the order of St John were completely successful.

Thanks to French intrigues, the Knights of Malta offered the tamest defence of their capital.

His own violations of the treaties of Luneville and Amiens were overlooked; and in particular men forgot that the weakening of the Knights of St John by the recent confiscation of their lands in France and Spain, and the protracted delay of Russia and Prussia to guarantee their tenure of power in Malta, furnished England with good reasons for keeping her hold on that island.

To all these various forces must be added the knights and native levies of the great orders, whose masters were practically independent sovereigns like the princes of Antioch and Tripoli; 3 and with these the total levy of the kingdom may be reckoned at some 25,000 men.

But the strength of the kingdom lay less perhaps in the army than in the magnificent fortresses which the nobility, and especially the two orders, had built; and the most visible relic of the crusades to-day is the towering ruins of a fortress like Krak (Kerak) des Chevaliers, the fortress of the Knights of St John in the principality of Tripoli.

For the history of the orders see the articles on the Templars; ST John Of Jerusalem, Knights Of; Knights, and the Teutonic Order.

Burgesses could buy and possess property in towns, which knights were forbidden to acquire; and though they could not intermarry with the feudal classes, it was easy and regular for a burgess to thrive to knighthood.

Thus was begun the Second Crusade, 1 under auspices still more favourable than those which attended the beginning of the First, seeing that kings now took the place of knights, while the new crusaders would no longer be penetrating into the wilds, but would find a friendly basis of operations ready to their hands in Frankish Syria.

The crusaders of northern Germany never went to the Holy Land at all; they were allowed the crusaders' privileges for attacking the Wends to the east of the Elbe - a fact which at once attests the cleavage between northern and southern Germany (intensified of late years by the war of investitures), and anticipates the age of the Teutonic knights and their long Crusade on the Baltic. The crusaders of the Low Countries and of England took the sea route, and attacked and captured Lisbon on their way, thus helping to found the kingdom of Portugal, and achieving the one real success which was gained by the Second Crusade.

On the 1 The Crusades in their course established a number of new states or kingdoms. The First Crusade established the kingdom of Jerusalem (I too); the Third, the kingdom of Cyprus (1195); the Fourth, the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204); while the long Crusade of the Teutonic knights on the coast of the Baltic led to the rise of a new state east of the Vistula.

To arrest his progress, a Crusade, preached by Boniface IX., led by John the Fearless of Burgundy, and joined chiefly by French knights, was directed down the valley of the Danube into the Balkans; but the old faults stigmatized by de Mezieres, divisio and pro Aria voluntas, were the ruin of the crusading army, and at the battle of Nicopolis it was signally defeated.

Henry V., whose father had fought with the Teutonic knights on the Baltic, dreamed of a voyage to Jerusalem.

It was Thomas who organized the Toulouse campaign of 1159; even in the field he made himself conspicuous by commanding a company of knights, directing the work of devastation, and superintending the conduct of the war after the king had withdrawn his presence from the camp. When there was war with France upon the Norman border, the chancellor acted as Henry's representative; and on one occasion engaged in single combat and unhorsed a French knight of reputation.

At either corner of the Propylaea entrance were equestrian statues dedicated by the Athenian knights; the bases with inscriptions have lately been recovered.

In his letters to his friend Mathilde Wesendonck, it appears that while he was composing Tristan he already had the inspiration of working out the identification of Kundry, the messenger of the Grail, with the temptress who, under the spell of Klingsor, seduces the knights of the Grail; and he had, moreover, thought out the impressively obscure suggestion that she was Herodias, condemned like the wandering Jew to live till the Saviour's second coming.

Vespasian could be liberal to impoverished senators and knights, to cities and towns desolated by natural calamity, and especially to men of letters and of the professor class, several of whom he pensioned with salaries of as much as £boo a year.

The tradition of Carnac is that there was once a convent of the Templars or Red Cross Knights on the spot; but this, it seems, is not supported by history.

The first onslaught of the Knights of the Cross did indeed rout the weak irregulars placed in the van of the Turkish army, but their mad pursuit was checked by the steady ranks of the Janissaries, by whom they were completely defeated (1396).

Mahommed now endeavoured to strike a blow at Rhodes, the stronghold of the Knights of St John, preparatory to carrying out his long-cherished plan of conquering Italy.

At the outset of the reign Bayezid's brother, Prince Jem, made a serious attempt to claim the throne; he was defeated, and eventually took refuge with the knights of Rhodes, whom Bayezid bribed to keep him in safe custody.

In the 14th century it was garrisoned by the knights of Montesa, and in 1420 it reverted to the Crown.

The knights and nobles of Bohemia and Moravia, who were in favour of church reform, sent to the council at Constance (September 2nd, 1415) a protest, known as the "protestatio Bohemorum" which condemned the execution of Huss in the strongest language.

It suffered much from the ravages of the Thirty Years' War, but the episcopal castle, then destroyed, was subsequently rebuilt, and in 1852 was converted by Louis Napoleon into a place of residence for widows of knights of the Legion of Honour.

Guillaume arrived too late to help Vivien, was himself defeated, and returned alone to his wife Guibourc, leaving his knights all dead or prisoners.

To this period Mommsen assigns the regulation, generally attributed to Augustus, that the sons of senators should be knights by right of birth.

The organization of the Protestant Church was formerly connected with the corporation of the nobles of Livonia and Courland, but the rights of presentation pertaining to the manorial estates of the knights and to the Government estates have been abolished by the introduction of a democratic free church.

The knights of south Germany especially prized the swords and armour of this town, and many of the weapons used in campaigns against the Turks and in the Seven Years' War are said to have been manufactured at Suhl.

Poland was restrained by his alliances with the Teutonic Knights and the tsardom of Muscovy, and his envoys appeared in Persia and in Egypt to combat the diplomacy of the Porte.

Being routed, Jem fled for refuge to the knights of St John at Rhodes, who, in spite of a safe-conduct granted to him, accepted a pension from Bayezid as the price for keeping him a close prisoner.

The jus annuli aurei, or right of wearing a gold ring, originally a military distinction, became a senatorial privilege, which was afterwards extended to the knights and gradually to other classes.

The two great Military Orders - the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem and the Templars - followed the Augustinian rule and were both settled in London.

A few years after this the Brethren of the Temple of Solomon at Jerusalem or Knights of the Temple came into being at the Holy City, and they settled first on the south side of Holborn near Southampton Row.

The tumults against the Paterine heretics (1244-1245), among whom were many Ghibelline nobles favoured by the podestd Pace di Pesamigola, indicate a successful Guelphic reaction; but Frederick II., having defeated his enemies both in Lombardy and in the Two Sicilies, appointed his natural son, Frederick of Antioch, imperial vicar in Tuscany, who, when civil war broke out, entered the city with 1600 German knights.

Donati and Vieri de' Cerchi, were becoming more powerful, and Charles had increased their number by creating a great many knights; but their attempts to interfere with the administration of justice were severely repressed, and new laws were passed to reduce their influence.

While in exile he was elected supreme commander of the Knights of the Golden Circle in Ohio and received the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio, but was defeated.

Take, for instance, the description of some of Arthur's knights in the Welsh tale of Kilhwch and Olwen (in the Mabinogion).

Arthur himself, who tends however to become completely overshadowed by his knights, who make his court the starting-point of their adventures.

There are many fine frescoes in the interior ranging from c. 1300 (knights kneeling before the Virgin) to the 15th century, including Pisanello's beautiful painting of St George (mentioned below).

Patavium acquired Roman citizenship with the rest of Gallia Transpadana in 49 B.C. Under Augustus, Strabo tells us, Patavium surpassed all the cities of the north in wealth, and in the number of Roman knights among its citizens in the census of Augustus was only equalled by Gades, which had also Soo.

Perceval meets a party of knights in armour; he first adores the leader as God, and then takes them to be some new and wondrous kind of animal, asking the most naïve questions as to their armour and equipment.

Being told that they are knights he determines that he too will be one, and returns to his mother announcing his intention of at once setting forth into the world to seek for knighthood.

He slays a foe of Arthur's, the Red Knight, who has insulted the king, and challenged the knights of the court, who, for some mysterious reason, are unable to respond to the challenge.

After the outbreak of the Civil War many of the Democrats of the Middle West, who were opposed to the war policy of the Republicans, organized the Knights of the Golden Circle, pledging themselves to exert their influence to bring about peace.

In 1863, owing to the disclosure of some of its secrets, the organization took the name of Order of American Knights, and in 1864 this became the Sons of Liberty.

The great importance of the Knights of the Golden Circle and its successors was due to its opposition to the war policy of the Republican administration.

Yet as a high-minded patriot Dlugosz had no sympathy whatever with Olesnicki's opposition to Casimir's Prussian policy, and steadily supported the king during the whole course of the war with the Teutonic knights.

The Teutonic knights in the north and the Tatar hordes in the south were equally bent on the subjection of Lithuania, while Olgierd's eastern and western neighbours, Muscovy and Poland, were far more frequently hostile competitors than serviceable allies.

Indeed, but for the unceasing simultaneous struggle with the Teutonic knights, the burden of which was heroically borne by Kiejstut, Russian historians frankly admit that Lithuania, not Muscovy, must have become the dominant power of eastern Europe.

Philadelphia was an independent neutral city, under the influence of the Latin Knights of Rhodes, when taken in 1390 by Sultan Bayezid I.

In an action with a galley of the Knights of Saint John, then established at Rhodes, Elias was killed and Arouj taken prisoner; the latter was ransomed by a Turkish pasha and returned to the sea.

There is good ground for believing that as Grail quester and winner, Gawain preceded alike Perceval and Galahad, and that the solution of the mysterious Grail problem is to be sought rather in the tales connected with the older hero than in those devoted to the glorification of the younger knights.

He introduces himself to us with a certain abruptness, merely specifying his own name as one of a list of knights of Champagne who with their count, Thibault, took the cross at a tournament held at Escry-sur-Aisne in Advent 1199, the crusade in contemplation having been started by the preaching of Fulk de Neuilly, who was commissioned thereto by Pope Innocent III.

If every other contemporary record of the crusades perished, we should still be able by aid of this to understand and realize what the mental attitude of crusaders, of Teutonic knights, and the rest was, and without this we should lack the earliest, the most undoubtedly genuine, and the most characteristic of all such records.

In his youth Casimir was considered frivolous and licentious; while his sudden flight from the field of Plowce, the scene of his father's great victory over the Teutonic knights, argued but poorly for his personal courage.

At this congress the differences between Casimir and John of Bohemia were finally adjusted; peace was made between the king of Poland and the Teutonic Order on the basis of the cession of Pomerania, Kulm, and Michalow to the knights, who retroceded Kujavia and Dobrzyn; and the kings of Hungary and Poland further agreed to assist each other in the acquisition of the south-eastern border province of Halicz, or Red Russia (very nearly corresponding to the modern Galicia), in case the necessity for intervention should arise.

The Holy See, jealous of the growing power of the house of Luxemburg, attempted to set aside the decrees of the congress of Visegred, by urging Casimir to take up arms against the knights once more; but Casimir prudently refrained from hostilities, and ultimately compensated himself in the southeast for his losses in the north.

With the Teutonic knights, still Poland's most dangerous foe, Casimir preserved peaceful relations throughout his reign.

He kept them within due bounds by using the influence of the Luxemburgers against them at the papal court; but the disputes between Poland and the order were ultimately settled by the peace of Kalisz (July 2 3, 1 343), when the knights engaged for the first time to pay tribute to the Polish crown.

The knights of St John of Jerusalem, commonly called " of Malta," were drawn from the nobility of Catholic Europe.

At the end of the rule of the knights (1798) the population was estimated at roo,000; sickness, famine and emigration during the blockade of the French in Valletta probably reduced the inhabitants to 80,000.

The capital is named after its founder, the Grand Master de la Valette, but from its foundation it has been called Valletta (pop. 1901, 24,685); it contains the palace of the Grand Masters, the magnificent Auberges of the several " Langues " of the Order, the unique cathedral of St John with the tombs of the Knights and magnificent tapestries and marble work; a fine opera house and hospital are conspicuous.

In the 18th century the government of the Knights and of the Inquisition did not favour the education of the people, after 1800 British governors were slow to make any substantial change.

The knights of St John having been driven from Rhodes by the Turks, obtained the grant of Malta, Gozo and Tripoli in 1530 from the emperor Charles V., subject to a reversion in favour of the emperor's successor in the kingdom of Aragon should the knights leave Malta, and to the annual tribute of a falcon in acknowledgment that Malta was under the suzerainty of Spain.

The Maltese, at first, challenged the grant as a breach of the charter of King Alfonso, but eventually welcomed the knights.

The knights lived apart from the Maltese, and derived their principal revenues from estates of the Order in the richest countries of Europe.

The great siege of Malta which made the island and its knights famous, and checked the advance of Mahommedan power in southern and western Europe, began in May 1565.

The knights and their Maltese troops fought for death or victory, without asking or giving quarter.

The Order thus reached the highest pinnacle of its fame, and new knights flocked to be enrolled therein from the flower of the nobility of Europe; La Valette refused a cardinal's hat, determined not to impair his independence.

The field for recruiting its members, as well as its landed estates, became restricted by the Reformation in England and Germany, and the French knights gradually gained a preponderance which upset the international equilibrium of the Order.

The last but one of the Grand Masters who reigned in Malta, de Rohan, restored good government, abated abuses and promulgated a code of laws; but the ascendancy acquired by the Inquisition over the Order, the confiscation of the property of the knights in France on the outbreak of the Revolution, and the intrigues of the French made the task of regenerating the Order evidently hopeless in the changed conditions of Christendom.

On the death of Rohan the French knights disagreed as to the selection of his successor, and a minority were able to elect, in 1797, a German of weak character, Ferdinand Hompesch, as the last Grand Master to rule in Malta.

The exiled knights made an attempt to reconstruct themselves under the emperor Paul of Russia, but finally the Catholic parent stem of the Order settled in Rome and continues there under papal auspices.

Towards the close of the rule of the knights in Malta feudal institutions had been shaken to their foundations, but the transition to republican rule was too sudden and extreme for the people to accept it.

Among other laws Bonaparte enacted that French should at once be the official language, that 30 young men should every year be sent to France for their education; that all foreign monks be expelled, that no new priests be ordained before employment could be found for those existing; that ecclesiastical jurisdiction should cease; that neither the bishop nor the priests could charge fees for sacramental ministrations, &c. Stoppage of trade, absence of work (in a population of which more than half had been living on foreign revenues of the knights), and famine, followed the defeat of Bonaparte at the Nile, and the failure of his plans to make Malta a centre of French trade.

The restoration of Church property, the re-establishment of law and administration on lines to which the people were accustomed before the French invasion, and the claiming for the Crown of the vast landed property of the knights, were the first cares of British civil rule.

Another legend states that Arthur and his knights sleep in a vault beneath the Eildons.

He grew up resolved to emulate the medieval knights who had reconquered Portugal from the Moors.

When the king went forth to war thirteen great crosses made of gold and jewels were carried in wagons before him as his standards, and each was followed by 10,000 knights and 100,000 footmen.

In 1224 the town was seized by the Teutonic Knights, and in the following year Bishop Hermann erected a cathedral on the Domberg.

Under the empire the praetorians or imperial guards were commanded by one, two, or even three praefects (praefecti praetorio), who were chosen by the emperor from among the knights and held office at his pleasure.

The village and valley belonged of old to the emperor, who in 1234 gave the advowson to the Knights of St Lazarus, by whom it was sold in 1272 to the Austin Canons of Interlaken, on the suppression of whom in 1528 it passed to the state.

He knew, says Orderic, more about marshalling mailed knights than edifying psalm-singing clerks.

The magistrates, the Schout or high bailiff and his assessors, the Schepenen (scabini, echevins), were nominated by the burgrave from the order of knights.

The Schout was still to be nominated by the bishop from among the knights, but his powers were now comparatively insignificant.

The first recorded case of the formation of an hermandad occurred in the 12th century when the towns and the peasantry of the north united to police the pilgrim road to Santiago in Galicia, and protect the pilgrims against robber knights.

In 1835 he obtained a scholarship at University College; and in 1836 he gained the Newdigate prize for a poem on "The Knights of St John," which elicited special praise from Keble.

The chief secular buildings are the town-hall (Rathaus), which dates from the i 5th century and was restored in 1883-1892, adorned with frescoes illustrating the history of the city; the Tempelherrenhaus, in Late Gothic erroneously said to have been built by the Knights Templars; the Knochenhaueramthaus, formerly the gild-house of the butchers, which was restored after being damaged by fire in 1884, and is probably the finest specimen of a wooden building in Germany; the Michaelis monastery, used as a lunatic asylum; and the old Carthusian monastery.

As many as 700 pairs of golden spurs were collected on the field from the bodies of French knights and hung up as an offering in an abbey church of the town, which has long disappeared.

The Merveille (1203-1264) consists of two continuous buildings of three storeys, that on the east containing, one above the other, the hospitium (aumonerie), refectory and dormitory, that on the west the cellar, knights' hall (salle des chevaliers) and cloister.

Of the apartments, all of the finest Gothic architecture, the chief are the refectory, divided down the centre by columns and lighted by large embrasured windows, and the knights' hall, a superb chamber, the vaulting of which is supported on three rows of cylindrical pillars.

Prince Albert was costumed as Edward III., the queen as Queen Philippa, and all the gentlemen of the court as knights of Poitiers.

Some of these were refounded, and the principal monastic remains now existing are those of the Benedictine priories at Rochester (1089), Folkestone (1095), Dover (1140); the Benedictine nunneries at Malling (time of William Rufus),Minster-in-Sheppey (1130), Higham (founded by King Stephen), and Davington (I 153); the Cistercian Abbey at Boxley (1146); the Cluniac abbey at Faversham (1147) and priory at Monks Horton (time of Henry II.), the preceptory of Knights Templars at Swingfield (time of Henry II.); the Premonstratensian abbey of St Radigund's, near Dover (1191); the first house of Dominicans in England at Canterbury (1221); the first Carmelite house in England, at Aylesford (1240); and the priory of Augustinian nuns at Dartford (1355).

But no remains exist of the priories of Augustinian canons at Canterbury (St Gregory's; 1084), Leeds, near Maidstone (1119), Tunbridge (middle of 12th century), Combwell, near Cranbrook (time of Henry II.); the nunnery of St Sepulchre at Canterbury (about 110o) and Langdon abbey, near Walmer (1192), both belonging to the Benedictines; the Trinitarian priory of Mottenden near Headcorn, the first house of Crutched Friars in England (1224), where miracle plays were presented in the church by the friars on Trinity Sunday; the Carmelite priories at Sandwich (1272) and Losenham near Tenterden (1241); and the preceptory of Knights of St John of Jerusalem at West Peckham, near Tunbridge (1408).

It is a heritage from the middle ages, when the Knights Hospitallers undertook for men the duties discharged in female institutions by the nuns.

Rumours of the war of extermination conducted against their kinsmen, the wild Prussians, by the Knights, first woke the Lithuanians to a sense of their own danger, and induced them to abandon their loose communal system in favour of a monarchical form of government, which concentrated the whole power of the state in a single hand.

There was, for instance, Mendovg (1240-1263), who submitted to baptism for purely political reasons, checkmated the Teutonic Knights by adroitly seeking the protection of the Holy See, and annexed the principality of Plock to his ever-widening grand duchy, which already included Black Russia, and formed a huge wedge extending southwards from Courland, thus separating Poland from Russia.

From this fate she was saved by the valour of Wladislaus Lokietek, duke of Great Poland (1306-1333), who reunited Great and Little Poland, revived the royal dignity in 1320, and saved the kingdom from annihilation by his great victory over the Teutonic Knights at Plowce in 1332.

In the first year of the 13th century, the Knights of the Sword, one of the numerous orders of crusading military monks, had been founded in Livonia to "convert" the pagan Letts, and, in 1208, the still more powerful Teutonic order was invited by Duke Conrad of Masovia to settle in the district of Kulm (roughly corresponding to modern East Prussia) to protect his territories against the incursions of the savage Prussians, a race closely akin to the Lithuanians.

So far were the Poles from anticipating any danger from the Teutonic Order, that, from 1243 to 1255, they actually assisted it to overthrow the independent Pomeranian princes, the most formidable opponents of the Knights in the earlier years of their existence.

Kiejstut ruled the western portion of the land where the Teutonic Knights were a constant menace, while Olgierd drove the Tatar hordes out of the southeastern steppes, and compelled them to seek a refuge in the Crimea.

Three weeks later Jagiello was compelled to cede Samogitia, as far as the Dubissa, to the Knights, and, in the following year they set up against him Kiejstut's son Witowt.

The eyes of Jagiello were now opened to the fact that the machiavellian policy of the Knights aimed at subjugating Lithuania by dividing it.

He at once made peace with his cousin; restored him his patrimony; and, to secure Lithuania against the future vengeance of the Knights, Jagiello made overtures to Poland for the hand of Jadwiga, and received the Polish crown along with it, as already mentioned Before proceeding to describe the Jagiellonic period of Polish history, it is necessary to cast a rapid glance at the social and political condition of the country in the preceding Piast period.

The conversion of Lithuania menaced the very existence of the Teutonic Knights.

The mere instinct of self-preservation had, at last, drawn the Poles and Lithuanians together against these ruthless and masterful intruders, and the coronation of Jagiello at Cracow on the 15th of February 1386, was both a warning and a challenge to the Knights.

In the art of war the Knights were immeasurably superior to all their neighbours.

Skilfully taking advantage of the jealousies of Poland and Lithuania, as they were accentuated by the personal antagonism of Jagiello and Witowt (q.v.), with the latter of whom the Knights more than once contracted profitable alliances, they even contrived (Treaty of Salin, 1378) to extend their territory by getting possession of the province of Samogitia, the original seat of the Lithuanians, where paganism still persisted, and where their inhuman cruelties finally excited the horror and indignation of Christian Europe.

The wisdom of this arrangement was made manifest in 1410, when Jagiello and Witowt combined their forces for the purpose of delivering Samogitia from the intolerable tyranny of the Knights.

The issue was fought out on the field of Tannenberg, or Griinewald (July 15, 1410), when the Knights sustained a crushing defeat, which shook their political organization to its very foundations.

But the excessive caution of Jagiello gave the Knights time to recover from the blow; the Polish levies proved unruly and incompetent; Witowt was suddenly recalled to Lithuania by a Tatar invasion, and thus it came about that, when peace was concluded at Thorn, on the 1st of February 1411, Samogitia (which was to revert to the Order on the death of Jagiello and Witowt), Dobrzyn, and a war indemnity of 10o,000 marks payable in four instalments, were the best terms Poland could obtain from the Knights, whose territory practically remained intact.

The trouble was due mainly to the repeated efforts of the Knights to evade the fulfilment of the obligations of the Treaty of Thorn.

The Polish king was always ready enough to support the Czechs against Sigismund; but the necessity of justifying his own orthodoxy (which the Knights were for ever impugning) at Rome and in the face of Europe prevented him from accepting the crown of St Wenceslaus from the hands of heretics.

In the domain of the Knights the gentry, parochial clergy and townsmen, who, beneath its protection, had attained to a high degree of wealth and civilization, for long remained without the slightest political influence, though they bore nearly the whole burden of taxation.

In 1414, however, intimidated by the growing discontent, which frequently took the form of armed rebellion, the Knights consented to the establishment of a diet, which was re-formed on a more aristocratic basis in 1430.

But provinces are not conquered by manifestoes, and Casimir's acceptance of the homage of the Prussian League at once involved him in a war with the desperate Teutonic Knights, which lasted twelve years, but might easily have been concluded in a twelvemonth had he only been loyally supported by his own subjects, for whose benefit he had embarked upon this great enterprise.

Not till the victory of Puck (September 17, 1462), one of the very few pitched battles in a war of raids, skirmishes and sieges, did fortune incline decisively to the side of the Poles, who maintained and improved their advantage till absolute exhaustion compelled the Knights to accept the mediation of a papal legate, and the second peace of Thorn (October 14, 1466) concluded a struggle which had reduced the Prussian provinces to a wilderness.'

The territory of the Knights was now reduced to Prussia proper, embracing, roughly speaking, the district between the Baltic, the lower Vistula and the lower Niemen, with Konigsberg as its capital.

Still the Knights had been driven beyond the Vistula, and Poland had secured a seaboard; and it was due entirely to the infinite patience and tenacity of the king that even as much as this was won at last.

The sole advantage which John Albert reaped from his championship of the Christian cause was the favour of the Curia, and the ascendancy which that favour gave him over the Teutonic Knights, whose new grand-master, Albert of Saxony, was reluctantly compelled to render due homage to the Polish king.

The first general assembly of which we have certain notice is the zjazd walny which was summoned to Koszyce in November 1404, to relieve the financial embarrassments of Wladislaus, and granted him an extraordinary subsidy of twenty groats per hide of land to enable him to purchase Dobrzyn from the Teutonic Knights.

The Cornish knights (who in Arthurian romance are always represented as hopeless cowards), dare not contest his claim but Tristan challenges him to single combat, slays him and frees Cornwall from tribute.

The interest here centres in the rivalry between Tristan and Lancelot, alike as knights and lovers, and in the later redaction, ascribed to Helie de Borron, the story is spun out to an interminable length.

For the future avoidance of any such scenes a cunning workman of Cornwall offered to make a table which should seat 1600 knights and more, and at which all should be equal.

Wace does not mention the number of knights.

When the founding of the Round Table is ascribed to Merlin it is generally in close connexion with the Grail legend, forming the last of a series of three, founded in honour of the Trinity - the first being the table of the Last Supper, the second that of the Grail, established by Joseph of Arimathea, The number of knights whom the table will seat varies; it might seat twelve or fifty or a hundred and fifty; nowhere, save in Layamon, do we find a practically unlimited power of accommodation.

It is also to be noted that whereas, in the pseudo-chronicles, it is the common table of Arthur's court, designed in the interests of peace and unity, in the romances it is a sign of superiority, only the best and most valiant knights being adjudged worthy of a seat at the Round Table.

The membership is not restricted to the knights of Arthur's immediate court and household, knights who are, in all essentials outsiders, appearing but as passing guests at Arthur's board, such as, e.g., Perceval and Tristan, may be elected knights of the Round Table.

In two romances, the prose Tristan and the Parzival, the place of the Round Table proper is taken, on a journey, by a silken cloth laid on the ground, round which the knights are seated.

On closely examining Layamon's version it seems probable that he had in his mind not merely a circular, but a turning table; he gives it as ground for the quarrel that all the knights wished to sit within; at the table the Cornish workman will make none shall be left without, but they shall sit "without and within, man against man."

The installations of the knights of St Patrick, the first of which took place in 1783, were originally held here, and some of their insignia are preserved in the choir.

In St Patrick's hall where the knights of St Patrick are invested, are the banners of that order.

The site chosen for it was that of the ancient priory of Kilmainham, founded by Strongbow for Knights Templars.

It originally occupied only the small island of Zephyria close to the shore, now occupied by the great castle of St Peter, built by the Knights of Rhodes in 1404; but in course of time this island was united to the mainland and the city extended so as to incorporate Salmacis, an older town of the Leleges and Carians.

Near it is the ruined fortress of Neamtzu, constructed early in the 13th century by the Teutonic knights of Andrew II., king of Hungary, in order to repel the incursions of the Cumanians.

Added to these were the 18 centuries of knights (see Equites).

To these we must add 18 centuries of knights, 4 of fabri, &c., and I of proletarii.

Here the first class and the knights command but 88 votes out of a total of 373.

The total votes in the comitia would thus be 70+ too- 5 (fabri, &c.) +18 (knights), i.e.

Subsequently the earls of Leicester bought out the rights of the earls of Norfolk for ten knights' fees.

In 1445 the faction of the nobles allied with Alvaro's main enemies, the Infantes de Aragon, were beaten at Olmedo, and the favourite, who had been constable of Castile and count of Santesteban since 1423, became Grand Master of the military order of Santiago by election of the Knights.

There are also, near the town, ruins of a house of the Knights of St John (1303).

In the earlier poems he is practically a lay figure, his court the point of departure and return for the knights whose adventures are related in detail, but he himself a passive spectator.

In the prose romances he is a monarch, the splendour of whose court, whose riches and generosity, are the admiration of all; but morally he is no whit different from the knights who surround him; he takes advantage of his bonnes fortunes as do others.

The town of Alaja was the creation of this sultan, as previously there existed on that site only the fortress of Candelor, at that epoch in the possession of an Armenian chief, who was expelled by Kaikobad, and shared the fate of the Armenian and Frankish knights who possessed the fortresses along the coast of the Mediterranean as far as Selefke (Seleucia).

There was formerly an archiepiscopal palace in the town, built by Archbishop Hampton about 1620; and the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Augustinians, the Carmelites and the knights of St John have monastic establishments.

Anciently a large part of Swinton was possessed by the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem.

He saw the invasion of Poland by the Reformation, and the democratic upheaval which placed all political power in the hands of the szlachta; he saw the collapse of the ancient order of the Knights of the Sword in the north (which led to the acquisition of Livonia by the republic) and the consolidation of the Turkish power in the south.

The principal monuments of the Lusignan period are the fine cathedral church of St Sophia, an edifice of French Gothic, at once solid and elegant (the towers were never completed); the church of St Catherine, an excellent example of the last years of the 14th century (both these are now mosques); and the church of St Nicolas of the English (now a grain store), built for the order of the Knights of St Thomas of Acre.

Thoroughly American, and a lover of the people, he greatly altered the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church toward the Knights of Labor and other labour organizations, and his public utterances displayed the true instincts of a popular leader.

The Dominican Abbey, of the 13th century, has Early English remains of great beauty and a tomb to Edmund, the last of the White Knights, a branch of the family of Desmond intimately connected with Kilmallock, who received their title from Edward III.

Ermeland was originally one of the eleven districts of old Prussia and was occupied by the Teutonic Knights (Deutscher Orden), being made in 1250 one of the four bishoprics of the country under their sway.

The primary sense in the middle ages is "knights" or "fully armed and mounted fighting men."

Thence the term came to mean that gallantry in battle and high sense of honour in general expected of knights.

In English law chivalry meant the tenure of land by knights' service.

When both sat the court had summary criminal jurisdiction as regards all offences committed by knights, and generally as to military matters.

His train was full of knights who served him without pay for the honour of being associated with his exploits in the tilting-lists and in war.

Under the empire the word is regularly used of the city proletariate, or of the commons as distinct from knights and senators.

For the more important religious as distinguished from the military orders of knighthood or chivalry the reader is referred to the headings ST John Of Jerusalem, Knights Of; Teutonic Knights; and Templars.

And if the designation of knights was first applied to the military tenants of the earls, bishops and barons - who although they held their lands of mesne lords owed their services to the king - the extension of that designation to the whole body of military tenants need not have been a very violent or prolonged process.

But those whom the English called knights the Normans called chevaliers, by which term the nature of their services was defined, while their social status was left out of consideration.

Then there grew up all over Europe a system of fining the knights who failed to respond to the sovereign's call or to stay their full time in the field; and in England this fine developed, from the reign of Henry II.

It was then that the analogy was first detected between the order of knighthood and the order of priesthood, and that an actual union of monachism and chivalry was effected by the establishment of the religious orders of which the Knights Templars and the Knights Hospitallers were the most eminent examples.

But the members of these orders were not less monks than knights, their statutes embodied the rules of the cloister, and they were bound by the ecclesiastical vows of celibacy, poverty and obedience.

In warfare it was customary for knights who were thus allied to appear similarly accoutred and bearing the same badges or cognisances, to the end that their enemies might not know with which of them they were in conflict, and that their friends might be unable to accord more applause to one than to the other for his prowess in the field.

It seems likely enough therefore that there should grow up bodies of knights banded together by engagements of fidelity, although free from monastic obligations; wearing a uniform or livery, and naming themselves after some special symbol or some patron saint of their adoption.

The main divisions of the army were distributed under the royal and other principal standards, smaller divisions under the banners of some of the greater nobility or of knights banneret, and smaller divisions still under the pennons of knights or, as in distinction from knights banneret they came to be called, knights bachelors.

All knights whether bachelors or bannerets were escorted by their squires.

The bachelor and the banneret were both equally knights, only the one was of greater distinction and authority 3 Du Cange, Dissertation, xxi., and Lancelot du Lac, among other romances.

In this form a number of knights were made before and after almost every battle between the iith and the 16th centuries, and its advantages on the score of both convenience and economy gradually led to its general adoption both in time of peace and time of war.

When Segar, garter king of arms, wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this had been accomplished with such completeness that he does not even mention that there were two ways of creating knights bachelors.

This is the manner of dubbing knights at this present, and that term ` dubbing ' was the old term in this point, not `creating.'

This sort of knights are by the heralds called knights bachelors."

Then the " two ancient and grave knights " returned and led him to the chapel, the esquires going before them " sporting and dancing " with " the minstrels making melody."

Afterwards he was taken back to his chamber, and remained in bed until the knights, esquires and minstrels went to him and aroused him.

The knights then dressed him in distinctive garments, and they then mounted their horses and rode to the hall where the candidate was to receive knighthood; his future squire was to ride before him bareheaded bearing his sword by the point in its scabbard with his spurs hanging from its hilt.

But as Ashmole, speaking of Knights of the Bath, says, " if the ceremonies and circumstances of their creation be well considered.

And to them the particular name of Knights of the Bath was assigned, while knights made in the ordinary way were called in distinction from them knights of the sword, as they were also called knights bachelors in distinction from knights banneret.

But all knights were also knights of the spur or " equites aurati," because their spurs were golden or gilt, - the spurs of squires being of silver or white metal, - and these became their peculiar badge in popular estimation and proverbial speech.

In the form of their solemn inauguration too, as we have noticed, the spurs together with the sword were always employed as the leading and most characteristic ensigns of knighthood.5 With regard to knights banneret, various opinions have been entertained as to both the nature of their dignity and the qualifications they were required to possess for receiving it at different periods and in different countries.

In the Pontificale Romanum, the old Ordo Romanus and the manual or Common Prayer Book in use in England before the Reformation forms for the blessing or consecration of new knights are included, and of these the first and the last are quoted by Selden.

And generally, at any rate to commence with, it seems probable that bannerets were in every country merely the more important class of feudatories, the " ricos hombres " in contrast to the knights bachelors, who in France in the time of St Louis were known as " pauvres hommes."

But it is clear that from a comparatively early period bannerets whose claims were founded on personal distinction rather than on feudal tenure gradually came to the front, and much the same process of substitution appears to have gone on in their case as that which we have marked in the case of simple knights.

It is a common error to suppose that baronets are hereditary knights.

Baronets are not knights unless they are knighted like anybody else; and, so far from being knights because they are baronets, one of the privileges granted to them shortly after the institution of their dignity was that they, not being knights, and their successors and their eldest sons and heirs-apparent should, when they attained their majority, be entitled if they desired to receive knighthood.

The evidence may be examined at length in Nicolas and Beltz; it is indisputable that in the wardrobe account from September 1347 to January 1349, the 21st and 23rd Edward III., the issue of certain habits with garters and the motto embroidered on them is marked for St George's Day; that the letters patent relating to the preparation of the royal chapel of Windsor are dated in August 1348; and that in the treasury accounts of the prince of Wales there is an entry in November 1348 of the gift by him of " twenty-four garters to the knights of the Society of the Garter."

It consisted of the king and the Black Prince, and 24 knights divided into two bands of 12 like the tilters in a hastilude - at the head of the one being the first, and of the other the second; and to the companions belonging to each, when the order had superseded the Round Table and had become a permanent institution, were assigned stalls either on the sovereign's or the prince's side of St George's Chapel.

But, although these eminent warriors were subsequently elected as vacancies occurred, their admission was postponed to that of several very young and in actual warfare comparatively unknown knights, whose claims to the honour may be most rationally explained on the assumption that they had excelled in the particular feats of arms which preceded the institution of the order.

The original companionship had consisted of the sovereign and 25 knights, and no change was made in this respect until 1786, when the sons of George III.

The queen consort, the wives and daughters of knights, and some other women of exalted position, were designated " Dames de la Fraternite de St George," and entries of the delivery of robes and garters to them are found at intervals in the Wardrobe Accounts from the 50th Edward III.

In the middle ages it was a common practice for sovereigns and princes to dub each other knights much as they were afterwards, and are now, in the habit of exchanging the stars and ribbons of their orders.

Even in the 12th century, when war was still rather the pastime of kings and knights than Sainte Palaye, ii.

And also among the Englishmen there were certain rascals that went afoot with great knives, and they went in among the men of arms, and slew and murdered many as they lay on the ground, both earls, barons, knights and squires, whereof the king of England was after displeased, for he had rather they had been taken prisoners."

Thus " orders," irrespective of the title or other specific designation they confer, fall in Great Britain generally into three main categories, according as the recipients are made " knights grand cross," " knights commander," or " companions."

Generally speaking, the insignia of the " knights grand cross " consist of a star worn on the left breast and a badge, usually some form either of the cross patee or of the Maltese cross, worn suspended from a ribbon over the shoulder or, in certain cases, on days of high ceremonial from a collar.

Of the three great military and religious orders, branches survive of two, the Teutonic Order (Der hohe deutsche Ritter Orden or Marianen Orden) and the Knights of St John of Jerusalem (Johanniter Orden, Malteser Orden), for the history of which and the present state see Teutonic Order and ST John Of Jerusalem, Knights Of The Order Of.

It consisted of the sovereign and eight knights companions, and fell into abeyance at the Revolution of 1688.

In 1703 it was revived by Queen Anne, when it was ordained to consist of the sovereign and 12 knights companions, the number being increased to 16 by statute in 1827.

Knights of the Bath, although they were allowed precedence before knights bachelors, were merely knights bachelors who were knighted with more elaborate ceremonies than others and on certain great occasions.

Exclusive of the sovereign, royal princes and distinguished foreigners, the order is limited to 55 military and 27 civil knights grand cross, 145 military and 108 civil knights commanders, and 705 military and 298 civil companions.

The ribbon and badges of the knights grand cross (civil and military) and the stars are illustrated on Plate II., figs.

By statute of 1832 the lord high commissioner of the Ionian Islands was to be the grand master, and the order was directed to consist of 15 knights grand crosses, 20 knights commanders and 25 cavaliers or companions.

It is now (by the enlargement of 1902) limited to oo knights grand cross, of whom the first or principal is grand master, exclusive of extra and honorary members, of 300 knights commanders and 600 companions.

The badge of the knights grand cross and the ribbon are illustrated on Plate II., figs.

The star of the knights grand cross is a seven-rayed star of silver with a small ray of gold between each, in the centre is a red St George's cross bearing a medallion of St Michael encountering Satan, surrounded by a blue fillet with the motto Auspicium melioris aevi.

Of these the first was instituted in 1861 and enlarged in 1876.1897 and 1903, in three classes, knights grand commanders, knights commanders and companions, and the second was established (for " companions " only) in 1878 and enlarged in 1887, 1892, 1897 and 1903, also in the same three classes, in commemoration of Queen Victoria's assumption of the imperial style and title of the Empress of India.

The badges, stars and ribbons of the knights grand commanders of the two orders are illustrated on Plate III., figs.

It consists of the sovereign, chancellor, secretary and five classes - knights grand commanders, knights commanders, commanders and members of the fourth and fifth classes, the distinction between these last divisions lying in the badge and in the precedence enjoyed by the members.

The knights of this order rank in their respective classes immediately after those of the Indian Empire, and its numbers are unlimited.

The badge, star and ribbon of the knights grand cross are illustrated on Plate III., figs.

The members were to be gentilshor y nznes de nom et d'armes et sans reproche, not knights of any other order, and vowed to join their sovereign in the defence of the Catholic faith, the protection of Holy Church, and the upholding of virtue and good morals.

The sovereign undertook to consult the knights before embarking on a war, all disputes between the knights were to be settled by the order, at each chapter the deeds of each knight were held in review, and punishments and admonitions were dealt out to offenders; to this the sovereign was expressly subject.

The arrest of the offender had to be by warrant signed by at least six knights, and during the process of charge and trial he remained not in prison but dans l'aimable compagnie du dit ordre.

It was in defiance of this right that Alva refused the claim of Counts Egmont and Horn to be tried by the knights of the Fleece in 1568.

A magnificent exhibition of relics, portraits of knights and other objects connected with the order of the Golden Fleece was held at Bruges in 1907.

The Order of St Stephen of Hungary, the royal Hungarian order, founded in 5764 by the empress Maria Theresa, consists of the grand master (the sovereign), 20 knights grand cross, 30 knights commanders and 50 knights.

The collar, only worn by the knights grand cross, is of gold, and consists of Hungarian crowns linked together alternately by the monograms of St Stephen, S.S., and the foundress, M.T.; the centre of the collar is formed by a flying lark encircled by the motto Stringit amore.

There were originally only two, grand cross and knights.

The order is limited to 21 knights in three divisions.

The order, exclusive of the sovereign and his sons, is limited to 30 knights, who must be of the Protestant religion.

Originally restricted to 50 knights and granted as a family or court decoration, it was reconstituted as an unlimited order of merit in 1808 by Frederick VI.; alterations have been made in 1811 and 1864.

It now consists of five classes, grand cross, commander (2 classes) and knights (2 classes).

The knights wore a collar of golden hunting horns, whence the order was also known as the Order of the Horn.

Exclusive of the sovereign and princes of the blood, and foreign sovereigns and princes, it consists of twelve capitular knights of the rank of count or Freiherr.

The badge is a white cross bearing on a blue centre the Wendish crown, surrounded by the motto, for the Schwerin knights, Per aspera ad astra, for the Strelitz knights, Avito viret honore.

It has two divisions, each of five classes, of capitular knights and honorary members.

It consisted of 30 nobly born knights.

It is of one class only, and the sons and nephews of the sovereign are born knights of the order.

The knights of the Annunziata have the title of "cousins of the king," and enjoy precedence over all the other officials of the state.

With the advance of the Saracens the knights of St Lazarus, when driven from the Holy Land and Egypt, migrated to France (1291) and Naples (1311), where they founded leper hospitals.

The present badges of the orders represent the crosses that the knights wore on their mantles.

The Order of Knights of Alcantara, instituted about 1156 by the brothers Don Suarez and Don Gomez de Barrientos for protection against the Moors.

Until about 1213 they were known as the Knights of San Julian del Pereyro; but when the defence of Alcantara, newly wrested from the Moors by Alphonso IX.

During the rule of thirty-seven successive grand masters, similarly chosen, the influence and wealth of the order gradually increased until the Knights of Alcantara were almost as powerful as the sovereign.

When Joseph Bonaparte became king of Spain in 1808, he deprived the knights of their revenues, which were only partially recovered on the restoration of Ferdinand VII.

The Order of Knights of Calatrava was founded in 1158 by Don Sancho III.

There is a prelate of the order which is administered by a chapter; the chapel of the knights is in the Riddar Holmskyrka at Stockholm.

His little principality of Glogau soon became famous as a'model state, and as governor of Silesia he suppressed the robber knights with an iron hand, protected the law-abiding classes, and revived commerce.

As late as 1230 human sacrifices were still being offered up in Prussia and Lithuania, and, in spite of all the efforts of the Teutonic Knights, idolatrous practices still lingered amongst the people, while amongst the Lapps, though successful missions had been inaugurated as early as 1335, Christianity cannot be said to have become the dominant religion till at least two centuries later.

The mention of the order of the Teutonic Knights reminds us how the crusading spirit had affected Christendom.

The funds of the suppressed order of Jesus, which Maximilian Joseph had destined for the reform of the educational system of the country, were used to endow a province of the knights of St John of Jerusalem, for the purpose of combating the enemies of the faith.

The knights were one hundred in number, and possessed the right of marrying and receiving pensions charged on ecclesiastical benefices.

On the Acropolis is a castle, built by the knights in the, 4th century, and many houses in the town show work of the same date.

In 1304 the commonalty rose against the patricians and drove them from the city, and in the following year gained a victory over the exiles and their allies, the knights, which was long celebrated by an annual service of thanksgiving.

The duchies had always been under a government of fetidal character, the grand dukes having the executive entirely in their hands (though acting through ministers), while the duchies shared a diet (Landtag), meeting for a short session each year, and at other times represented by a committee, and consisting of - the proprietors of knights estates (Rittergitter), known as the Ri.iterschaft, and the Landschaft or burgomasters of certain towns.

At a banquet shortly afterwards Philip vowed that he would lead a crusade against the Turks, who had seized Constantinople, and the knights of his court swore to follow his example.'

The juries, both for answering the questions asked by the judges and for trying cases under the grand assize, were to be chosen by a committee of four knights, also elected by the suitors of each county court for that purpose.

In 1195 Hubert issued an ordinance by which four knights were to be appointed in every hundred to act as guardians of the peace, and from this humble beginning eventually was evolved the office of justice of the peace.

His reliance upon the knights, or middle-class landowners, who now for the first time appear in the political foreground, is all the more interesting because it is this class who, either as members of parliament or justices of the peace, were to have the effective rule of England in their hands for so many centuries.

But Richard had grown dissatisfied with him, for the carucage had not been a success, and Hubert had failed to overcome the resistance of the Great Council when its members refused to equip a force of knights to serve abroad.

Prussia was conquered for Christianity and civilization by the knights of the Teutonic Order, who here built up the state which was later, The in association with Brandenburg, deeply to influence Teutonic the course of history.

Order in Knights .eager to win fame by engaging in the war Prussia.

All immediate nobles were not princes; but even petty knights or barons, who possessed little more than the rude towers from which they descended upon passing travellers, if their only lord was the emperor, recognized no law save their own will.

They were often transformed into free knights by the grant of a fief, and the class ultimately became absorbed in that of the knights.

Often they were separated one from the other by large stretches of territory under the rule of a hostile prince and their trade was peculiarly liable to attack by an adventurous body of knights.

The class to which Hutten and his friend, Franz von Sickingen, a daring and ambitious Rhenish baron, belonged, was that of the small feudal tenants in chief, the Ritterschaft or knights of the Empire.

They were intensely jealous of the princes, and it occurred to Hutten and Sickingen that the Reformation might be used to improve the condition of the knights and to effect a total change in the constitution of the Empire.

The German peasants had grievances compared with which those of the knights and lesser barons were The imaginary.

In the absence of the emperor and of his brother, the archduke Ferdinand, the authorities in these parts of the country were unable to check the movement and, aided by many knights, prominent among whom was Gbtz von Berlichingen, the peasants were everywhere victorious, while another influential recruit, Ulrich, the dispossessed duke of Wurttemberg, joined them in the hope of recovering his duchy.

Borromeo was made prothonotary, entrusted with both the public and the privy seal of the ecclesiastical state, and created cardinal with the administration of Romagna and the March of Ancona, and the supervision of the Franciscans, the Carmelites and the knights of Malta.

The castle of Braunsberg was built by the Teutonic knights in 1241, and the town was founded ten years later.

In meeting all the extraordinary demands resulting from the Civil War he displayed great energy and resourcefulness, and was active in thwarting the schemes of the secessionists in the neighbouring state of Kentucky, and of the Knights of the Golden Circle, the Order of American Knights, and the Sons of Liberty (secret societies of Southern sympathizers and other opponents of the war) in Indiana.

The land was full of disorder, and the praetors shrank from enforcing the law against offenders, many of whom, as Roman knights, might be their own judges.

In 1530 the Sicilian island of Malta became the shelter of the Knights of Saint John driven by the Turk from Rhodes, and Sicily has received several colonies of Christian Albanians, who have replaced Greek and Arabic by yet another tongue.

The fighting was more serious between the two centres; the infantry of the Low Countries, who were at this time almost the best in existence, drove in the French; Philip led the cavalry reserve of nobles and knights to retrieve the day, and after a long and doubtful fight, in which he himself was unhorsed and narrowly escaped death, began to drive back the Flemings.

Here too the imperial forces suffered defeat, Otto himself being saved only by the devotion of a handful of Saxon knights.

The battle closed with the celebrated stand of Reginald of Boulogne, a revolted vassal of King Philip, who formed a ring of seven hundred Brabancon pikemen, and not only defied every attack of the French cavalry, but himself made repeated charges or sorties with his small force of knights.

Eventually, and long after the imperial army had begun its retreat, the gallant schiltron was ridden down and annihilated by a charge of three thousand men-at-arms. Reginald was taken prisoner in the melee; and the prisoners also included two other counts, Ferdinand and William Longsword, twenty-five barons and over a hundred knights.

The killed amounted to about 170 knights of the defeated party, and many thousands of foot on either side, of whom no accurate account can be given.

It remained an independent principality until the 12th century, resisting the repeated attacks of the princes of Kiev; those of Pskov, Lithuania, and the Livonian Knights, however, proved more effective, and Polotsk fell under Lithuanian rule in 1320.

In 1228 the castle was taken by the Livonian Knights, but nine years later it returned to the Danes.

The country, over, but in 1385 a great band of French knights landed in.

Here Douglas fell in the thickest of the melee, but his death was concealed and Henry Percy, with many other English knights, were captured and held to heavy ransom (r5th of August 1388).

With the tidings of this truce arrived, in April, a body of French knights who desired to enjoy fighting, and though dates are obscure they seem to have caused, by a raid in April, a retaliatory foray by the Percies in May or June.

In France, Marseilles was the main harbour for the pilgrims. From there ships belonging to the knights of St John and the knights templars conducted the commerce with Palestine, and carried annually some 6000 passengers.

In the constitution of the Jomborg state and again in that of the eastern Vaerings (a Scandinavian body in the service of the East Roman Empire) we see a constitution which looks like the foretaste of that of the Templars or the Teutonic Knights.

The Knights of the Golden Circle, and other secret societies, whose aims were the promulgation of state sovereignty and the extension of aid to the Confederate states, began to flourish, and it is said that in 1864 there were 50,000 members of the Sons of Liberty in the state.

George's Chapel, Windsor, are the stalls of the Knights of the Garter, in Henry VII.'s Chapel in Westminster Abbey are those of the Knights of the Bath, adorned with the stall plates emblazoned with the arms of the knight occupying the stall, above which is suspended his banner.

The combination suggested an alliance between the lesser knights and the peasants, dreaded by all the ruling classes.

He passed the Straits of Dover with a numerous flotilla laden with military machines and stores, and also carrying many knights and soldiers.

The Cinque Port seamen returned in triumph, towing their prizes, after throwing the common soldiers overboard, and taking the knights to ransom according to the custom of the age.

On the other hand their town, being the principal emporium of the Baltic by the middle of the 13th century, acted as the firm ally of the Teutonic knights in Livonia.

As early as 1241 Lubeck, Hamburg and Soest had combined to secure their highways against robber knights.

Although the picturesque figures of Manfred and Conradin awakened sympathy among the people of the kingdom, their authority was never really consolidated and their German knights were hated; which facts rendered the enterprise of another foreigner like the Angevin comparatively easy.

In the following year the Teutonic Order, in conjunction with the Order of the Sword, succeeded in capturing Pskov; but Alexander recovered it in 1242, advanced into Livonia, and on the 5th of April defeated the knights on the ice of Lake Peipus and compelled them in the ensuing peace to renounce all their conquests.

They drew up a list of proscribed citizens, and caused the assassination of three hundred senators and two thousand knights.

It will be seen that, in consequence of this, municipal life in Italy was from the first more complex, the main constituent parts of the population being the capitani, or greater nobles, the valvassori, or lesser nobles (knights) and the people (popolo).

Ladies gorgeously clad, and knights, showing by their dress and bearing their anxiety to revive the glories and the follies of the age of chivalry, jostled mountebanks, mendicants and vendors of all kinds.

At different times it was held by Pomerania, Poland, Brandenburg and Denmark, and in 1308 it fell into the hands of the Teutonic knights, under whose rule it long prospered.

The naturalism of which we have been speaking found free utterance now in the fabliaux of jongleurs, lyrics of minnesingers, tales of trouveres, romances of Arthur and his knights - compositions varied in type and tone, but in all of which sincere passion and real enjoyment of life pierce through the thin veil of chivalrous mysticism or of allegory with which they were sometimes conventionally draped.