Knight's fee

Knight's fee is a feudal term used in medieval England to describe the value of land.

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Feudalism is the exchange of land 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 required 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 heirarchy of lords and vassals lay over the land with the knight's fee as the base unit of denomination.

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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 appearances as a member of the Noble (fighting) class.

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The typical knight's fee was around £20 per year circa 1200. The derivation of the amount likely comes from a minor medieval obsession with the number three, based on the Holy Trinity: the three estates, Noble, Church and 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. The amount is actually quite small in relative terms. 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. A knight's fee is thus only about three to five times as much as a peasant's average income.

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