If your father was a knight, are you still a peasant?

Question

Like if your father was a knight, and you missed your chance at becoming a serf, squire etc. are you known as a pesant?? Thank you

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

A knighthood is not hereditary.  You would be a "commoner,"

though an "aristocrat," however, not a "peasant."  (The lowest

hereditary title is "baronet.")

Answer 3

I take it you are meaning in olden days. No you wouldn't be a peasant if your father was a knight - - you would be a commoner, not a noble, but you would be in the lower part of the upper class, and you'd be considered as "gentry" -- a 'gentleman' or a 'lady'  (but NOT with a title "Lady Mary" etc.)

  

Re: "missed your chance at becoming a serf" . Believe me being a serf is not a GOOD thing - -it was just a little up the ladder from a slave. In fact it was like a slave, but they were tied to a particular piece of land and had to work on it- -they could not be sold as a slave and sent off elsewhere. But neither could they decide to go elsewhere, or take another job.

A "squire" on the other hand, was very different from a "serf"  it's an upper class thing, but it is not a noble rank / title, although he might be related to people with titles. "Squire" has been used in different ways over the years. The word from the 17th-20th centuries applied to the head of a family of gentry who owned a manor and surrounding land of an English village. ...sometimes called "the village squire"

in the early Middle Ages, a squire was like an apprentice knight --a young man of the upper class who served a knight as his assistant / servant , while learning the skills for knighthood, and he'd go on to be a knight himself.   Later it might just be a youth/young man who served for a while a lord that his father owed allegience to or had some alliance with.     (And before he was a squire, he was often a 'page'  - - that is a younger boy who goes to work for a more powerful lord. )

Answer 4

No, I think that once your family is ennobled, then you are noble.  It's different now.  Just the knight is noble.  Not the entire family.

Answer 5

Yes, you would be a commoner.  For you to have any honourary titles, your father would have to be a baron or higher.