Medieval Hierarchy?

Question

Hi all, I need to know some information about medieval hierarchy pretty quickly. Obviously there were Royal, baronial and gentry (by which I mean those with land (landed gentry) and peasants.

I need to know where knights fit in, are they gentry? They aren't baronial I believe.

Or am I completely wrong. Basically I could use a royal hierarchy and what was contained within them.

Please do not answer unless you know or have some kind of historical qualification. Don't just write down a list you think may be right.

Answer 1

The roll and status of knights changed much througout the middle ages and as such can be hard to place. Do you have a specific time that you are looking at?

The center of the feudal system in medieval Europe was the king, and a medieval king was, above everything else, a warrior. From the 9th to the 14th centuries the most important element in making war was the armored and mounted knight. To maintain a retinue of knights was, however, very expensive. In return for providing the king with warriors, tenants-in-chief were granted large holding of land. A grant of land was known as a "feud" or a "fief": hence the term "feudalism". The tenants-in-chief (commonly called barons in England) received their lands directly from the king and, in turn, leased parts of their estates to the knights, who in their turn gave leases to yeomen.

Later on when-around the middle of the 15th century- The members of the parlements, obtained noble titles from the king. The old nobility of military origin, the noblesse d'épée (nobility of the sword) became increasingly irritated by this newer noblesse de robe (nobility of the gown). In the last years of the ancien régime, before the French Revolution, the old nobility, intent on keeping its privileges, had pushed for restrictions of certain offices and orders of chivalry to noblemen who could demonstrate that their family had enough "noble quarterings" a reference to a noble's ability to display armorially their descents from armigerous noble forebears in each of their lines of descent to demonstrate that they were descended from old noble families, who bore arms that could be quartered with their own male line arms, and thus prove that they did not derive merely from bourgeois families recently elevated to noble rank.

So in essense the first nobels and even kings of the feudal system were knights. However, as thier need faded so too did their status. So they serverd both as land owners and as no more than vassels to lords of the time.