How much land for new Noble ?

[Ourph]

As Gizmo has noted, a medieval setting does not have the ability to levy sales tax or income tax. Taxes will be property taxes levied annually, duties on imports & exports through the city gates & docks (I hit the PCs with that when they brought some chain shirts into town to sell) and requirements for feudal service. Some modern taxes could also work, eg Inheritance Tax on the wealthy (unlikely in a feudal society) and Stamp Duty on the sale of land & buildings. Medieval towns had a narrow tax base, most tax came from a small number of property owners - burghers - who were also usually the only people counted as real 'citizens'.

Inheritance Tax was definitely a feature of medieval/manorial life and was far from being restricted to the wealthy. Peasants taking possession of a parcel of land paid entry fees (gersum) and upon the death of a villein, the lord collected a death duty (heriot or "best beast", meaning the lord usually took the villein's best farm animal or a like amount of goods in payment).

I think some of these ideas being thrown around are very much mixing Renaissance concepts into the Medieval/Feudal model. In Medieval times, the vast majority of "income" came from villages, not towns. Towns didn't develop as significant economic centers until well into the late medieval period and villages didn't start to die out until several hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance period. In addition, the idea of taxes on trade (i.e. import duties, etc.) during the Feudal period is somewhat erroneous as well, since most trade at that time was conducted not by private individuals but by powerful land-owning nobles (the only ones with enough excess to make trade worthwhile) who obviously wouldn't be taxing themselves. It's important to remember that the Feudal system was based almost exclusively on the exchange of services and land; not money and goods as a form of payment. Kings granted land to Counts, Dukes and Barons in exchange for their provision of trained military personnel. The greater nobles then obtained those soldiers by granting sub-plots of their land to knights/lords in the form of a manor, who financed their living and military equipment by granting sub-plots of their manor to serfs, who paid for that by rendering service back to the lord in the form of labor on his own lands. This was, by a large margin, the major form of "commerce". Any exchange of money or goods was in extremely small quantities and usually localized to a very small area. In fact, it was the rise of trade which essentially brought about the end of the Feudal period (by creating means of exchange other than service which were more attractive and beneficial to the parties involved).

 

[S'mon]

Ourph - yeah, I got a bit distracted, was thinking of adventurers buying ale & chain shirts in the city so I was talking about how my towns function, not the rural demesnes. My campaign, like default D&D, definitely has a larger role for cities than did medieval Europe (outside maybe the Holy Roman Empire); I base it off a mix of Holy Roman & actual classical Roman Empire, albeit with a mostly Anglo-Celtic culture. Death duties on villeins is different from what I meant by Inheritance Tax, the early 20th century idea that you could make tons of money by "screw the rich" approach of taxing the wealthy on death of large chunks of their estate. Eg in UK all inherited wealth over about £280,000/$450,000 is subject to 40% inheritance tax!

 

[S'mon]

The greater nobles then obtained those soldiers by granting sub-plots of their land to knights/lords in the form of a manor

AFAIK the practice of granting land to knights directly was quite late-medieval? IMC some areas have "land knights" where each knight manages a manor and provides a lance of troops (3-5) to their Lord in war-time, but in many areas the baron keeps his knights at his castle, maintaining them from his own pocket, while villages are either left to their own devices between taxations or are managed by a baron's reeve. Of course you can also have a mixed system where the baron maintains a squadron of house knights who are drawn from the families of land knights seated on the manors.

 

[S'mon]

BTW I remember reading/hearing that by the Wars of The Roses ca 1450 AD there were only about 4,000 actual Knights in England, with about 600 Lords so that's about 7 knights per Baron; these Knights would be the elite plate-armoured guys on barded warhorses. Most of the English armies comprised yeoman longbow archers. Whereas when knighthood developed in France ca 800 AD it was basically "any guy with a horse and a sword".

 

[RobertCampbell]

In England many avoided full blown knighthood to avoid the expenses and duties, but were as wealthy and well-armed as knights. While not technically knights, members of the gentry were held to the same code of honour and indistinguishable in battle.

 

[Ourph]

AFAIK the practice of granting land to knights directly was quite late-medieval? IMC some areas have "land knights" where each knight manages a manor and provides a lance of troops (3-5) to their Lord in war-time, but in many areas the baron keeps his knights at his castle, maintaining them from his own pocket, while villages are either left to their own devices between taxations or are managed by a baron's reeve. Of course you can also have a mixed system where the baron maintains a squadron of house knights who are drawn from the families of land knights seated on the manors.

Some of the wealthier nobility maintained household soldiers, but these weren't necessarily "knights" as we know the term (and this only became common after the mid 1300s). The bestowing of an actual title almost always came with a grant of land. Although villages were often left primarily to their own devices, it was still almost universally true that each village had a manor house. In some cases, the lords who owned these manors were not in residence full time, since it was much easier to support oneself by having multiple manors and traveling to each throughout the year (thus spreading the burden of support and visiting each to make sure the Reeve and/or Bailiff was doing an adequate job).

 

[Ourph]

BTW I remember reading/hearing that by the Wars of The Roses ca 1450 AD there were only about 4,000 actual Knights in England, with about 600 Lords so that's about 7 knights per Baron.

OK, I think there's some confusion about terms here, or I'm misunderstanding your point. The title of Knighthood was "Sir" but when it came with a grant of land, a title of lordship was also appended. So, for example, if John Smith were granted a knighthood and a plot of land under a greater noble (like a Baron) including the village of Bromley, his title would be "Sir John Smith, Lord of Bromley".

So almost all 4000 of those Knights would have had their own lands (save for a few maintained solely by a greater noble at his own demense). The division of 7 knights per greater noble (Counts, Dukes and Barons numbering around 600) would be accurate, but the number of "Lords" would actually have been very close to 4000.

There was just no way for the economy of the medieval manorial system to support a noble household that constantly had to pay, train and maintain 7 heavy cavalry. Doing so would have required large sums of cash. Whereas granting land allowed the nobles to pay in coin they had plenty of (land, labor, crops and animals), while also making sure that during times of peace there weren't a lot of trained military personnel around the castle getting ideas about "moving up" in the world (not an uncommon occurence in those times). Land was a major status symbol and granting Knights their own lands not only helped them support themselves, got them out from underfoot and kept them busy during times of peace, but also bought fealty and loyalty without requiring huge amounts of cash (unlike, for example, hiring mercenaries).

 

[S'mon]

Ourph I hate to take issue with you, but 600 was the number of Barons (and higher noble titles) in late-medieval England. In England you were only a Lord, and entitled to sit in the House of Lords, if you were a Baron (and possibly Viscount, Earl, Duke etc). You did not acquire the official title of Lord (=Baron) through being a landed knight, although I agree "lord of the manor" was/is used in casual parlance. Only the King could make Lords.

England was unusual in Europe in how few titled nobles it had; partly because in England a noble title was only held by the head of the family (outside royalty) and attached to the land, whereas in Europe younger sons also got titles and the nobility thus multiplied until by the end of the Ancien Regime in France something like 1/4 the population could claim a noble title!

Traditionally any Knight could knight another Knight, but by the later medieval epoch it became a prerogative of the Barons (all English nobles are Barons even if they have higher titles), and nowadays only the Crown can make knights.

A manor* did not of course maintain 7 knights/heavy cavalry. By 1450, when I think knighthood had become a Crown prerogative (correct me anyone who knows better), there were far fewer actual knights than manors, as RobertCampbell noted earlier. As time went on most "lords of the manor" never did get knighted and would thus be always a Squire; Squire is still the colloquial term for gentry in the UK, especially rural gentry, though now somewhat archaic.

*Edit: I think you were saying that Barony could not maintain 7 heavy cavalry under arms in the late-medieval period. I'm not sure that's true, but obviously most barons would not necessarily _want_ to maintain 7 heavy cavalry unless they felt there was a need for it; ie conflict was likely. In England it's very noticeable how 16th century aristocratic architecture shifts away from the castle model to much more comfortable mansions. Whereas in Scotland (and on the Borders) they were still building fortified castles well into the gunpowder era.

 

[S'mon]

FWIW late 15th century England had a population reckoned at 4 million, maybe a bit less, having recovered from the Black Death in mid-14th century when it dropped to 2 million. Mostly rural, with 4000 knights that's 1 knight per 1000 of the population; while with 600 Barons/Lords that's 1 per 6666 on average. Of course in reality some Lords had far larger holdings, and I think my baseline figure for a minor baron of 2-3,000 peasants is about right; it works for my campaign anyway.

If we used the MMS:WE 'manor' of 450 people that would be 1 manor per 2 knights. I think IRL an English manor was probably smaller than that; my sourcebooks seem to indicate a typical early-medieval manor was more like 80-100 peasants; though 450 sounds right for France and probably for Europe in general. The important thing about a manor is that it supports a heavy cavalryman; the more support he needs the bigger a manor has to be, so a Norman manor is going to be smaller than a Wars of the Roses manor.

I think I'm right that England ca 1100 had only about 200 Barons BTW, with a population around 2 million and 100 peasants/heavy cavalryman that's a theoretical 20,000 heavy cavalry. Although a king who managed to get even 5,000 of them together in his army at once was doing pretty well!

 

[S'mon]

I think a GM has to be clear what "knighthood" means in his campaign. I've had the problem as a player that I want my newly 2nd level Fighter of good breeding to get his knighthood, thinking Norman knight, whereas the GM is thinking 15th century Knight (maybe Fighter-6, depending on campaign demographcs), and laughs at me....