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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 3467494" data-attributes="member: 15538">The whole point of chainmail is to put lots of guys into armor who aren't fabulously rich. Mail and sword is expensive, but swords last pretty well, and chainmail can be forged by the village smithie, or in the field. A wealthy farmer certainly could have afforded it, but a wealthy farmer is only symantically, and one good marraige away, from the "aristocracy" in the middle ages. A farmer with a few acres of his own was certainly the "laird" of his little realm. All he lacked of the nobility was the power of justice, bestowed on the shire-reeve (sheriff). Any free person was eligible for the knighthood. In times of war, the chivalrous classes were a huge source of upward mobility for freemen. In times of peace, the haves did what they could to maintain control of the have-nots. One good example of "knighthood" in the professional sense are the landsknechts... German mercenaries, armored soldiers who fought on foot. Whereas the Scots fielded sizeable cavalry units of no particular pedigree other than a horse and a claymore. It would be a mistake to assume the encyclopedic version of chivalry of certain periods in certain times and places describes, wholly, medieval knighthood. The word knight means "retainer," and certainly, the original knights were soldiers hired on who received their pay in land and taxes. They became nobility by achieving military and economic power of their own and intermixing with the baronial classes.</blockquote>

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