Knight's fairy

The Knight's Fee ( Latin feodum militis ) is a medieval unit that described in England and Normandy how much a land taken on fief was worth or what tax had to be paid for it. This special type of fiefdom is also known as Knight's fee .

Such a fee served as a substitute for the initially customary military service . Depending on the value of the land, it could be 1/5 of a Knight's fee , but also 5 Knight's fees . By 1200 a Knight's fee was around £ 20 a  year. A free farmer who was paid for his field work earned about 1/5 of this sum.

The Seigneur of Sark , a channel island , whose system of government is still based on the order of around 1600, is obliged to defend the island and pay one twentieth of the Knight's fee . He pays £ 1.79 a year, which today corresponds to around € 2.04  or CHF 2.34  (as of July 2011).

literature

• Sally Harvey: The Knight and the Knight's Fee in England. In: Past & Present . Volume 49, No. 1, November 1, 1970, pp. 3–43 ( jstor.org )
• Frederick Pollock , Frederic William Maitland : The History of English Law. Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, London 1968, p. 256 f.