INTRODUCTION.

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century, by those who were not themselves Knights. Theproofs cited by Ashmole are, that “ anciently Bishops andPriests made Knights, so also do the Popes and some Com-monwealths, nay Women in whom the supreme power is vested,as Queens Mary and Elizabethand he quotes an ancient lawof Spain, that “ the King or his son and heir, though theybe no Knights, may nevertheless make Knights, by reason thatthey possess the Kingdom, and are therefore the head andchief of Chivalry, and consequently all the power thereof, isclosed up and contained in the King’s command.” 4 But theexception, as well in the case of the Kings of Spain and theQueens Regnant of England, as in that of the Pope and Com-monwealths, tends to establish the rule ; and for the very reasoncontained in the Spanish law, namely, that the supreme powerof the State was vested in the persons who have conferred thehonour. The right of the Priesthood to bestow Knighthoodwas derived from the Saxons, and may have been continued inconsequence of the Order having originally so much of areligious character; but it was specially forbidden to be exer-cised in a Synod held at Westminster, so early as the year 1102. 5As has been already stated, several Kings of England, after theCrown had devolved upon them, were Knighted by their ownsubjects; and when the Earl Marshal demanded, as his fee, thehorse and furniture of Alexander the Third, King of Scotland,on his being Knighted at York, by King Henry the Third, in

* Ashmole, p. 35.

5 Ibid. p. 37. “It was among other things ordained, ‘ Ne Abbates faciunt Milites’(Concil. Brit, tome ii. p. 22), by which word ‘ Abbates’ we suppose is understood all sortsof Spiritual persons.” Selden (p. 638) does not appear, however, to give the same con-struction to that Ordinance.