KNIGHT-ERRANT

In the language of Chivalry, a knight wandering in search of adventures, sometimes under vows, foi i riod. Knight-errantry was not altogether a fiction of romance. It originated, as Mr. Turner says, partly from the frequency of private war in feudal time.-', which made military aid constantly acceptable to the great barons; and as a knight had, for the most part, no other lie to the soil than his duties towards his feudal superior,hewas at liberty to follow his own bent whenever his services were not needed by him. Such a mode of life peculiarh suited the tastes of the men of that age, and in some rved the exigencies of society. "Knights, therefore, were perpetually errant, or travelling in quest of adventures or employment: some from the pleasure of the expedition, and some for its expected profits. They often met the oppre ed or the unsucce ful; and they cheerfully engaged themselves to redre those wrongs which laws Feeble to remedy, and for redre ing which, honour, plunder, or rich donations became usually their com pens a lion." i Turner's History of England during the Middle I. Mii.) KNIGHT, [s. 647]