Word Finder - bannerets

definition

A noble, knighted feudal lord who has the right to lead his vassals to battle under his own banner

definition

A small banner.

definition

A proposed but unadopted senior commissioned rank of the Royal Air Force equivalent to group captain.

definition

A civil officer in some Swiss cantons.

All knights whether bachelors or bannerets were escorted by their squires.

In Scotland, even as late as the reign of James VI., lords of parliament were always created bannerets as well as barons at their investiture, " part of the ceremony consisting in the display of a banner, and such ` barones majores ' were thereby entitled to the privilege of having one borne by a retainer before them to the field of a quadrilateral form."

On the Continent, however, there are several recorded examples of bannerets who had an hereditary claim to that honour and its attendant privileges on the ground of the nature of their feudal tenure.'

And generally, at any rate to commence with, it seems probable that bannerets were in every country merely the more important class of feudatories, the " ricos hombres " in contrast to the knights bachelors, who in France in the time of St Louis were known as " pauvres hommes."

But it is clear that from a comparatively early period bannerets whose claims were founded on personal distinction rather than on feudal tenure gradually came to the front, and much the same process of substitution appears to have gone on in their case as that which we have marked in the case of simple knights.

Sir Alan Plokenet, Sir Ralph Daubeney and Sir Philip Daubeney are entered as bannerets on the roll of the garrison of Caermarthen Castle in 1282, and the roll of Carlaverock records the names and arms of eighty-five bannerets who accompanied Edward I.

What the exact contingent was which bannerets were expected to supply to the royal host is doubtful.'

One earl, forty-two barons and bannerets, two hundred knights, seven hundred esquires and probably 10,000 foot were killed in the battle and the pursuit.

One earl, twenty-two barons and bannerets and sixty-eight knights fell into the hands of the victors, whose total loss of 4000 men included, it is said, only two knights.

Ultimately bannerets obtained a place in the feudal hierarchy between barons and knights bachelors, which has given rise to the idea that they are the origin of King James I.'s order of baronets.

The creation of bannerets is traceable, according to Selden, to the time of Edward I.

According to the Sallade and the Division du Monde, as cited by Selden, bannerets were clearly in the beginning feudal tenants of a certain magnitude and importance and nothing more, and different forms for their creation are given in time of peace and in time of war.'

The second part enters upon the history of the crusade itself, and tells how Joinville pledged all his land save so much as would bring in a thousand livres a year, and started with a brave retinue of nine knights (two of whom besides himself wore bannerets), and shared a ship with the sire d'Aspremont, leaving Joinville without raising his eyes,"pour ce que le cuer ne me attendrisist du biau chastel que je lessoie et de mes deux enfans"; how they could not get out of sight of a high mountainous island (Lampedusa or Pantellaria) till they had made a procession round the masts in honour of the Virgin; how they reached first Cyprus and then Egypt; how they took Damietta, and then entangled themselves in the Delta.