Knight's fee is a feudal term used in medieval England to describe the value of land.

Feudalism is the exchange of land for military service, thus everything was based on what was called the knight's fee, which was the amount of money and/or military service a fief was required to pay to support one knight. Thus, either a fief could provide the service of a knight, or an equivalent amount of money to allow a lord to hire a knight. A single fief could have a value of anywhere from 1/5th of a knight's fee to 50 or more knight's fees, depending on its size and resources. Fief's might also contain sub-fiefs, such that the knight's fee value of the fief is made up for by the value of the smaller fiefs contained within. In this way a heirarchy of lords and vassals lay over the land with the knight's fee as the base unit of denomination.

A knight was expected to be self-sufficient from the proceeds of the fief, to support his family, arm himself, stable a war horse, pay his own taxes and duties, and keep up appearances as a member of the Noble (fighting) class.

The typical knight's fee was around £20 per year circa 1200. The derivation of the amount likely comes from a minor medieval obsession with the number three, based on the Holy Trinity: the three estates, Noble, Church and Peasantry, taxation and fees assessed by thirds-- the 'third penny' going to the crown or local Lord-- and so on. £20 is 30 Marks, a monetary unit commonly used for assessing taxes, paying ransoms and other such official usage. The Mark was 2/3 of a pound. The amount is actually quite small in relative terms. A free peasant paid for field work around the same period could expect around 3d per day, or a much as £3-4 in a year. A knight's fee is thus only about three to five times as much as a peasant's average income.

See also

• Feudalism (examples) for a historic example of knight's fees.

References

• Sally Harvey, "The Knight and Knight's Fee in England", Past and Present, No. 49. (Nov., 1970), pp. 3-43. Available online through JSTOR.