Knight’s Fee

Knight's fee was a feudal term used in mediæval England and Anglo-Norman Ireland to describe the value of land. It is also sometimes called scutage.Feudalism was a system under which the land was exchanged 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 necessary 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. Fiefs 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 hierarchy of lords and vassals lay over the land with the knight's fee as the base unit of denomination.
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