Originally from this thread: http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2933.0





Not to mention that sons of household knights would be extremely rare birds, unless they are bastards, since household knights rarely if ever marry.

I'm not sure we've thunk this one quite all the way through. I know the appreciation has become that household knights can't afford to support a wife, so couldn't marry, usually. But "every" landed knight has a wife, and all those wives have ladies-in-waiting who are already supported, who could become wives for household knights. Baronial courts are slewing in maidservants, and the Countess Generica much prefers to be served by those of Noble blood. Making matches between "the staff" has potential advantages, along with some downsides: with the mortality rate amongst knights, having extra squires around to step up might be desirable; having the household married together might foster greater unity, and curb the excesses of some of the younger, hotter blood; ladies-in-waiting having progeny might be inconvenient for the Lady of the household; mediating marital strife might not be something the Lord wants to be bothered with.

On the whole, though, I think a Lord might find it better, on balance, to take some control over his household by pairing them off... Whaddaya think?


While I am personally in the group that feels that household knights should be allowed to marry if the Lord chooses to do so (and actually encourage my players to marry off their household knights to their kinswomen or if they are kinsmen), there are some points against the idea:

1. Historically, they rarely did. This seems to be the primary objection at the moment.
2. The number of ladies-in-waiting in a Baroness' retinue is much smaller than the number of knights in the Baron's service (BotE, BotW). That means only a fraction of the household knights would have suitable partners in the Baroness' retinue (which is a good thing, IMHO, as it makes the marriage a reward, not an automatic expectation).
3. The cost of supporting a lady with children is higher than just the lady (BotEnt, BotE). Thus, there is a clear financial penalty to the Baron. Hence slimming the supply even more.
4. Most of the ladies-in-waiting tend to be young girls, 14-21 in age (BotEnt). Which is of course the prime marriage age, but still.
5. The Baron doesn't decide on the marriage of the ladies-in-waiting, but the girls' fathers do. Many of them might have their eyes on the landed knights, although I agree with you that generally there wouldn't be enough of them to go around! Of course the Baron's suggestion would carry weight and I agree that a career as a lady-in-waiting married to a household knight would sound better than being married off to a mere esquire or even worse, to a merchant.

Some arguments FOR:
6. The knights have to come from somewhere. At 20 / 80 split between vassal and household knights, you'd need families of 5 boys for each vassal knight, all of them becoming knights, to support the household knight population from that alone. The commoner-born knights are supposed to be rare, after all. And this doesn't even cover the fact that you are supposed to have those esquires, too, as stewards and officers (they are not that common, though), although you might alleviate this by having the esquire-ship to travel down, so stewards who might marry will make more stewards. Anyway, the idea that you'd have 5 boys in each family would necessarily mandate a ten child family, which is insanely large in Pendragon and even in medieval times given child mortality. So this would imply that MOST of the household knights are actually not sons of vassal knights, since there are not that many of them! Having a fraction (one in fourth?) household knights marry would help with this 'problem' a lot. Probably those second sons of vassal knights, so that the family line continues even if the primary branch dies off. This would replenish the ranks at least a bit.
7. It is more fun for players (if they are stuck as household knights). Most of their kinsmen would be AT BEST household knights, so having the option for them to marry would allow for the family tree to florish a bit more. Especially those spare heirs who might become the next PKs if the primary one dies before the son is old enough.
8. The widows would make another pool for a 'costless' marriage arrangement by the Baron, and he actually has the right to marry widows off. Downside, the number of widows tends to be very low, given the low number of vassal knights to begin with.

Anyway, since this became much longer and more involved answer than I originally intended, I think I will post this as a separate thread for people to notice. :)

2. The number of ladies-in-waiting in a Baroness' retinue is much smaller than the number of knights in the Baron's service (BotE, BotW). That means only a fraction of the household knights would have suitable partners in the Baroness' retinue (which is a good thing, IMHO, as it makes the marriage a reward, not an automatic expectation).

'Tis true. There is an additional (small) pool of eligible Ladies in the "Court" of each landed knight, though that might need additional arrangements being made for transfer of cost of feeding the knight to the Lord whose hall he'll be visiting to pursue his conjugal duties.


3. The cost of supporting a lady with children is higher than just the lady (BotEnt, BotE). Thus, there is a clear financial penalty to the Baron. Hence slimming the supply even more.
A household knight finding a spare librum per year for the kids' upkeep, with battle loot and Gifts isn't as big an ask as paying for both his wife and the children.

It's certainly still not anything like a 'gimme' that a household knight will get married, but at least logistically, it's plausible to allow some Household knights to marry; PKs are supposed to be exceptional, after all :)

6. The knights have to come from somewhere. At 20 / 80 split between vassal and household knights, you'd need families of 5 boys for each vassal knight, all of them becoming knights, to support the household knight population from that alone. The commoner-born knights are supposed to be rare, after all. And this doesn't even cover the fact that you are supposed to have those esquires, too, as stewards and officers (they are not that common, though), although you might alleviate this by having the esquire-ship to travel down, so stewards who might marry will make more stewards. Anyway, the idea that you'd have 5 boys in each family would necessarily mandate a ten child family, which is insanely large in Pendragon and even in medieval times given child mortality. So this would imply that MOST of the household knights are actually not sons of vassal knights, since there are not that many of them! Having a fraction (one in fourth?) household knights marry would help with this 'problem' a lot. Probably those second sons of vassal knights, so that the family line continues even if the primary branch dies off. This would replenish the ranks at least a bit.

This neatly touches on the next question I was going to ask... where do all these knights and their squires come from?

It makes sense to me that at least the second sons of vassal knights could be married, for the very reason you state - to continue the family line. With that in mind it might make sense for the father/vassal knight to set aside land/income to support his second son's wife and children, even if the sons support is "paid" by the household he serves.

It would also make sense to me that notable officers of the court, for example the seneschal and constable, might be married. It could part of the reward of their elevated position.

On the Against side, however, I wonder if consanguinity would be an issue... after all, the first place any household looks for people to fill trusted positions is family. I can imagine many of a households knights and ladies would be cousins.

'Tis true. There is an additional (small) pool of eligible Ladies in the "Court" of each landed knight,


There isn't. Not for a £10 manor landed knight's household, which is the most common one. See BotE and BotW: there is just one noble lady in the household, the wife.

The Player-ladies with their own ladies-in-waiting (BotEnt) are an EXCEPTION, to allow them to have a 'squire-like' companion.



A household knight finding a spare librum per year for the kids' upkeep, with battle loot and Gifts isn't as big an ask as paying for both his wife and the children.


The problem is that what happens when the loot money runs out? Who will take care of the wife and children then?



It's certainly still not anything like a 'gimme' that a household knight will get married, but at least logistically, it's plausible to allow some Household knights to marry; PKs are supposed to be exceptional, after all :)


Ah, now if we are talking about Player-knights who happen to be household knights rather than vassal knights, it is a whole different ballgame. Like you said, they are exceptional. There are just a few of them, too, instead of dozens or even hundreds in the Baron's service. And we have a certain interest in making sure that there is a dynastic aspect to the campaign, and that means children for the PKs! :)

6. The knights have to come from somewhere. At 20 / 80 split between vassal and household knights, you'd need families of 5 boys for each vassal knight, all of them becoming knights, to support the household knight population from that alone.

This neatly touches on the next question I was going to ask... where do all these knights and their squires come from?


Lets see... Assuming the above 20/80 split between vassal and household knights, and assuming that at any particular point, the vassal knight's heir or brother (the spare, knighted after daddy kicks the bucket so that he can inherit daddy's equipment) is holding down one spot, this leads to:
1 vassal knight
1 household knight (heir or spare)
3 unallocated household knights

Assuming we will let the spare to marry and procreate, then his eldest son can inherit his equipment when he dies, and take one of those three unallocated slots.

This leaves two slots. We know that some of the household knights might be elevated esquires or even commoners. So lets say that is one slot more.

Some vassal knights have more sons. And definitely many barons might have more sons that they can knight, too. These would be rather rare, but if we handwave a bit, it is reasonable enough that they could maybe fill the final slot. The Baron's sons might even marry, too.

So we'd have this kind of a distribution amongst the household knights:
1/4th: heirs & spares
1/4th: eldest sons of spares (vassal) or Nth sons (Baron)
1/4th: Nth sons of vassals & Barons
1/4th: Sons of esquires or commoners who have proven themselves

You can of course increase the fraction of the last category and hence make the marriage amongst the spares more rare. However, this means that HALF of the household knights would come from non-knightly backgrounds, which conflicts with the idea that this would be rare. 50% of something is not rare. Even at 25% level, we are stretching it a bit.

Of course, there should be some mercenary knights, too... which further narrows down the availability of knights for the household knight positions.



It makes sense to me that at least the second sons of vassal knights could be married, for the very reason you state - to continue the family line. With that in mind it might make sense for the father/vassal knight to set aside land/income to support his second son's wife and children, even if the sons support is "paid" by the household he serves.


This would not be a hardship for estate holders or Barons, certainly. Of course, many Barons would have a chance to marry their second sons off to heiresses anyway. Even the normal £10 manor is producing £1 extra, which would be enough to support a wife OR the children, so if the liege would pick up the tab for the lady-in-waiting wife, then the father/brother could cover for the children. Gets pretty tight, though.



It would also make sense to me that notable officers of the court, for example the seneschal and constable, might be married. It could part of the reward of their elevated position.


I agree. But like I said in the beginning, I am in the camp that says that even though the household knights might not have married historically, in Pendragon it would be good for some of them to be married. Also, the demographics get a bit strained, as mentioned in the above, if only vassals marry.



On the Against side, however, I wonder if consanguinity would be an issue... after all, the first place any household looks for people to fill trusted positions is family. I can imagine many of a households knights and ladies would be cousins.


Which means that they wouldn't marry one another. However, there would certainly be household knights and ladies-in-waiting coming from farther afield, from political allies, friends and so forth. I wouldn't be all that surprised if those second-generation spares wouldn't be sent outside the county, too, to find their own fortune and hence widen the genepool a bit.

Sending out those spares is a good way to secure better relations with your neighbors. Such a man being a knight in a another court will probably be reluctant to go against his own family (the loyalty(lord) vs love(family) problem). In the long run they may be the glue that keep the lords together, even if there is no king to lead them.

You all are forgetting one simple fact that any legitimate son of a knight by right of birth is eligible to be squired and become a knight. So keep that in mind for all the lord-less knights that campaign and support themselves. Plus there are foreign knights that travel from other lands who come to serve other lords.

You all are forgetting one simple fact that any legitimate son of a knight by right of birth is eligible to be squired and become a knight. So keep that in mind for all the lord-less knights that campaign and support themselves. Plus there are foreign knights that travel from other lands who come to serve other lords.


No, we are not. See my starting post:



6. The knights have to come from somewhere. At 20 / 80 split between vassal and household knights, you'd need families of 5 boys for each vassal knight, all of them becoming knights, to support the household knight population from that alone. ...SNIP... Anyway, the idea that you'd have 5 boys in each family would necessarily mandate a ten child family, which is insanely large in Pendragon and even in medieval times given child mortality.


Finally, if you have looked at the way finances go in Pendragon, it is very difficult to afford to knight more than two sons. I believe this is somewhat deliberate on Greg's part to create an incentive to get loot and such, and a hole to spend the treasure on. But the 'vassal knight's Nth sons are the household knights' is already contradicted by simple family genetics: you'd need 10 child families to fill in those household knight slots from vassal knight's sons alone. And remember, all of those 10 children need to SURVIVE to adulthood, too, which means that at 70% child mortality you need 14 children to be born.

One possibility which alleviates some of the problem of equipment is that those old household knights when they perish or retire will probably be handing their equipment to their own bastard or a nephew or a cousin or even their own favorite squire. That will help in the knighting expenses a lot. Alternatively, the lord might be sponsoring knights and that the warhorse & other equipment is simply 'on loan' until the knight snuffs it (or is released from service) and then it becomes available for the next knight. This doesn't change the above point about the huge families needed, though.

Having foreigners come in helps a BIT, that is, assuming that they have more vassals and less household knights of their own, or if the whole noble population is displaced (de Ganis). De Ganis is pretty much the ONLY case where we have a huge influx of foreign knights; apart from them, foreign knights are individuals and exotically so, not a big fraction of every household knight population. Certainly not every baron has 50% of his knights from Byzantium or something...

If you allow the second sons to marry, too, then the situation changes. Now you have TWO knightly families in each generation providing knights for the next generation. Thus, if you get even two sons per family (thus on average surviving 4 children families, which is very reasonable still, even at 70% child mortality), you are able to have 4 eligible knights in the next generation. The cousin-branch might die off (not getting married anymore), but the new 2nd son of a vassal knight marries again, and keeps the cycle moving. Thus, you'd actually only need 25% household knights from other sources, like those cousin-branch knights (if they get bastards or happen to marry somehow), esquires' sons or elevated commoners of promise.

Would Barons' sons help? Not really. We know from BoW that we have around 50 Barons in Logres. They are unlikely to have much larger families than vassal knights already, but even if we give them 3 sons per generation, it is just 150 knights out of ~2600. Even if all those sons marry and produce 3 sons of their own who all become knights, we are still looking at 450 knights, less than 20% of the total. Which helps to top up the household knight pool (and hence ensure that the poorer knights are available as mercenary/errant knights), but not enough to dominate the household knight pool by themselves.

EDIT: Actually, since the 'formula' is "heir, spare and prayer" those 3rd sons of Barons are likely destined to a career in the Church, future bishops and abbots. Thus, they do not marry and do not produce progeny (legitimate ones that is). So you will just have 50 -> 100 knight-sons -> 200 knight-grandsons.

As a relate issue, and looping back to my original post, there is the question of squires...

Even if we assume fairly high mortality among household knights, say an average lifespan of 35, a knight would still train at least two squires. Do we actually need to account for at least two to three times as many noble sons to include not only knights but their squires as well?

From the estimates in the above... It doesn't seem as if there are many 'free lances' around. Most 'knight errants' of Romance and Tournament Periods are actually household knights who are adventuring with their Lord's permission (or explicitly sent by the Lord on a quest). Mercenary knights might not be so available for hire, but might be 'contracted' out from other Barons (like the warring sides are doing during Anarchy, trying to hire Salisbury knights as mercenaries in their battles). Truly full-time mercenary knights would be rare.

This means that a household knight position might not be such a difficult task to attain: there are not that many other knights out there competing for the spot. Naturally, family connections and Glory would help, and the higher the rank & Glory of the Lord, the better knights he would attract and the fiercer the competition. But it is not as if there is a huge pool of unattached knights around.

Actually, AlnothEadricson made a good comment that not only is this issue about the household knights, but it impinges on Squires, too! It is actually even worse for the squires: you'd expect each knight to serve a couple of decades, maybe even three, but a squire would be done in 6 years. Do we have enough squires to keep this thing going??? The answer is... not at the moment. Even if the vassal knight would have 5 sons and all go to the squire training, this is enough to only 'feed' the current crop of knights (1 vassal and 4 household knights / vassal knight) for 6 years. You clearly need MORE sources of squires than 1:4 ratio of married to unmarried knights can provide from knightly backgrounds.

If we let the second sons marry, and assume that their progeny would be 1 household knight (doesn't marry) and 2 esquires (marry, 3 sons each), then we would get SOME esquires out of this whole thing and 6 more squires who are sons of esquires. There would also be another 2 sons from the current vassal knight branch (3rd one is prayer) and 3 sons from the current 2nd son branch, for a total of 11 squires per a vassal knight kin group. This would be enough to 'feed' the squire-power requirements of knights for 12 years. Add another 5 squires or so from more exotic backgrounds, and you'd have around 2 decades of squires available for the knights, which sounds about adequate.

How would this impact in play? Well, since you probably would like your son to be a squire to as high-ranking a knight as possible, then it is no wonder that the vassal knight PKs would mainly see squires who are sons of other vassal knights. The 'rank and file' household knights would have squires who are mainly of esquire background, and those esquire- or commoner-born household knights would have mainly commoner squires under them. So through this convoluted chain of a thought experiment, the table in BotEnt is actually close enough (when used for vassal knight PKs, which is the intent)!

Summa summarum:

Assumption 1: 20% of all knights are vassal knights, 80% are household knights. Everything starts from this. The big issue is actually knights who have children and knights who don't, and if you change the ratio, the situation changes.

Assumption 2: Most of the household knights come from knightly families. You'd need around 50% from commoners to keep things moving otherwise.

Conclusions (assuming above assumptions are valid):
1) If only vassal knights marry, there are not enough sons to be knighted.
2) If second sons marry (whilst household knights), the two knightly families are enough to keep the ranks filled (with some additions from the other sources).
3) For squires, we need to turn to the next generation with esquires and their sons, and still need a heap of commoner-born squires.
4) If we don't let the second sons marry, we will strangle the pool of household knights but especially that of esquires and squires.
5) Assuming that a knight's career is about 20 years (enough for training 3 squires), this logically leads to the conclusion that only about 1 in 3 squires ends up being knighted (overwhelmingly weighted towards sons of knights, which makes sense).

As a relate issue, and looping back to my original post, there is the question of squires...

Even if we assume fairly high mortality among household knights, say an average lifespan of 35, a knight would still train at least two squires. Do we actually need to account for at least two to three times as many noble sons to include not only knights but their squires as well?


Heh, I was just posting about this. :) I was assuming 3 squires per knight, but you are right, even at 2 times the number you will definitely need those esquires' sons, too. And if we 'snip off' the vassal knight cadet branches (2nd son is an unmarried household knight and 3rd son is a celibate clergyman), we will never get those esquires in the first place.

WRT the lack of squires:

Given (the above) that the knight slots are (mostly) filled by the vassals' sons and second sons and their sons, have we perhaps derived an invalid "expectation of knighthood"? Yes, Squires who are destined to be knights (i.e. the lucky sons of B...arons and other landed knights) only serve 6 years (or 7 if you like that triple division), but a bastard or commoner or rare son of a non-landed-family Household knight who gets taken on as a squire might never be knighted, and so stay in the service of his knight for the whole of his career. There are mentions in the game material of "older" squires who've made a lifetime vocation out of service to the actual chivalry. This would help reduce the demand for new squires. Makes it all a bit more "steady state".

Great thread!! Please continue with squires and esquires

What is not taken into account in this calculation is that a father may live longer than the 21 years after he got a son.
So there will be sons knighted when the father is still alive. What about them? I always assumed that they would be household knights until the father dies and they can claim their heritage. So these are also into the household knight pool or do they remain esquires and have to wait?

There are mentions in the game material of "older" squires who've made a lifetime vocation out of service to the actual chivalry. This would help reduce the demand for new squires. Makes it all a bit more "steady state".


True (also thanks for reminding me about the current 7 year squire track... I lapse so easily to the old 6 year track.). We still need those esquire sons, though, or alternatively most household knights have commoner 'career squires'. While BotEnt is mostly geared towards PKs (vassal knights, at that), the implication is that commoners are rare as squires. And that career squires are a bit of a rarity, too, not 80% of the squires currently employed. (I could see some advantages to the Lord, here, having in essence an additional light cavalryman to his knight: a 30 year old veteran squire is in a totally different league as a fighter than a 15 year old one).

Again, this probably wouldn't impact on the PK vassal knights, who would be training those 'to be knighted' squires.

What is not taken into account in this calculation is that a father may live longer than the 21 years after he got a son.
So there will be sons knighted when the father is still alive. What about them? I always assumed that they would be household knights until the father dies and they can claim their heritage. So these are also into the household knight pool or do they remain esquires and have to wait?


Yes, the heir or the spare is already holding down one household knight slot:


So we'd have this kind of a distribution amongst the household knights:
1/4th: heirs & spares
1/4th: eldest sons of spares (vassal) or Nth sons (Baron)
1/4th: Nth sons of vassals & Barons
1/4th: Sons of esquires or commoners who have proven themselves


If you scroll up the thread, you can see the assumptions leading to that result.

You are right that if the knights survive significantly longer than 21 years from the birth of their eldest, like 40 years, then the math changes. However, looking at the NPC survival probabilities in BotEstate, you'll get the lifespan expectancy of a 21-year old knight to be around 46 years. 25 years is not significantly different from 21, especially since marriage and the birth of the eldest son might take a few years too. Also, the BotEstate family survival roll doesn't model battles (which are an extra roll now), so something like the big battles in GPC will erode the lifespans more.

(You can find those lifespan expectancies here: http://nocturnal-media.com/forum/index.php?topic=2420.msg18545#msg18545
Look at the latter 'Pretzel' run to see the current BotEstate results.)

Ok. Then every 100 knights there are
20 landed knights
80 household knights of which:
20 heirs & spares
20 eldest sons of spares (vassal) or Nth sons (Baron)
20: Nth sons of vassals & Barons
20: Sons of esquires or commoners who have proven themselves
How many squires and esquires?

WRT the lack of squires:

Given (the above) that the knight slots are (mostly) filled by the vassals' sons and second sons and their sons, have we perhaps derived an invalid "expectation of knighthood"? Yes, Squires who are destined to be knights (i.e. the lucky sons of B...arons and other landed knights) only serve 6 years (or 7 if you like that triple division), but a bastard or commoner or rare son of a non-landed-family Household knight who gets taken on as a squire might never be knighted, and so stay in the service of his knight for the whole of his career. There are mentions in the game material of "older" squires who've made a lifetime vocation out of service to the actual chivalry. This would help reduce the demand for new squires. Makes it all a bit more "steady state".


I confess that I find myself favoring this line of thought... might many household knights simply have a kind of groom, who tends their horse and gear with no expectation of knighthood or even martial training, rather than an actual squire? (I confess my knowledge of history fails me on this.)

PKs, being vassal knights, would certainly have actual squires, as might notable household knights... such as officers or especially skilled bachelors chosen to pass along their ability and experience to a new generation.

Ok. Then every 100 knights there are
20 landed knights
80 household knights of which:
20 heirs & spares
20 eldest sons of spares (vassal) or Nth sons (Baron)
20: Nth sons of vassals & Barons
20: Sons of esquires or commoners who have proven themselves
How many squires and esquires?


Roughly 100 current squires, of course. :)

OK, lets look at how they will break down...

Assuming 3 squires per knight's career, we see that we'd need around 300 squires or former squires. In practice, everything is in a bit of a flux, but since we are looking at the averages, it is OK.

You'd expect around 4 knight-background squires per vassal knight per generation, but like we said earlier, the sons would fill up the shoes of their fathers, so they'd go swiftly to replenishing the knight pool. At any given time, one third of them would be old enough for the squire service (the others would be too young or already knighted), so you have around 23 squires who are of knightly birth: these guys would be squires to the vassal knights and a couple of the highest ranking household knights.

You have around 7 'esquire' squires per vassal knight per generation. Only a fraction of these would be in service at any given time... To make things easy for me, I am suggesting (assuming that the lifespans are around mid-45s):
25 career squires
25 squires
(50 too young, ignored)
40 who have already 'graduated' and are now cavalrymen, stewards, household officers...

This gives us 73 squires, though, and we need 100. The remaining 27 would be commoner-born squires, whether career squires or not.

Given that a career esquire squire would be much superior to a commoner squire, I think that as a knight, I would prefer keeping the former rather than getting the latter. So you could flip the graduated esquires and career squires if you wish:
40 career squires
25 other career esquires

This gives you a total of 23 knight-class squires, 65 esquire-class squires (of whom 40 are careerists), and mere 12 commoner squires.

I am a bit unhappy with the high number of career squires, but on the other hand, with the esquire level positions so rare (Baronial households, mainly), there are not many more positions for them. Especially if you add to the number of esquires to fill in the requisite number of squire-aged esquire-class youths... You'd have to at least double the numbers, which would leads to a hundred esquires looking for a career. Not a good situation either. So I guess I will have to be happy with the above.

Thank you Sir!

You have around 7 'esquire' squires per vassal knight per generation. Only a fraction of these would be in service at any given time... To make things easy for me, I am suggesting (assuming that the lifespans are around mid-45s):
25 career squires
25 squires
(50 too young, ignored)
40 who have already 'graduated' and are now cavalrymen, stewards, household officers...


Oops, I made a mistake in the above. Those 7 'esquire squires' would be of ages 0 - 21. The already graduated squires would be the previous generation. Hence, the true numbers should be:
47 squires
93 too young, ignored
140 already graduated, previous generation esquires

This leads to:
23 knight-born squires
47 esquire-born squires (of whom 7 are actually knight-born, too, but as third sons of spares will probably not be knighted, and hence included to this group; the 2nd sons of second sons are kinda standing in for the Nth sons who might get lucky, and are included to the knight-born squires)
30 other squires (my preference, 20 career esquires from the previous generation and 10 commoners)

Yes, this does lead to 120 already graduated esquires running around, which is a lot. Looking over the BotW quickly, we have around 15 esquire-level court members per typical £300 Baron. So this 100 knight list would normally be split between 3 Barons, who would have around 50 job openings for those esquires, leaving 70.

Thanks to their knight-training, they would of course be great in the cavalryman roles, but unfortunately, we don't have good data on how many non-knight cavalrymen typical Barons have. Servitium Debitum requirements have focused squarely on the knights and foot soldiers, implying that the answer is NONE. In my humble opinion, a more likely scenario is that many of those servitium debitum terms actually have a portion of the knights exchanged to an equal worth of cavalrymen, so for example, instead of having 20 vassal knights and 80 household knights, our Army would have, for example, 20 vassal knights, 60 household knights and 40 cavalrymen. That would not only lower the required amounts of knights, squires and esquires (helping with the required family sizes, which are currently pretty much maxed out at 3 sons per family), but also give the Lord a bit more flexibility of manpower. Or even:
20 vassal knights, 50 household knights, 40 cavalrymen and 40 light cavalrymen
at which point we have already disposed of all of our graduated esquire pool (even accounting for those 10 career squires). This kind of a force composition would give the Baron (Duke, Count) more flexibility & eyes in scouting & patrolling at a relatively small reduction in the number of knights. (Also, significantly, it gives the GMs more opportunities to give the knights something else to fight than other knights, who have oh so tasty ransom loot attached to them!)

Or yet another compromise (perhaps a bit easier to calculate, as it is just a 1/4th reduction in household knights):
20 vassal knights, 60 household knights, 30 cavalrymen (bolster those patrols) and 20 light cavalrymen (as messengers and scouts).
You'd still account for most of the esquires, and if we drop the family size a bit, one of those esquires' sons can go for a career in the church, too, as a monk. And hey presto, no more unemployed esquires! (And also, explains where all those cousins of yours end up if they do not become knights.)

In any case, the esquires would also make superior armored foot soldiers (albeit they might need more experience to reach that veteran rank), and £1000 worth of land would have around 300 foot soldiers, of whom at least 30 would be armored foot soldiers. Now it is probably too much to expect that all of these would be esquires, but I wouldn't be surprised if a good fraction would be. Hey, it is still much better than being a peasant or a rank-and-file spearman! That Battle 10, Sword 10 and Spear Expertise 10 minimum requirements to pass the knight training will give a good base, and surely a knighted cousin or some such can put in a good word! BotE mentions also messengers, but they are just glorified grooms, rather than warriors, and hence beneath our notice.

A little help if needed.
Christopher Gravett, English Medieval Knight 1200-1300, Osprey, p.15 : "Military pay records show that, under Edward I, between a quarter and a third of cavalry were knights, the rest being squires, sergeants and other men ar arms"
Congratulation for works.

Christopher Gravett, English Medieval Knight 1200-1300, Osprey, p.15 : "Military pay records show that, under Edward I, between a quarter and a third of cavalry were knights, the rest being squires, sergeants and other men ar arms"


Yes, I know that historically, not all heavy cavalrymen were actually knights. Even some of the captains in the Hundred Years' War were just esquires to start with, and were given a knighthood later. Also, the distinction between a man-at-arms and a knight is mostly a social one, since they performed exactly the same task on the battlefield and tended to be similarly armed and armored. Often, no distinction between the two is made. The Late Medieval French 'lances fournies' had one heavy cavalryman (knight or man-at-arms), one cavalryman (serjeant-at-arms; almost as heavy), one squire or a page, and two to three archers. But there are many variants of this.

Even if you start from the norm 'only knights', you actually have 1 squire per knight, so you could claim that only 50% of the cavalry is knights. Adding 1 cavalryman per knight would make it conform with the French system pretty well (once you account for those two foot soldiers, although the archers were often mounted, too), but that is more soldiery than can currently be supported. Of course, the Late Medieval is also the period when the Kings were using more mercenaries and contracted companies rather than feudal levies, so at that point they can build whatever army they wish. The landed gentry would be paying scutage rather than serving in war.

But if you wished to go with it...

100 'old' knights becomes:
20 vassal knights
50 household knights
50 cavalrymen
20 light cavalrymen
70 squires (included to the knights)

70 knights, 70 squires and 70 other cavalrymen.

Simply multiply the number of knights by 0.7. :)

Thank you for the answer!

WRT the lack of squires:
Given (the above) that the knight slots are (mostly) filled by the vassals' sons and second sons and their sons, have we perhaps derived an invalid "expectation of knighthood"? Yes, Squires who are destined to be knights (i.e. the lucky sons of B...arons and other landed knights) only serve 6 years (or 7 if you like that triple division), but a bastard or commoner or rare son of a non-landed-family Household knight who gets taken on as a squire might never be knighted, and so stay in the service of his knight for the whole of his career. There are mentions in the game material of "older" squires who've made a lifetime vocation out of service to the actual chivalry. This would help reduce the demand for new squires. Makes it all a bit more "steady state".

See Book of Entourage for older squires