The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe, 1325-1520

New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. Hardcover. VG- (indentation to lower board. smudges to boards. rubbing to corners. foxing to textblock edges w/ stain to upper & fore-edge of textblock; remnants to pg edges. dustjacket scuffed, heavily worn w/ rubbing to corners & edges). Blue cloth boards with silver lettering; bw dust jacket with white lettering, color illustrated on front, mylar cover; xxv, 540 pp; bw illustrations. Photo is of another copy in our collection. This copy is no ex-library. "The orders of lay knights founded in some profusion in the 14th and 15th centuries were a favorite subject of the antiquarian historians of the 17th and 18th centuries, but they have attracted little attention from modern critical historians. Here Dr. Boulton sorts the numerous lay orders founded in this period into a number of distinct classes., and and examines on the basis of of the surviving primary evidence the nature and history of each of the thirteen orders that certainly belonged to the 'monarchial class': orders with corporate statutes that attached the presidential office to the crown of the princely founder or made it hereditary in his house. Orders of this class--the most famous of which are those of the Garter and the Golden Fleece--were founded at some time between 1325 and 1470 in almost every kingdom of Western Christendom and commonly occupied an important place in the life of the court. Modelled either directly or indirectly on the fictional society of the Round Table, they were all organized as devotional confraternities, but incorporated varying numbers of element borrowed from the older religious orders of knighthood and from contemporary institutions such as retainig by contract and brotherhood-in-arms."--Jacket.