A retinue is a body of persons "retained" in the service of a noble, royal personage, or dignitary; a suite (French "what follows") of retainers. [1]
A retinue is a body of persons "retained" in the service of a noble, royal personage, or dignitary; a suite (French "what follows") of retainers. [1]
The word, recorded in English since circa 1375, stems from Old French retenue, itself from retenir, from the Latin retenere: to hold back or retain.
Such retainers were not necessarily in the domestic service or otherwise normally close to the presence of their lord, but also include others who wore his livery (a kind of uniform, in distinctive colours) and claimed his protection, such as musicians and tutors.
Some were a source of trouble and abuse in the 15th and early 16th century. [1]
Often their real importance was very different from their rank: on the one hand, sinecures and supernumerary appointments allowed enjoying benefits without performing full service. On the other hand, "having the ear" of the master can allow one to act as a confidant in an informal capacity; or in some cases, even as a spy, under the guise of an innocent musician.
The term is sometimes used in the context of the supporters or followers of a medieval knight or great lord, such as Richard, Earl of Salisbury in 15th-century England, which he called upon during the Wars of the Roses. [2]
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the head of an independent monastery for men in various Western Christian traditions. The name is derived from abba, the Aramaic form of the Hebrew ab, and means "father". The female equivalent is abbess.
Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century witnessed the rise of the yeoman longbow archers during the Hundred Years' War, and the yeoman outlaws celebrated in the Robin Hood ballads. Yeomen joined the English Navy during the Hundred Years' War as seamen and archers. In the early 15th century, yeoman was the rank of chivalry between page and squire. By the late 17th century, yeoman became a rank in the Royal Navy for the common seamen who were in charge of ship's stores, such as foodstuffs, gunpowder, and sails.
The King's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard is a bodyguard of the British monarch. The oldest British military corps still in existence, it was created by King Henry VII in 1485 after the Battle of Bosworth Field.
A housecarl was a non-servile manservant or household bodyguard in medieval Northern Europe.
A livery is an identifying design, such as a uniform, ornament, symbol or insignia that designates ownership or affiliation, often found on an individual or vehicle. Livery often includes elements of the heraldry relating to the individual or corporate body featured in the livery. Alternatively, some kind of a personal emblem or badge, or a distinctive colour, is featured.
Trim Castle is a castle on the south bank of the River Boyne in Trim, County Meath, Ireland, with an area of 30,000 m2. Over a period of 30 years, it was built by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter as the caput of the Lordship of Meath. The Irish Government currently own and are in charge of the care of the castle, through the state agency The Office of Public Works (OPW).
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who sang songs and played musical instruments.
The word seneschal can have several different meanings, all of which reflect certain types of supervising or administering in a historic context. Most commonly, a seneschal was a senior position filled by a court appointment within a royal, ducal, or noble household during the Middle Ages and early Modern period – historically a steward or majordomo of a medieval great house. In a medieval royal household, a seneschal was in charge of domestic arrangements and the administration of servants, which, in the medieval period particularly, meant the seneschal might oversee hundreds of laborers, servants and their associated responsibilities, and have a great deal of power in the community, at a time when much of the local economy was often based on the wealth and responsibilities of such a household.
Sir Thomas Erpingham was an English soldier and administrator who loyally served three generations of the House of Lancaster, including Henry IV and Henry V, and whose military career spanned four decades. After the Lancastrian usurpation of the English throne in 1399, his career in their service was transformed as he rose to national prominence, and through his access to royal patronage he acquired great wealth and influence.
A knight banneret, sometimes known simply as banneret, was a medieval knight who led a company of troops during time of war under his own banner and was eligible to bear supporters in English heraldry. The military rank of a knight banneret was higher than a knight Bachelor, but lower than an earl or duke.
A great hall is the main room of a royal palace, castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages, and continued to be built in the country houses of the 16th and early 17th centuries, although by then the family used the great chamber for eating and relaxing. At that time the word "great" simply meant big and had not acquired its modern connotations of excellence. In the medieval period, the room would simply have been referred to as the "hall" unless the building also had a secondary hall, but the term "great hall" has been predominant for surviving rooms of this type for several centuries, to distinguish them from the different type of hall found in post-medieval houses. Great halls were found especially in France, England and Scotland, but similar rooms were also found in some other European countries.
Bastard feudalism is a somewhat controversial term invented by 19th-century historians to characterise the form feudalism took in the Late Middle Ages, primarily in England. Its distinctive feature is that middle-ranking figures rendered military, political, legal, or domestic service in return for money, office, or influence. As a result, the gentry began to think of themselves as the men of their lord rather than of the king. Individually, they are known as retainers, and collectively as the "affinity" of the lord, among other terms.
Beaugency is a commune in the Loiret department, Centre-Val de Loire, north-central France. It is located on the Loire river, upriver (northeast) from Blois and downriver from Orléans.
In history writing, a comitatus, which is Latin for a group of companions (comites), is an armed escort or retinue, especially in the context of Germanic warrior culture, where warbands were tied to a leader by an oath of fealty. The concept describes the relations between a lord and his retainers. Traditionally scholars have seen such Germanic warbands as the origin of later, medieval European institutions involving nobles and their armed retainers. On the other hand, many scholars today consider the Roman era report of these warbands as more of a literary trope rather.
Valet de chambre, or varlet de chambre, was a court appointment introduced in the late Middle Ages, common from the 14th century onwards. Royal households had many persons appointed at any time. While some valets simply waited on the patron, or looked after his clothes and other personal needs, itself potentially a powerful and lucrative position, others had more specialized functions. At the most prestigious level it could be akin to a monarch or ruler's personal secretary, as was the case of Anne de Montmorency at the court of Francis I of France. For noblemen pursuing a career as courtiers, like Étienne de Vesc, it was a common early step on the ladder to higher offices.
Feudalism in the Holy Roman Empire was a politico-economic system of relationships between liege lords and enfeoffed vassals that formed the basis of the social structure within the Holy Roman Empire during the High Middle Ages. In Germany the system is variously referred to Lehnswesen, Feudalwesen or Benefizialwesen.
Feudal duties were the set of reciprocal financial, military and legal obligations among the warrior nobility in a feudal system. These duties developed in both Europe and Japan with the decentralisation of empire and due to lack of monetary liquidity, as groups of warriors took over the social, political, judicial, and economic spheres of the territory they controlled. While many feudal duties were based upon control of a parcel of land and its productive resources, even landless knights owed feudal duties such as direct military service in their lord's behest. Feudal duties were not uniform over time or across political boundaries, and in their later development also included duties from and to the peasant population, such as abergement.
In post-classical history, an affinity was a collective name for the group (retinue) of (usually) men whom a lord gathered around himself in his service; it has been described by one modern historian as "the servants, retainers, and other followers of a lord", and as "part of the normal fabric of society". It is considered a fundamental aspect of bastard feudalism, and acted as a means of tying magnates to the lower nobility, just as feudalism had done in a different way.
Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury was a fifteenth-century English northern magnate. He was the eldest son by the second wife of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, from whom he inherited vast estates in Yorkshire and the North West of England. He was a loyal Lancastrian for most of his life, serving the king, Henry VI, in France, on the border with Scotland, and in many of the periodic crises of the reign. He finally joined York in his last rebellion in the late 1450s and became a Yorkist leader during the early parts of the Wars of the Roses. This led directly to his death following the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460, when he was captured and subsequently put to death in Pontefract Castle.
Kashindan (家臣団) was an institution of the retainers (kashin) of the shogun or a daimyo in Japan that became a class of samurai. It was divided into the military commanders (bankata) and the civil officers (yakukata).
