Part 5

KNAVE (O.E. _cnafa_, cognate with Ger. _Knabe_, boy), originally a male child, a boy (Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_: "Clerk's Tale," I. 388). Like Lat. _puer_, the word was early used as a name for any boy or lad employed as a servant, and so of male servants in general (Chaucer: "Pardoner's Tale," 1. 204). The current use of the word for a man who is dishonest and crafty, a rogue, was however an early usage, and is found in Layamon (c. 1205). In playing-cards the lowest court card of each suit, the "jack," representing a medieval servant, is called the "knave." (See also VALET.)

KNEBEL, KARL LUDWIG VON (1744-1834), German poet and translator, was born at the castle of Wallerstein in Franconia on the 30th of November 1744. After having studied law for a short while at Halle, he entered the regiment of the crown prince of Prussia in Potsdam and was attached to it as officer for ten years. Disappointed in his military career, owing to the slowness of promotion, he retired in 1774, and accepting the post of tutor to Prince Konstantin of Weimar, accompanied him and his elder brother, the hereditary prince, on a tour to Paris. On this journey he visited Goethe in Frankfort-on-Main, and introduced him to the hereditary prince, Charles Augustus. This meeting is memorable as being the immediate cause of Goethe's later intimate connexion with the Weimar court. After Knebel's return and the premature death of his pupil he was pensioned, receiving the rank of major. In 1798 he married the singer Luise von Rudorf, and retired to Ilmenau; but in 1805 he removed to Jena, where he lived until his death on the 23rd of February 1834. Knebel's _Sammlung kleiner Gedichte_ (1815), issued anonymously, and _Distichen_ (1827) contain many graceful sonnets, but it is as a translator that he is best known. His translation of the elegies of Propertius, _Elegien des Properz_ (1798), and that of Lucretius' _De rerum natura_ (2 vols., 1831) are deservedly praised. Since their first acquaintance Knebel and Goethe were intimate friends, and not the least interesting of Knebel's writings is his correspondence with the eminent poet, _Briefwechsel mit Goethe_ (ed. G. E. Guhrauer, 2 vols., 1851).

Knebel's _Literarischer Nachlass und Briefwechsel_ was edited by K. A. Varnhagen von Ense and T. Mundt in 3 vols. (1835; 2nd ed., 1840). See Hugo von Knebel-Döberitz, _Karl Ludwig von Knebel_ (1890).

KNEE (O.E. _cnéow_, a word common to Indo-European languages, cf. Ger. _Knie_, Fr. _genou_, Span, _hinojo_, Lat. _genu_, Gr. [Greek: gonu], Sansk. _janu_), in human anatomy, the articulation of the upper and lower parts of the leg, the joint between the femur and the tibia (see JOINTS). The word is also used of articulation resembling the knee-joint in shape or position in other animals; it thus is applied to the carpal articulation of the fore leg of a horse, answering to the ankle in man, or to the tarsal articulation or heel of a bird's foot.

KNELLER, SIR GODFREY (1648-1723), a portrait painter whose celebrity belongs chiefly to England, was born in Lübeck in the duchy of Holstein, of an ancient family, on the 8th of August 1648. He was at first intended for the army, and was sent to Leyden to learn mathematics and fortification. Showing, however, a marked preference for the fine arts, he studied in the school of Rembrandt, and under Ferdinand Bol in Amsterdam. In 1672 he removed to Italy, directing his chief attention to Titian and the Caracci; Carlo Maratta gave him some guidance and encouragement. In Rome, and more especially in Venice, Kneller earned considerable reputation by historical paintings as well as portraits. He next went to Hamburg, painting with still increasing success. In 1674 he came to England at the invitation of the duke of Monmouth, was introduced to Charles II., and painted that sovereign, much to his satisfaction, several times. Charles also sent him to Paris, to take the portrait of Louis XIV. When Sir Peter Lely died in 1680, Kneller, who produced in England little or nothing in the historical department, remained without a rival in the ranks of portrait painting; there was no native-born competition worth speaking of. Charles appointed him court painter; and he continued to hold the same post into the days of George I. Under William III. (1692) he was made a knight, under George I. (1715) a baronet, and by order of the emperor Leopold I. a knight of the Roman Empire. Not only his court favour but his general fame likewise was large: he was lauded by Dryden, Addison, Steele, Prior, Tickell and Pope. Kneller's gains also were very considerable; aided by habits of frugality which approached stinginess, he left property yielding an annual income of £2000. His industry was maintained till the last. His studio had at first been in Covent Garden, but in his closing years he lived in Kneller Hall, Twickenham. He died of fever, the date being generally given as the 7th of November 1723, though some accounts say 1726. He was buried in Twickenham church, and has a monument in Westminster Abbey. An elder brother, John Zachary Kneller, an ornamental painter, had accompanied Godfrey to England, and had died in 1702. The style of Sir Godfrey Kneller as a portrait painter represented the decline of that art as practised by Vandyck; Lely marks the first grade of descent, and Kneller the second. His works have much freedom, and are well drawn and coloured; but they are mostly slight in manner, and to a great extent monotonous, this arising partly from the habit which he had of lengthening the oval of all his heads. The colouring may be called brilliant rather than true. He indulged much in the common-places of allegory; and, though he had a quality of dignified elegance not unallied with simplicity, genuine simple nature is seldom to be traced in his works. His fame has greatly declined, and could not but do so after the advent of Reynolds. Among Kneller's principal paintings are the "Forty-three Celebrities of the Kit-Cat Club," and the "Ten Beauties of the Court of William III.," now at Hampton Court; these were painted by order of the queen; they match, but match unequally, the "Beauties of the Court of Charles II.," painted by Lely. He executed altogether the likenesses of ten sovereigns, and fourteen of his works appear in the National Portrait Gallery. It is said that Kneller's own favourite performance was the portrait of the "Converted Chinese" in Windsor Castle. His later works are confined almost entirely to England, not more than two or three specimens having gone abroad after he had settled here. (W. M. R.)

KNICKERBOCKER, HARMEN JANSEN (c. 1650-c. 1720), Dutch colonist of New Netherland (New York), was a native of Wyhe (Wie), Overyssel, Holland. Before 1683 he settled near what is now Albany, New York, and there in 1704 he bought through Harme Gansevoort one-fourth of the land in Dutchess county near Red Hook, which had been patented in 1688 to Peter Schuyler, who in 1722 deeded seven (of thirteen) lots in the upper fourth of his patent to the seven children of Knickerbocker. The eldest of these children, Johannes Harmensen, received from the common council of the city of Albany a grant of 50 acres of meadow and 10 acres of upland on the south side of Schaghticoke Creek. This Schaghticoke estate was held by Johannes Harmensen's son Johannes (1723-1802), a colonel in the Continental Army in the War of Independence, and by his son Harmen (1779-1855), a lawyer, a federalist representative in Congress in 1809-1811, a member of the New York Assembly in 1816, and a famous gentleman of the old school, who for his courtly hospitality in his manor was called "the prince of Schaghticoke" and whose name was borrowed by Washington Irving for use in his (Diedrich) _Knickerbocker's History of New York_ (1809). Largely owing to this book, the name "Knickerbockers" has passed into current use as a designation of the early Dutch settlers in New York and their descendants. The son of Johannes, David Buel Knickerbacker (1833-1894), who returned to the earlier spelling of the family name, graduated at Trinity College in 1853 and at the General Theological Seminary in 1856, was a rector for many years at Minneapolis, Minnesota, and in 1883 was consecrated Protestant Episcopal bishop of Indiana.

See the series of articles by W. B. Van Alstyne on "The Knickerbocker Family," beginning in vol. xxix., No. 1 (Jan. 1908) of the _New York Genealogical and Biographical Record_.

KNIFE (O.E. _cníf_, a word appearing in different forms in many Teutonic languages, cf. Du. _knijf_, Ger. _Kneif_, a shoemaker's knife, Swed. _knif_; the ultimate origin is unknown; Skeat finds the origin in the root of "nip," formerly "knip"; Fr. _canif_ is also of Teutonic origin), a small cutting instrument, with the blade either fixed to the handle or fastened with a hinge so as to clasp into the handle (see CUTLERY). For the knives chipped from flint by prehistoric man see ARCHAEOLOGY and FLINT IMPLEMENTS.

KNIGGE, ADOLF FRANZ FRIEDRICH, FREIHERR VON (1752-1796), German author, was born on the family estate of Bredenbeck near Hanover on the 16th of October 1752. After studying law at Göttingen he was attached successively to the courts of Hesse-Cassel and Weimar as gentleman-in-waiting. Retiring from court service in 1777, he lived a private life with his family in Frankfort-on-Main, Hanau, Heidelberg and Hanover until 1791, when he was appointed _Oberhauptmann_ (civil administrator) in Bremen, where he died on the 6th of May 1796. Knigge, under the name "Philo," was one of the most active members of the _Illuminati_, a mutual moral and intellectual improvement society founded by Adam Weishaupt (1748-1830) at Ingolstadt, and which later became affiliated to the Freemasons. Knigge is known as the author of several novels, among which _Der Roman meines Lebens_ (1781-1787; new ed., 1805) and _Die Reise nach Braunschweig_ (1792), the latter a rather coarsely comic story, are best remembered. His chief literary achievement was, however, _Über den Umgang mit Menschen_ (1788), in which he lays down rules to be observed for a peaceful, happy and useful life; it has been often reprinted.

Knigge's _Schriften_ were published in 12 volumes (1804-1806). See K. Goedeke, _Adolf, Freiherr von Knigge_ (1844); and H. Klencke, _Aus einer alten Kiste_ (_Briefe, Handschriften und Dokumente aus dem Nachlasse Knigges_) (1853).

KNIGHT, CHARLES (1791-1873), English publisher and author, the son of a bookseller and printer at Windsor, was born on the 15th of March 1791. He was apprenticed to his father, but on the completion of his indentures he took up journalism and interested himself in several newspaper speculations. In 1823, in conjunction with friends he had made as publisher (1820-1821) of _The Etonian_, he started _Knight's Quarterly Magazine_, to which W. M. Praed, Derwent Coleridge and Macaulay contributed. The venture was brought to a close with its sixth number, but it initiated for Knight a career as publisher and author which extended over forty years. In 1827 Knight was compelled to give up his publishing business, and became the superintendent of the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, for which he projected and edited _The British Almanack and Companion_, begun in 1828. In 1829 he resumed business on his own account with the publication of _The Library of Entertaining Knowledge_, writing several volumes of the series himself. In 1832 and 1833 he started _The Penny Magazine_ and _The Penny Cyclopaedia_, both of which had a large circulation. _The Penny Cyclopaedia_, however, on account of the heavy excise duty, was only completed in 1844 at a great pecuniary sacrifice. Besides many illustrated editions of standard works, including in 1842 _The Pictorial Shakespeare_, which had appeared in parts (1838-1841), Knight published a variety of illustrated works, such as _Old England_ and _The Land we Live in_. He also undertook the series known as _Weekly Volumes_. He himself contributed the first volume, a biography of William Caxton. Many famous books, Miss Martineau's _Tales_, Mrs Jameson's _Early Italian Painters_ and G. H. Lewes's _Biographical History of Philosophy_, appeared for the first time in this series. In 1853 he became editor of _The English Cyclopaedia_, which was practically only a revision of _The Penny Cyclopaedia_, and at about the same time he began his _Popular History of England_ (8 vols., 1856-1862). In 1864 he withdrew from the business of publisher, but he continued to write nearly to the close of his long life, publishing _The Shadows of the Old Booksellers_ (1865), an autobiography under the title _Passages of a Working Life during Half a Century_ (2 vols., 1864-1865), and an historical novel, _Begg'd at Court_ (1867). He died at Addlestone, Surrey, on the 9th of March 1873.

See A. A. Clowes, _Knight, a Sketch_ (1892); and F. Espinasse, in _The Critic_ (May 1860).

KNIGHT, DANIEL RIDGWAY (1845- ), American artist, was born at Philadelphia, Penn., in 1845. He was a pupil at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under Gleyre, and later worked in the private studio of Meissonier. After 1872 he lived in France, having a house and studio at Poissy on the Seine. He painted peasant women out of doors with great popular success. He was awarded the silver medal and cross of the Legion of Honour, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1889, and was made a knight of the Royal Order of St Michael of Bavaria, Munich, 1893, receiving the gold medal of honour from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1893. His son, Ashton Knight, is also known as a landscape painter.

KNIGHT, JOHN BUXTON (1843-1908), English landscape painter, was born at Sevenoaks, Kent; he started as a schoolmaster, but painting was his hobby, and he subsequently devoted himself to it. In 1861 he had his first picture hung at the Academy. He was essentially an open-air painter, constantly going on sketching tours in the most picturesque spots of England, and all his pictures were painted out of doors. He died at Dover on the 2nd of January 1908. The Chantrey trustees bought his "December's Bareness Everywhere" for the nation in the following month. Most of his best pictures had passed into the collection of Mr Iceton of Putney (including "White Walls of Old England" and "Hereford Cathedral"), Mr Walter Briggs of Burley in Wharfedale (especially "Pinner"), and Mr S. M. Phillips of Wrotham (especially two water-colours of Richmond Bridge).

KNIGHTHOOD and CHIVALRY. These two words, which are nearly but not quite synonymous, designate a single subject of inquiry, which presents itself under three different although connected and in a measure intermingled aspects. It may be regarded in the first place as a mode or variety of feudal tenure, in the second place as a personal attribute or dignity, and in the third place as a scheme of manners or social arrangements. The first of these aspects is discussed under the headings FEUDALISM and KNIGHT SERVICE: we are concerned here only with the second and third. For the more important religious as distinguished from the military orders of knighthood or chivalry the reader is referred to the headings ST JOHN OF JERUSALEM, KNIGHTS OF; TEUTONIC KNIGHTS; and TEMPLARS.

"The growth of knighthood" (writes Stubbs) "is a subject on which the greatest obscurity prevails": and, though J. H. Round has done much to explain the introduction of the system into England,[1] its actual origin on the continent of Europe is still obscure in many of its most important details.

The words _knight_ and _knighthood_ are merely the modern forms of the Anglo-Saxon or Old English _cniht_ and _cnihthád_. Of these the primary signification of the first was a boy or youth, and of the second that period of life which intervenes between childhood and manhood. But some time before the middle of the 12th century they had acquired the meaning they still retain of the French _chevalier_ and _chevalerie_. In a secondary sense _cniht_ meant a servant or attendant answering to the German _Knecht_, and in the Anglo-Saxon Gospels a disciple is described as a _leorning cniht_. In a tertiary sense the word appears to have been occasionally employed as equivalent to the Latin _miles_--usually translated by _thegn_--which in the earlier middle ages was used as the designation of the domestic as well as of the martial officers or retainers of sovereigns and princes or great personages.[2] Sharon Turner suggests that _cniht_ from meaning an attendant simply may have come to mean more especially a military attendant, and that in this sense it may have gradually superseded the word thegn.[3] But the word thegn itself, that is, when it was used as the description of an attendant of the king, appears to have meant more especially a military attendant. As Stubbs says "the thegn seems to be primarily the warrior gesith"--the gesithas forming the chosen band of companions (_comites_) of the German chiefs (_principes_) noticed by Tacitus--"he is probably the gesith who had a particular military duty in his master's service"; and he adds that from the reign of Athelstan "the gesith is lost sight of except very occasionally, the more important class having become thegns, and the lesser sort sinking into the rank of mere servants of the king."[4] It is pretty clear, therefore, that the word cniht could never have superseded the word thegn in the sense of a military attendant, at all events of the king. But besides the king, the ealdormen, bishops and king's thegns themselves had their thegns, and to these it is more than probable that the name of _cniht_ was applied.

Around the Anglo-Saxon magnates were collected a crowd of retainers and dependants of all ranks and conditions; and there is evidence enough to show that among them were some called _cnihtas_ who were not always the humblest or least considerable of their number.[5] The testimony of Domesday also establishes the existence in the reign of Edward the Confessor of what Stubbs describes as a "large class" of landholders who had commended themselves to some lord, and he regards it as doubtful whether their tenure had not already assumed a really feudal character. But in any event it is manifest that their condition was in many respects similar to that of a vast number of unquestionably feudal and military tenants who made their appearance after the Norman Conquest. If consequently the former were called _cnihtas_ under the Anglo-Saxon régime, it seems sufficiently probable that the appellation should have been continued to the latter--practically their successors--under the Anglo-Norman régime. And if the designation of knights was first applied to the military tenants of the earls, bishops and barons--who although they held their lands of mesne lords owed their services to the king--the extension of that designation to the whole body of military tenants need not have been a very violent or prolonged process. Assuming, however, that _knight_ was originally used to describe the military tenant of a noble person, as _cniht_ had sometimes been used to describe the thegn of a noble person, it would, to begin with, have defined rather his social status than the nature of his services. But those whom the English called _knights_ the Normans called _chevaliers_, by which term the nature of their services was defined, while their social status was left out of consideration. And at first _chevalier_ in its general and honorary signification seems to have been rendered not by _knight_ but by _rider_, as may be inferred from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, wherein it is recorded under the year 1085 that William the Conqueror "dubbade his sunu Henric to ridere."[6] But, as E. A. Freeman says, "no such title is heard of in the earlier days of England. The thegn, the ealdorman, the king himself, fought on foot; the horse might bear him to the field, but when the fighting itself came he stood on his native earth to receive the onslaught of her enemies."[7] In this perhaps we may behold one of the most ancient of British insular prejudices, for on the Continent the importance of cavalry in warfare was already abundantly understood. It was by means of their horsemen that the Austrasian Franks established their superiority over their neighbours, and in time created the Western Empire anew, while from the word _caballarius_, which occurs in the _Capitularies_ in the reign of Charlemagne, came the words for knight in all the Romance languages.[8] In Germany the chevalier was called _Ritter_, but neither _rider_ nor _chevalier_ prevailed against _knight_ in England. And it was long after _knighthood_ had acquired its present meaning with us that _chivalry_ was incorporated into our language. It may be remarked too in passing that in official Latin, not only in England but all over Europe, the word _miles_ held its own against both _eques_ and _caballarius_.

Origin of Medieval Knighthood.

Concerning the origin of knighthood or chivalry as it existed in the middle ages--implying as it did a formal assumption of and initiation into the profession of arms--nothing beyond more or less probable conjecture is possible. The medieval knights had nothing to do in the way of derivation with the "equites" of Rome, the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, or the Paladins of Charlemagne. But there are grounds for believing that some of the rudiments of chivalry are to be detected in early Teutonic customs, and that they may have made some advance among the Franks of Gaul. We know from Tacitus that the German tribes in his day were wont to celebrate the admission of their young men into the ranks of their warriors with much circumstance and ceremony. The people of the district to which the candidate belonged were called together; his qualifications for the privileges about to be conferred upon him were inquired into; and, if he were deemed fitted and worthy to receive them, his chief, his father, or one of his near kinsmen presented him with a shield and a lance. Again, among the Franks we find Charlemagne girding his son Louis the Pious, and Louis the Pious girding his son Charles the Bald with the sword, when they arrived at manhood.[9] It seems certain here that some ceremony was observed which was deemed worthy of record not for its novelty, but as a thing of recognized importance. It does not follow that a similar ceremony extended to personages less exalted than the sons of kings and emperors. But if it did we must naturally suppose that it applied in the first instance to the mounted warriors who formed the most formidable portion of the warlike array of the Franks. It was among the Franks indeed, and possibly through their experiences in war with the Saracens, that cavalry first acquired the pre-eminent place which it long maintained in every European country. In early society, where the army is not a paid force but the armed nation, the cavalry must necessarily consist of the noble and wealthy, and cavalry and chivalry, as Freeman observes,[10] will be the same. Since then we discover in the _Capitularies_ of Charlemagne actual mention of "caballarii" as a class of warriors, it may reasonably be concluded that formal investiture with arms applied to the "caballarii" if it was a usage extending beyond the sovereign and his heir-apparent. "But," as Hallam says, "he who fought on horseback and had been invested with peculiar arms in a solemn manner wanted nothing more to render him a knight;" and so he concludes, in view of the verbal identity of "chevalier" and "caballarius," that "we may refer chivalry in a general sense to the age of Charlemagne."[11] Yet, if the "caballarii" of the _Capitularies_ are really the precursors of the later knights, it remains a difficulty that the Latin name for a knight is "miles," although "caballarius" became in various forms the vernacular designation.

Knighthood in England.