“Knights” had originally been a term for freelance warriors, drawn from the younger or, often, bastard sons of the minor nobility. Unable to inherit, they were often forced to band together to seek their fortunes. Many of these bands became little more than roving gangs of thugs, in an endless pursuit of plunder—precisely the sort of people who made merchants’ lives so dangerous. Culminating in the twelfth century, there was a concerted effort to bring this dangerous population under the control of the civil authorities:
