It was an astronomically expensive career, and one that could only be contemplated by those who were born rich or else could be made so. One way for a knight to sustain himself was to chance his arm: battle offered the opportunity to seize plunder, equipment, and prisoners for ransom. But this was a precarious way to fund a career. A more reliable route was to find a patron and eventually become a landowner. Thus, from around the ninth century onward, across the west, men who fought on horseback were awarded hundreds of acres of farmable land, which they held in exchange for making themselves
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