>"the majority being knights and esquires of gentle blood" естественно, для тех, кто носит дорогие и требующие привычки латы, но "большинство", а не обязательный признак. Меньшинство таки сержанты из незнатных.
Ну так в перечень men-at-arms англичане в те времена не включали sergeants-at-arms.
In the College of Arms text, the section that enumerates the sub-knightly personnel of the royal household lacks names; but in content it is nevertheless essentially comparable with other Edwardian pay-rolls. Just how many of these men were accompanying the king when the army landed at La Hougue, and how many arrived later, is unclear, but we would probably be justified in assuming that the majority were with the king from the outset. This is of some relevance to our discussion of ‘strenuous’ personnel, since as well as several dozen clerks and household staff, and several hundred workmen and artisans, this section of the College of Arms text includes over 200 men-at-arms and over 400 archers (mostly mounted) – a substantial contribution to the manpower of the ‘household division’.
In addition to the 230 men-at-arms, there were 67 sergeants-at-arms. Of the 427 archers, 55 were foot soldiers, and 121 were designated ‘king’s archers’.
Half of the men-at-arms (101) were actually household esquires, some of whom would have had other fighting men associated with them, as individuals or in small companies, as would have at least a proportion of the clerks.
>Еще раз: man-at-arms - профессионально подготовленный к рукопашному бою воин в полных латах, предпочтительно конник, но способный сражаться и пешим (как англичане и делали чаще всего). Как правильно пишут в https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-at-arms , "while all knights equipped for war certainly were men-at-arms, not all men-at-arms were knights"
Да, большинство были эсквайры, не рыцари.
>Социальное деление существовало в другой плоскости, хотя и пересекающейся с военной плоскостью.
Да вот иное утверждают, о наличии "clear separation in economic and social terms":
What do we know of the social and economic standing of the archers at Crécy? Some clues are offered by Edward III’s re-enactments and extensions of the Statute of Winchester (1285). Itself based on earlier assizes of arms, the statute had required every free man between the ages of 15 (later 16) and 60 to possess military equipment appropriate to his means, as determined by the value of his land or chattels; and to appear at a ‘view of arms’ in his hundred twice a year. According to Edward III’s promulgations of the statute during the 1330s, those with land worth from £2 to £5 per annum were to be equipped with a bow and arrows, a sword and a knife. This definition of the section of
society that would be expected to yield foot archers was very much that of the earlier Edwardian kings. What occurred in the years immediately prior to Crécy was the crown’s identification of the socio-economic group that would be called upon to provide mounted archers. This was not done by altering the politically sensitive ‘customary’ scale of wealth-specific categories defined by the Statute of Winchester, the maintenance of which had prompted petitioning (and a statute) in the first parliament of Edward III’s reign. Rather, it was the novel military assessment of the mid-1340s (itself ‘highly contentious’) that laid down that a landowner whose property was worth £5 per annum was to be, or to provide, a mounted archer, while the income threshold for a hobelar was £10, and for a man-at-arms, £25.
There was, therefore, at least in principle, a clear separation in economic and social terms between archers, whether mounted or on foot, and mounted, armoured warriors – the hobelars and men-at-arms.
However, the archers were not themselves a homogeneous group any more than the ‘peasantry’ was; and those who served in the king’s armies cannot have been drawn exclusively from the comparatively narrow socio-economic bands specified in royal proclamations. Indeed, the original Statute of Winchester, and its re-enactments under Edward II and Edward III, appear to cast the net much more widely, by inviting ‘all others’ (that is, those not included in the lowest specifically identified groups, which were ‘less than 40s of land’ and ‘less than 20 marks of chattels’) to have bows and arrows, if living outside the forest and bows and bolts (presumably crossbows), if within. Thus, the very poorest freemen were encouraged to possess a bow, if nothing else; and this aspect of the Statute of Winchester may have proved useful when the heavy recruiting demands of the Edwardian wars began in the mid-1290s.
