the.com/squire
the apprentice knight whose whole job was making someone cooler look even cooler
means A squire is a young man who attended a knight as his personal aide and trainee, polishing armor and tending horses while learning the trade; later the word came to mean a country gentleman or landowner of standing.
from From Old French 'esquier,' a shield-bearer, which traces back to Latin 'scutarius' — literally 'one who carries the shield' (from 'scutum,' shield). The job was right there in the name: you held the shield until you'd earned the right to swing the sword. It's the same word as 'esquire,' just worn down at the front over centuries of English use.
- job description
- Carried armor, cleaned weapons, hoped to survive to knighthood
- timeline
- Boys started squiring around age fourteen
- title creep
- Later became a polite word for English country gentlemen
- battlefield role
- Followed knights into combat, often fighting too
- promotion path
- Knighthood usually arrived around twenty-one, if lucky
sir lancelot's squire kay — arthurian legend character who served knights and became a knight himself
william marshal's squire john — medieval english squire to the famous knight william marshal, 12th century
squire allworthy — fictional character in henry fielding's 1749 novel tom jones, country gentleman