That knight and esquire were not necessarily of gentle blood, might be proved by numerous ancient evidences: one or two may suffice. Matthew Paris, under the year 1250, tells us that the king "gave a charter of the liberty of warren in the land of Saint Alban's to a certain knight named Geoffry, although not descended from noble or knightly ancestors." This knight had obtained the privilege "from having married the sister of the king's clerk, John Maunsell." The "lady's name was Clarissa, and she was the daughter of a country priest, but exalted herself in her pride above her station, to the derision of all." Froissart, in the fourteenth century, gives us the history of Jacques le Gris, the bosom-friend of the Earl of Alençon,--"qui n'étoit pas de trop haute affaire, mais un écuyer de basse lignée qui s'étoit avancé, ainsi que fortune en avance plusieurs; et quand ils sont tous élevés et ils cuident être au plus sûr, fortune les retourne en la boue et les met plus has que elle ne les a eus de commencement[156]." In fact, numerous exceptional cases might be adduced on almost every point of knightly usage, and to chronicle the whole would be a labour of many pages. A detail of such usages (the education of the varlets, the probation of the knights, the ceremonies of investiture, and the institutions of the various brotherhoods) is by no means within the province of this work. A large amount of information on these points will be found in the _Mémoires sur l'ancienne Chevalerie_ of St. Palaye, and in the various works of Ducange; from whose pages numerous references will lead the more critical investigator to a wide range of valuable authorities. An able sketch of the Feudal System, as it existed in Italy, appears in the first volume of Sismondi's _Républiques Italiennes au Moyen-âge_, p. 80, sq.