Note 98 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

'On the continent,' writes Gneist, 'fifty milites, or at least twenty-five, were reckoned to one banneret; in England, in proportion to the smaller scale of enfeoffments, a smaller number appears to have formed the unit of the constabularia.'98 He is right: the English constabularia, where I find it referred to, consists of ten knights.99 It is interesting to trace this unit and its multiples recurring in the narratives of Irish warfare, under Henry II, and in other struggles.100 We meet with it also in the grant by the Empress to Geoffrey de Mandeville, in 1141, of 'feodum et servicium xx. militum' and in Stephen's grant to him of 'lx milites feudatos'.101