When it comes to understanding the way in which the medieval military elite learnt to use their weapons, and particularly the sword, we have precious little information. The common understanding is that at a young age a nobleman would become squire to a knight, usually a family member, serving a kind of apprenticeship by acting as a servant whilst also learning the craft of war. Such a statement leaves a lot unexplained, however. Who undertook this training? Were there formal classes run by a ‘master-at-arms’ as is often depicted in the Hollywood epics like Prince Valiant or The Black Shield of Falworth, both of which depict rows of uniformed squires receiving bellowed instructions from a grizzled veteran, with all the precision of modern military drill?1 What of royal children, who were not farmed out to be squires? Who within the household looked to their training?

Our sources are almost silent on the subject. The biographies of individual knights tend to skip over their childhood years, unless to pronounce them as prodigies of strength or maturity. Sir John Hardyng, a fourteenth-century chronicler and knight, does outline the education of a young nobleman, but all he has to say about war is that at sixteen he is ‘to werray and to wage’…

This suggests that the boy effectively learns by doing, by taking part in battle and campaign. But how was he taught the basic skills?

Romance and epic literature rarely dwell on the childhood and youth of their heroes either. In the romance of Perceval, where the wild and untamed protagonist is taught knighthood by Gornament, we get an impressionistic image of a knight's training. Gornament's pedagogical approach is to demonstrate techniques, watched by the young Perceval, and then to get the young man to copy him.