Knight's Fee

Knight's Fee is a children's historical novel by the English writer Rosemary Sutcliff, first published in 1960. It is set in and around the South Downs, near the towns of Steyning and Arundel in West Sussex, and covers the period from 1094 to 1106.

The title is a term from the feudal system, describing a manor or holding that a knight held in return for providing military support to his overlord. The book is set in the same general part of Sussex as Sutcliff's earlier novel Warrior Scarlet and contains several references to it.

The central figure is Randall, the orphan son of a Breton soldier and a Saxon mother, who works as a dog-boy in Arundel Castle. Sir Everard d'Aguillon, who holds the manor of West Dean from his feudal overlord de Braose, takes him home, and Randall is brought up with Sir Everard's grandson, Bevis.

The book follows the two of them as they grow up. When Sir Everard dies, Bevis becomes a knight and inherits the manor, with Randall as his squire, and the pair of them become part of the army that Henry I leads against his older brother Robert Curthose in a campaign that ends at the Battle of Tinchebray in Normandy in 1106.