Super Glossary

Squire

Entertainment / Literature / Squire: A knight-in-training, a young boy who has spent several years as a page to learn humility, patience, and the manners of polite society and who is now acting as the servant of a knight while he perfects his combat and riding skills. In older medieval times, the offices of page and squire were limited to the children of aristocrats. By the fourteenth century, wealthy middle class or bourgeois parents began making arrangements for their children to be trained as pages in noble households. Chaucer himself served as a page when he was young, for instance, even though he was of common birth. In Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Chaucer depicts a young squire as primarily concerned with romance and good manners, while the older generation, represented by his father, the pilgrim Knight, appears more concerned with important military matters. This depiction might reveal something of medieval attitudes toward knights, i.e., that 'real' knights were a dying breed, and these noble warriors were being replaced by younger foppish courtiers.
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