Replies

Actually I should have used a slightly different term, not 'Crusader knight,' but rather 'Chivalrous knight.'

Distinction is important, although perhaps the closest to a 'crusading knight' we have are our folks who are about to go to Iraq and bring freedom to the slaves there. But a knight chivalrous was, at the time, very close to the lawman in spirit and in fact. To bear arms and mete justice meant that, as the lord of your manor, YOU settled disputes between your villeins, YOU had the power to punish, by death if necessary, violent criminals within your fee (a term meaning not a sum of money, but the extent of feudal lands granted you by the King).

In fact, the development in England, of royal courts, with trial by jury, was accellerated because peasants would rather by judged by a 'jury of their peers' who didn't have an interest in the outcome of the case rather than a lord who might judge you to be guilty just so he can tumble your cottage, be rid of you, and use your land for something else.

A lawman with the power to kill, in a lawless and jury-free world, is a fearsome thing to be, a fearsome power to have. As our Euro buddies are trying to tell us. Some of them, that is, the ones that are not choking on their own anti American bile.