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sous at this time was equal to a day’s pay of one knight or four archers, or the hire of a cart and two horses for twenty days, or, theoretically, the pay of a hired peasant for two years, so it may be presumed to have underwritten a reasonable number of prayers, though perhaps not adequate for the soul of Enguerrand IV.
    When that unlamented lord, though twice married, died without heirs, the dynasty passed to the descendants of his sister Alix, who was married to the Count of Guînes. Her eldest son inherited the Guînes lands and title, while her second son, Enguerrand V, became the lord of Coucy. Raised at the court of Alexander of Scotland, his uncle by marriage, he married Catherine Lindsay of Baliol, the King’s niece, and held the seigneury only ten years. He was followed in rapid succession by his son Guillaume and his grandson Enguerrand VI, who inherited the domain in 1335 and five years later was to father Enguerrand VII, last of the Coucys and the subject of this book. Through further marriages with powerful families of northern France and Flanders, the Coucys had continued to weave alliances of strength and influence andacquire lands, revenues, and a galaxy of armorial bearings in the process. They could display as many as twelve coats-of-arms: Boisgency, Hainault, Dreux, Saxony, Montmirail, Roucy, Baliol, Ponthieu, Châtillon, St. Pol, Gueldres, and Flanders.
    The Coucys maintained a sense of eminence second to none, and conducted their affairs after the usage of sovereign princes. They held courts of justice in the royal style and organized their household under the same officers as the King’s: a constable, a grand butler, a master of falconry and the hunt, a master of the stables, a master of forests and waters, and masters or grand stewards of kitchen, bakery, cellar, fruit (which included spices, and torches and candles for lighting), and furnishings (including tapestry and lodgings during travel). A grand seigneur of this rank also usually employed one or more resident physicians, barbers, priests, painters, musicians, minstrels, secretaries and copyists, an astrologer, a jester, and a dwarf, besides pages and squires. A principal vassal acting as
châtelain
or
garde du château
managed the estate. At Coucy fifty knights, together with their own squires, attendants, and servants, made up a permanent garrison of 500.
    Outward magnificence was important as a statement of status, requiring huge retinues dressed in the lord’s livery, spectacular feasts, tournaments, hunts, entertainments, and above all an open-handed liberality in gifts and expenditure which, since his followers lived off it, was extolled as the most admired attribute of a noble.
    The status of nobility derived from birth and ancestry, but had to be confirmed by “living nobly”—that is, by the sword. A person was noble if born of noble parents and grandparents and so on back to the first armed horseman. In practice the rule was porous and the status fluid and inexact. The one certain criterion was function—namely, the practice of arms. This was the function assigned to the second of the three estates established by God, each with a given task for the good of the whole. The clergy were to pray for all men, the knight to fight for them, and the commoner to work that all might eat.
    As being nearest to God, the clergy came first. They were divided between two hierarchies, the cloistered and secular, meaning in the latter case those whose mission was among the laity. Presiding over both hierarchies were the prelates—abbots, bishops, and archbishops, who were the equivalent of the secular
grands seigneurs
. Between the prelacy and the poor half-educated priest living on a crumb and a pittance there was little in common. The Third Estate was even less homogeneous, being divided between employers and workers and covering the whole range of great urban magnates, lawyers anddoctors, skilled craftsmen, day laborers, and peasants.