Chaucer's Franklin and Distraint of Knighthood

Description: Distraint, established in the thirteenth century, required that landholders whose lands produced 20 pounds a year must become knights, the rank involving both military and civil service. The remark that he would rather have a son with the Squire's virtues than "twenty pound worth lond" (SqT 682), rather than indicating bourgeois mercenariness, indicates that the Franklin would rather have his son manifest the inner qualities of knighthood.