knightlet

plural knightlets

1. A small or petty knight.

   Then follow accounts of many misdeeds of different sinners, and the penalties enforced on them, the Church standing up valiantly against the petty chiefs and knightlets which abounded in Wales, though she was well paid for it.

   1885, The Red Dragon, volume 8, page 614

   1 more example

   Highborn boys were sent off to another noble household at the age of about seven, to serve strenuously as pages and later as esquires to their lord before they themselves were knighted, looked around for a "lady" and incidentally got married and produced more knightlets, whom they never got to know at all well.

   1971, Clayton C. Barbeau, Future of the family

   Synonyms: knightling