Knighting, historically termed 'dubbing,' is the ritualistic act of creating a knight, a process that evolved from a simple blow delivered by a lord to a complex liturgical and heraldic ceremony. In the high medieval period, the ceremony often involved a vigil within a chapel, a ritual bath of purification, and the girding of a sword and spurs. By the Tudor era, the rite was streamlined into the 'accolade,' where the sovereign or their delegate taps the recipient on both shoulders with a flat sword blade while the individual kneels in homage.
From a heraldic and legal perspective, the act of knighting confers a non-hereditary title of honor, authorizing the individual to use the prefix 'Sir' and to display an open-faced helmet in their achievement of arms. Within the feudal hierarchy, it served as a mechanism for military mobilization and social stratification, whereby a land-holding tenant or a professional soldier was formally integrated into the martial aristocracy, owing direct loyalty to their feudal superior or the Crown.