It is now awarded to bachelors of three years' standing on payment of a fee.
In place of the monastic judicature a jury of six bachelors and six maidens appear in the 16th century.
The main divisions of the army were distributed under the royal and other principal standards, smaller divisions under the banners of some of the greater nobility or of knights banneret, and smaller divisions still under the pennons of knights or, as in distinction from knights banneret they came to be called, knights bachelors.
All knights whether bachelors or bannerets were escorted by their squires.
When Segar, garter king of arms, wrote in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, this had been accomplished with such completeness that he does not even mention that there were two ways of creating knights bachelors.