Knight’s Acre

by Norah Lofts Book 1 in the The Suffolk Trilogy series.

First published 1974

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Sir Godfrey Tallboys is a professional knight-errant whose reputation in tournaments offers more glory than security. Marriage to Sybilla gives him a reason to seek a permanent home, and the modest Suffolk property that becomes Knight’s Acre is meant to provide the stability that his restless military life has never offered. Land, buildings, servants and harvests quickly prove less romantic than the career by which Godfrey hopes to pay for them.
Set in fifteenth-century England as Lancastrian authority weakens, the novel contrasts the culture of chivalry with the economics of a small estate. Godfrey’s continuing appetite for campaigning and adventure pulls him toward conflict in Spain and the frontier of the Reconquista, leaving Sybilla to confront debt, childbirth and the daily labour of keeping Knight’s Acre alive. The house becomes the measure of whether a knight’s honour can be converted into a durable family inheritance.