It has been the general opinion, as expressed by Sainte Palaye and Mills, that formerly all knights were qualified to confer knighthood.[49] But it may be questioned whether the privilege was thus indiscriminately enjoyed even in the earlier days of chivalry. It is true that as much might be inferred from the testimony of the romance writers; historical evidence, however, tends to limit the proposition, and the sounder conclusion appears to be, as Sir Harris Nicolas says, that the right was always restricted in operation to sovereign princes, to those acting under their authority or sanction, and to a few other personages of exalted rank and station.[50] In several of the writs for distraint of knighthood from Henry III. to Edward III. a distinction is drawn between those who are to be knighted by the king himself or by the sheriffs of counties respectively, and bishops and abbots could make knights in the 11th and 12th centuries.[51] At all periods the commanders of the royal armies had the power of conferring knighthood; as late as the reign of Elizabeth it was exercised among others by Sir Henry Sidney in 1583, and Robert, earl of Essex, in 1595, while under James I. an ordinance of 1622, confirmed by a proclamation of 1623, for the registration of knights in the college of arms, is rendered applicable to all who should receive knighthood from either the king or any of his lieutenants.[52] Many sovereigns, too, both of England and of France, have been knighted after their accession to the throne by their own subjects, as, for instance, Edward III. by Henry, earl of Lancaster, Edward VI. by the lord protector Somerset, Louis XI. by Philip, duke of Burgundy, and Francis I. by the Chevalier Bayard. But when in 1543 Henry VIII. appointed Sir John Wallop to be captain of Guisnes, it was considered necessary that he should be authorized in express terms to confer knighthood, which was also done by Edward VI. in his own case when he received knighthood from the duke of Somerset.[53] But at present the only subject to whom the right of conferring knighthood belongs is the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and to him it belongs merely by long usage and established custom. But, by whomsoever conferred, knighthood at one time endowed the recipient with the same status and attributes in every country wherein chivalry was recognized. In the middle ages it was a common practice for sovereigns and princes to dub each other knights much as they were afterwards, and are now, in the habit of exchanging the stars and ribbons of their orders. Henry II. was knighted by his great-uncle David I. of Scotland, Alexander III. of Scotland by Henry III., Edward I. when he was prince by Alphonso X. of Castile, and Ferdinand of Portugal by Edmund of Langley, earl of Cambridge.[54] And, long after the military importance of knighthood had practically disappeared, what may be called its cosmopolitan character was maintained: a knight's title was recognized in all European countries, and not only in that country in which he had received it. In modern times, however, by certain regulations, made in 1823, and repeated and enlarged in 1855, not only is it provided that the sovereign's permission by royal warrant shall be necessary for the reception by a British subject of any foreign order of knighthood, but further that such permission shall not authorize "the assumption of any style, appellation, rank, precedence, or privilege appertaining to a knight bachelor of the United Kingdom."[55]