[Knight's Fee is] a splendid rendering of upper-middle-class values. It is set in that Kiplingesque region of English history where Saxon and Norman are being made one. The hero is a lowly Celtic hound boy, in touch with the surviving magic of earth and folk…. [His] loyal steadfastness (and the accidents of fate) finally win him victory over the class barrier and inheritance of the knight's fee. The feudal background is vivid; the political intrigue murky. Miss Sutcliff's strength is her almost poetic feeling for people and places and things; but this can sometimes betray her into fine writing. (p. 742)

C. S. Bennett, "Varlets, Nabobs, Governesses," in New Statesman (© 1960 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. LX, No. 1548, November 12, 1960, pp. 742, 744.∗