Thank you for your responses gentlemen.
The very high quality double edge dagger is a hunting dagger. Probably used by the lord to prod his helpers into the scrum to finish off the raging boar. I'm convinced.
But the other one?
Detlef reckons Genovese, or maybe it is a hunting knife too? Perhaps not a knife with a specific purpose, but just a personal knife?
It is a nice size for a knife that one could carry day in, day out, to slice up the cheese, the salami and the people who cheated at cards.
Don't forget that even though the fork was in use by about the 4th century in Rome, and was in common usage across Italy by the 1600's, in other parts of Europe it took another couple of hundred years to gain universal favour. I guess because Italians eat more pasta than Frenchmen and Englishmen. Anyway, in most of Europe the personal knife was indispensable right through until modern policing methods made them something to be avoided.
Maybe this knife with the holes in the ricasso was just a personal knife?
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