The preface in Fiore Furlano's work Fior di Battaglia outlines his credentials as well as his sponsors. He name drops a couple of famous dueling students as well as some exploits of his own.

http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Fiore_de'i_Liberi

In the later German freifechter and Marxbruder societies, it is often a boast of lineage, most often through Kal's list of various students of Lichtenauer.

The various English masters had varying backgrounds. Ranging from McBain who was a pimp and all round unsavoury character to the Maquis of Newcastle who, on the losing side of the civil war, decided to learn and write a book on how to fight better with his new method. George Silver is famous for writing most widely accessed fencing treatise today (as it was in English and widely available) which contained a great deal of fencing theory as well as being about 40% trash-talking Italian and Spanish rapiers as useless, etc etc.