Footnotes:
[1] The History of Italy, from the Fall of the Western Empire to the Commencement of the Wars of the French Revolution. By George Perceval, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. 1825.
[2] A third volume was added in the year 1781, which also bears the title “Mémoires sur l’ancienne Chevalerie;” though more than half of the volume relates to the sport of hunting, which is a baronial or feudal rather than a chivalric subject.
[3] The Troubadour, &c. By L. E. L., author of The Improvisatrice. 12mo.
[4] Jean Froissart, called Sir Jean Froissart, (the title, Sir, being in the middle ages common to all who were either in the holy orders of the church or in the holy order of knighthood,) was born at Valenciennes in the year 1337, and died in 1397.
[5] The Prologue of Froissart—Lord Berners’ translation.
[6] I subjoin Schultens’ Latin version of the Arabic passage in Bohadin, vita et res gestæ Saladini, c. 127. p. 209. “Cupere Anglum ut Almalichus Aladilus sororem ipsius in matrimonium duceret (eam e Sicilia cujus functo domino nupta fuerat, secum avexerat frater, quum insulam illam trajiceret).”
[7] Reiske’s Latin version of Abulfeda is this:—“Illuc commeabant Francorum pacis causa legati, eam offerentes conditionem, ut Malec-al-Adel, frater Sultani sororem Regis Angliæ in matrimonium, et Hierosolymas in regnum acciperet.” Abulfeda, vol. iv. p. 111.
[8] Tacitus Germania, sec. 6. Cæsar de Bello Gallico, lib. i. s. 48.
[9] Tacitus Germania, s. 13. Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, vol. i. p. 197.
[10] Tacitus Germania. Cæsar, lib. 6. s. 14.
[11] Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 16. c. 13.
[12] Chron. Saxon, 57, &c. Florence, ad an. 784. William of Malmsbury, 7.
[13] Athenæus, lib. iv. c. 36.
[14] Treatise on the Virtue of the Female Sex.
[15] Tacitus Germania, s. 18. c. 19.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Strabo, lib. iv. Tacitus Historia, lib. iv. c. 61. 65. Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. c. 6.
[18] Tacitus, Hist. lib. iv. c. 18. Life of Agricola, s. 32. Germania, s. 7.
[19] Barthol. p. 54. as cited by Warton, Dissert. I. Of the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe, in the first volume of the late admirable edition of his History of English Poetry.
[20] It is also curious that this blow was said to have been customary.—“Dato eisdem, sicut consuetudinis est, manu colapho.”
[21] Not exactly according to the form, for by this time a belt with a sword inserted was girded round the military candidate, instead of delivering a javelin to him. See the preceding page.
[22] William of Malmsbury, lib. ii. c. 6.
[23] Ingulph, p. 512.
[24] Caxton, Fayts of Arms and Chivalry, chapter entitled “Of the Honor that ought to be done to a Knight.”
[25] Spencer’s Fairy Queen, book v. canto 5. st. 37. The romance of the Morte D’Arthur says, that in early times there were no hermits, but who had been men of worship and prowess; “and the hermits held great household, and refreshed people that were in distress.” Lib. 18. c. 10.
[26] The reader will find in Johnson’s Dictionary the etymology of sir. When this word, acknowledging power and superiority, was first used as the title of chivalry, I do not know. Instances exist as high as the reign of Henry II.
[27] Coke, Instit. 4. In the Reports of the Lords’ Committees respecting the Peerage, (printed 2d July 1821), doubts are often expressed regarding the meaning of the word Banneret. A little attention to the difference between the personal nobility of chivalry, and the nobility which arose as a franchise appurtenant to land, would have prevented the entertaining of such doubts, and the conclusion might have been drawn from principles, instead of being guessed from precedent, that the title of banneret had no relation to the dignity of Lord of Parliament. The Lords’ Committees seem surprised that barons should sometimes have had the addition of knights, and at other times of bannerets but in truth chevalier was the title which comprehended all others, and, like the word ‘Lord,’ was used in a general sense.
[28] See Du Cange, Dissertation 9. on Joinville. This learned commentator seems inclined to confound knights-banneret with barons, chivalry with nobility; and a herd of subsequent writers, refining on his error, have gravely placed knights-banneret as an order or class of society mediate between Nobility and Knighthood.
[29] Some fortune was, however, always thought necessary for the support of the dignity of knight-banneret. In the 28th of Edward III. John de Cobham was made a banneret, and had a grant of an annuity of 100 marks, out of the issues of the county of Norfolk, expressly for the better support of that dignity. Dugdale’s Baronage, vol. ii. p. 66. Many similar instances are mentioned in the Parliamentary Rolls.
[30] A note of Waterhouse on Fortescue will illustrate this. “The title of franklein is ‘good man;’ and yet they have oft knights’ estates. Many are called by courtesy ‘masters,’ and even ‘gentlemen;’ and their sons are educated in the inns of court, and adopted into the orders of knights and squires.”
[31] Illegitimacy seems not to have been a matter of the slightest consequence. Froissart. ii. 26.
[32] Favyn. i. 6.
[33] When Don Quixote was dubbed a knight, the landlord asked him whether he had any money. “Not a cross,” replied the knight; “for I never read in any history of chivalry, that any knight-errant ever carried money about him.”—“Respondio Don Quixote que no traia blanca, porque él nunca habia leido en las historias de los caballeros andantes, que ninguno los hubiese traido.” This was a very singular error in Cervantes, for in Amadis de Gaul, which he characterizes as the best work of its class, and which is evidently one of his textbooks, we read that the queen gave Adrian the Dwarf enough money to last Amadis de Gaul his master for a whole year. Book III. c. 6.
[34] Froissart, i. c. 448.
[35] Froissart, ii. c. 49.
[36] Thus, as Bracton observes, if a villain be made a knight, he is thereby immediately enfranchised, and consequently accounted a gentleman, l. iv. f. 198. b.
[37] Froissart, i. 384.
[38] Du Cange says, the third order of Chivalry consisted of the Esquires; but he evidently thinks they were the personal attendants of knights, for he calls them infancons or damoiseaux. He does not seem to have thought that a grave old squire ever existed.
[39] ——“Mais le dit escuyer s’excusa; et dit qu’il ne pouvoit trouver son bacinet.”—Froissart, i. 211.
[40] favour.
[41] soon.
[42] diligently.
[43] attempted.
[44] against.
[45] rule.
[46] the minstrelsy art.
[47] went.
[48] knew.
[49] Geste of Kyng Horn, v. 233.
[50] Mr Rose’s note on the Romance of Partenopex of Blois, p. 51.
[51] Caxton, Fayt of Armes and of Chyvalrye, c. 9., Mémoires du bon Messire Jean le Maingre, dit Boucicaut, Maréchal de France, c. 5, 9. in the sixth volume of the large collection of French Memoirs.
[52] L’Histoire de Guerin de Montglaive.
[53] L’Histoire et plaisante Cronicque du petit Jehan de Saintré, vol. 1. c. 3-6. I have the authority of Sir Walter Scott and other able writers on chivalry, to cite this romance as good evidence for the laws and manners of knighthood. It was written in 1459; the first edition was printed in Gothic characters in 1523, and it was reprinted in three volumes, 12mo. in 1724.
[54] Caxton, Fayt of Armes and Chevalrye, c. 9.
[55] Damoisel et Eescuyer sont arrivés à Novandel demandant chivalarie, lequel layant reçu n’est plus appellé de tels tiltres, ains seulement des tiltre de chevalier.—Amadis de Gaul, liv. 3. c. 3.
[56] Fauchet de l’Origine des Chevaliers, liv. 1. ch. 1. Monstrelet, vol. 1. c. 138. L’histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin, c. 1.
[57] Paulus Warnefridus, lib. 1. c. 23.
[58] Eximinus Petri Salonava Justitia Arragonum. Lib. de privilegiis baronum et riccorum hominum.
[59] Froissart, vol. 2. c. 31.
[60] Froissart, vol. 2. c. 92. The Earl of Oxenford had reason to repent of his arrogance. Sir John Chandos, observes Froissart, marked well all the matter between his squire and the earl, and remained quiet till the prince was gone from them, and then coming to the earl, he said, “Sir Thomas, are you displeased that I drank before you? I am constable of this country; I may well drink before you, since my lord the prince, and other lords here, are content therewith. It is of truth that you were at the battle of Poictiers; but all who were there do not know so well as I what you did. I shall declare it. When my lord the prince had made his voyage in Languedock and Carcassone to Narbonne, and was returned hither to his town of Bourdeaux, you chose to go to England. What the king said to you on your arrival I know right well, though I was not present. He demanded of you whether you had finished your voyage, and what you had done with his son the prince. You answered, that you had left him in good health at Bourdeaux. Then the king said, ‘How durst you be so bold as to return without him? I commanded you and all others when ye departed, that you should not return without him, and you thus presume to come again to England. I straitly command you, that within four days you avoid my realm and return again to him, and if I find you within this my realm on the fifth day, you shall lose your life, and all your heritage for ever.’ And you feared the king’s words, as it was reason, and left the realm, and so your fortune was good, for truly you were with my lord the prince four days before the battle of Poictiers. On the day of the battle you had forty spears under your charge, and I had fourscore. Now you may see whether I ought to drink before you or not, since I am constable of Acquitain.” The Earl of Oxenford was ashamed, and would gladly have been thence at the time; but he was obliged to remain and hear this reproof from that right noble knight, Sir John Chandos.
[61] Fairy Queen, book 1. canto 10. st. 7.
[62] Froissart, 1. c. 269. M. Paris, 873.
“Les prisons firent arreter,
Et en lieu seur tourner,
A leurs escuyers les liverent
Et à garder les commandement.”
[64] Ulrich von Lichtenstein, p. 70. Ulrich was a German knight, who lived in the fourteenth century, and wrote his own memoirs. They often give us curious glimpses into ancient chivalry.
[65] Chaucer, in drawing his squire, had certainly in mind a passage from his favourite poem, “The Romaunt of the Rose:”—
“Si avoient bien a Bachalier,
Que il sache de vieler,
De fleuter et de danser.”
I do not notice this circumstance on account of the literary coincidence, but to shew that the squire of France and the squire of England were in Chaucer’s view the same character.
[66] Du Cange, Dissert. 7. au Joinville, and Menage, Dict. Et. in verb.
[67] Fairy Queen, book 2. canto 3. st. 46.
“So to his steed he got, and ’gan to ride,
As one unfit therefore, that all might see
He had not trained been in chivalry;
Which well that valiant courser did discern;
For he despised to tread in dew degree,
But chaf’d and foam’d with courage fierce and stern,
And to be eas’d of that base burthen still did erne.”
In the old poem called the Siege of Karvalerock, a knight is praised for not appearing on horseback like a man asleep.
“Ki kant seroit sur le cheval,
Ne sembloit home ki someille.”
[68] Chaucer, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Selden, Titles of Honour, part 2. c. 3, 6.
[69] Froissart, vol. 1. c. 321. ‘The lord Langurant did that day marvels in arms, so that his own men and also strangers had marvels of his deeds. He advanced himself so much forward that he put his life in great jeopardy, for they within the town (against whose walls he was standing on a ladder,) by clean force raised his helm from his head, and so had been dead without remedy, if a squire of his had not been there, who followed him so near that he covered him with his target, and the lord and he together descended down the ladder by little and little, and in their descending they, received on their target many a great stroke. They were greatly praised by all that saw them.’—Berner’s Froissart.
[70] Froissart, liv. 2. c. 24.
[71] Rigordus in Du Chesne, vol. 5. p. 59. Mr. Maturin, in that powerful and magnificent romance, the Albigenses, has made a very fine use of the instance related above of the squirehood of Philip Augustus.
[72] This strange practice prevailed, says Mr. Ellis, (Specimens of early English Poetry, vol. i. p. 325.) at a time when the day-dress of both sexes was much warmer than at present, it being generally bordered, and often lined with furs; insomuch that numberless warrens were established in the neighbourhood of London for the purpose of supplying its inhabitants with rabbit skins. “Perhaps,” continues Mr. Ellis, in his usual style of pleasantry, “it was this warmth of clothing that enabled our ancestors, in defiance of a northern climate, to serenade their mistresses with as much perseverance as if they had lived under the torrid zone.”
[73] This circumstance was satirised, as the reader must remember, by Cervantes, who did not always spare chivalry itself in his good humoured satire of the romances of chivalry.
[74] Du Cange, articles Barbani radere, and Capilli. The complete shaving of the head was not often submitted to by knights. It was generally thought sufficient if a lock of hair was cut off.
[75] In the Fabliau of the order of knighthood the exhortation is somewhat different, and necessarily so, for the candidate was a Saracen. It was not to be expected that he would vow to destroy his erring brethren. The exhortation deserves to be extracted, for it contains some particulars not noticed in the one which I have inserted in the text. Whether specially mentioned or not, attendance at church and serving the ladies were always regarded as essentials of a knight’s duty.
“Still to the truth direct thy strong desire,
And flee the very air where dwells a liar:
Fail not the mass, there still with reverend feet
Each morn be found, nor scant thy offering meet:
Each week’s sixth day with fast subdue thy mind,
For ’twas the day of PASSION for mankind:
Else let some pious work, some deed of grace,
With substituted worth fulfil the place:
Haste thee, in fine, where dames complain of wrong,
Maintain their right, and in their cause be strong.
For not a wight there lives, if right I deem,
Who holds fair hope of well-deserv’d esteem,
But to the dames by strong devotion bound,
Their cause sustains, nor faints for toil or wound.”
Way’s Fabliaux, vol. i. p. 94.
The expressive conciseness of the exhortation to the duties of knighthood in the romance of Ysaie le Triste is admirable. “Chevalier soies cruel a tes ennemys, debonnaire a tes amys, humble a non puissans, et aidez toujours le droit a soustenir, et confons celluy qui tort a vefves dames, poures pucelles et orphelins, et poures gens aymes toujours a ton pouvir, et avec ce aime toujours Saincte Eglise.”
[76] The more distinguished the rank of the aspirant, the more distinguished were those who put themselves forward to arm him. The romances often state that the shield was given to a knight by a king of Spain, the sword by a king of England, the helmet from a French sovereign, &c.
[77] The word dub is of pure Saxon origin. The French word adouber is similar to the Latin adoptare, not adaptare, for knights were not made by adapting the habiliments of chivalry to them, but by receiving them, or being adopted into the order. Many writers have imagined that the accolade was the last blow which the soldier might receive with impunity: but this interpretation is not correct, for the squire was as jealous of his honour as the knight. The origin of the accolade it is impossible to trace, but it was clearly considered symbolical of the religious and moral duties of knighthood, and was the only ceremony used when knights were made in places (the field of battle, for instance,) where time and circumstances did not allow of many ceremonies.
[78] Caxton, Fayt of Armes and Chivalry, c. 49. Favyn Theatre of Honour, liv. i. c. 6. Daniel, Hist. de la Milice Francaise, liv. i. c. 4.
[79] Froissart, vol. i. c. 364. The romance writers made strange work of this disposition of candidates for chivalry to receive the wished for honours from the hands of redoubted heroes. In one of them a man wanted to be knighted by the famous Sir Lancelot of the Lake. He however happened to be dead, but that circumstance was of no consequence, for a sword was placed in the right hand of the skeleton, and made to drop upon the neck of the kneeling squire, who immediately rose a knight.
[80] Pinkerton’s History of Scotland, vol. i. p. 71.
[81] Favyn, liv. iii. c. 12. Monstrelet, vol. vi. p. 82. Honoré, Dissertations Historiques et Critiques sur la Chevaliere. 4to. Paris. 1718. p. 55.
[82] Selden likens the degradation of a knight to the degradation of a clergyman by the canon law, previously to his being delivered over to the secular magistrate for punishment. The order of the clergy and the order of knighthood were supposed to be saved from disgrace by this expulsion of an unworthy member. Selden, Titles of Honour, p. 787.
[83] Segar, Of Honour, lib. ii. c. 5.
[84] Stow’s Chronicle.
[85] The iron of Poictou was particularly famous for making admirable lance-heads; nor was it disliked as a shield. Thus an old French poet says,—
“Et fu armé sor le cheval de pris,
D’Aubere, et d’iaume, d’escu Poitevin.”
Du Cange, art. Ferrum Pictavense.
The iron of Bourdeaux is frequently mentioned by Froissart as of excellent use in armour. liv. 2. c. 117. 4. 6. And the old chronicle of Bertrand du Guesclin says,—
“Un escuier y vint qui au comte lanca
D’une espée de Bourdeaux, qui moult chier li cousta.”
[86] Menage, Diction. Etym. in verb.
[87] It is not worth while to say much about mere words. I shall only add that the banner was sometimes called the Gonfanon.
“Li Barons aurent gonfanons
Li chevaliers aurent penons.”
[88] This battle-axe is very amusingly described in the metrical romance of Richard Cœur de Lion:—
“King Richard I understond,
Or he went out of Englond,
Let him make an axe for the nones,
To break therewith the Sarasyns bones.
The head was wrought right wele,
Therein was twenty pounds of steel,
And when he came into Cyprus land,
The ax he took in his hand.
All that he hit he all to-frapped,
The Griffons away fast rapped
Natheless many he cleaved,
And their unthanks there by lived,
And the prison when he came to,
With his ax he smot right thro,
Dores, barres, and iron-chains,
And delivered his men out of pains.”
Line 2197, &c.
[89] Monstrelet. Johnes’ edit. vol. 5. p. 294.
[90] Thus Pandaro the giant in Palmerin of England carried a huge mallet:—but I need not multiply instances.
[91] En loyal amour tout mon cœur, was a favourite motto on the shank of a spur.
[92] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. 1. p. 193.
[93] Chronicle of the Cid. p. 46.
[94] Ritterzeit und Ritterwesen, vol. 1. p. 201.
[95] Hoveden.
[96] Pellicer’s note on Don Quixote, edit. Madrid, 1798. Dillon’s Travels in Spain, p. 143.
[97] Robert of Brune.
[98] Wormius, Lit. Run. p. 110. Hickes Thes. vol. 1. p. 193.
[99] The notion of applying the word jocosé to a sword is thus pleasantly dilated on by St. Palaye. “Ils ont continuellement repandu sur toutes les images de la guerre un air d’enjouement, qui leur est propre: ils n’ont jamais parlé que comme d’une fête, d’un jeu, et d’un passe-temps. Jouer leur jeu, ont-ils dit, les arbalétriers qui faisoient pleuvoir une grêle de traits. Jouer gros jeu, pour donner battaile. Jouer des mains, et une infinité d’autres façons de parler semblables se recontrent souvent dans la lecture de recits militaires nos écrivains.”
[100] Ellis’ Metrical Romances. 2. 362.
[101] The shield therefore was fitted by its shape to bear a wounded knight from the field, and to that use it was frequently applied. Another purpose is alluded to in the spirited opening to the Lay of the Gentle Bachelor.
“What gentle Bachelor is he
Sword-begot in fighting field,
Rock’d and cradled in a shield,
Whose infant food a helm did yield.”
[102] Malmsbury, p. 170.
[103] Dr. Meyrick, in his huge work on armour, divides the sorts of this early mail into the rustred, the scaled, the trellissed, the purpointed, and the tegulated. The grave precision of this enumeration will amuse the curious enquirer into the infinite divisibility of matter.
[104] In a masterly dissertation upon Ancient Armour, in the sixtieth number of the Quarterly Review, it is said, that “though chain-mail was impervious to a sword-cut, yet it afforded no defence against the bruising stroke of the ponderous battle-axe and martel; it did not always resist the shaft of the long or cross bow, and still less could it repel the thrust of the lance or the long-pointed sword.”—There is a slight mistake here. All good coats of mail were formed of duplicated rings, and their impenetrability to a lance thrust was an essential quality. “Induitur lorica incomparabili, quæ maculis duplicibus intexta, nullius lanceæ ictibus transforabilis haberetur.” Mon. l. 1. ann. 1127.
[105] Froissart describes Sir John Chandos as dressed in a long robe, which fell to the ground, blazoned with his arms on white sarcenet, argent a field gules, one on his breast, and another on his back.
[106] Du Cange, Dissert. the first on Joinville. The extravagance of people in the middle ages on the subject of furs is the theme of perpetual complaint with contemporary authors. By two statutes of the English parliament, holden at London in 1334 and 1363, all persons who could not expend one hundred pounds a-year were forbidden to wear furs.
[107] Du Cange, ubi supra.
[108] Montfaucon, Pl. 2. xiv. 7. and Gough i. 137.
[109] Fairy Queen, Book i. canto vii. st. 31, 32.
[110] Shakspeare, Henry V. Act iii. sc. 7.
[111] Fairy Queen, Book i. c. 7. st. 29.
[112] Lay of the Knight and the Sword.
[113] Froissart, livre i. c. 342.
[114] Ellis’s Specimens of Metrical Romances, i. 328. 366.
[115] Monstrelet, Johnes’s edition, vol. v. p. 121. 126., et prestement un nommé Olivier Layet à l’ayde de Pierre Frotier lui bouta une espée par dessoules son haulbergeon tout dedans le ventre, &c.—En apres le dessusdit duc mis à mort, comme dit est fut tantost par les gens du Daulphin desuestu de sa robbe, de son haulbergeon, &c. Monstrelet, vol. i. c. 212, 213.
[116] Books of military costume may illustrate the truth, how important every man’s occupation is in his own eyes. The old French writer, Fauchet, has devoted some pages to a description of the regular process of dressing, and his example has been followed by some of our English antiquarians.
[117] In Dr. Meyrick’s three ponderous quartos on Armour there is one interesting point: he shews that the celebrated title of the Black Prince, which the Prince of Wales gained for his achievements at the battle of Cressy, did not arise, as is generally supposed, from his wearing black armour on that day, nor does it appear that he ever wore black armour at all. Plain steel armour was his usual wear, and the surcoat was emblazoned with the arms of England labelled. When he attended tournaments in France or England he appeared in a surcoat with a shield, and his horse in a caparison all black with the white feathers on them; so that the colour of the covering of the armour, and not of the armour itself, gave him his title. Dr. Meyrick thinks the common story an erroneous one, that the ostrich feathers in the crest of our princes of Wales arose from young Edward’s taking that ornament from the helmet of the King of Bohemia, who was slain by him at the battle of Cressy. He contends that the feathers formed a device on the banner of the monarch, and were not worn on the helmet, because plumes of feathers were not used as crests till the fifteenth century. That Dr. Meyrick has not been able to find any instance of their being thus worn goes but very little way to prove the negative. On the other hand, we know that the swan’s neck, the feathers of favourite birds, such as the peacock and pheasant, were devices on shields, and also at the same time continually surmounted the helmet, and the ostrich feathers, which ever since the crusades the western world had been familiar with, might in all probability have been used in this twofold manner. How the King of Bohemia wore his we do not know with historic certainty, but it is very difficult to believe that he, or our chivalric ancestors, with their love of splendid ornament, would have been contented with placing the ostrich feathers as a mere device on a shield, and not have also fixed it where they set every thing peculiarly graceful, on the summit of the helm.
[118] A very singular instance of the inconvenience of heavy armour occurred in the year 1427, during a war between the Milanese and the Venetians. Carmagnola, the Venetian General, had skilfully posted his army behind a morass, the surface of which, from the dryness of the season, was capable of bearing the weight of infantry. He irritated the enemy (the Milanese) to attack him, by capturing the village of Macalo before their eyes, but their heavy cavalry had no sooner charged along the causeway intersecting the marshy ground, which he purposely left unguarded, than his infantry assailed them with missiles on both flanks. In attempting to repulse them the Milanese cuirassiers sank into the morass: their column was crowded on the narrow passage, and thrown into confusion, and the infantry of Carmagnola then venturing among them on the causeway, and stabbing their horses, made prisoners of the dismounted cuirassiers to the number of eight thousand, as they lay helpless under the enormous weight of their own impervious armour. Perceval’s History of Italy, vol. ii. p. 77.
[119] Quarterly Review, No. lx. p. 351.
[120] In marking the progress of chivalry through Italy I shall again have occasion to notice the excellence of the Milanese armour.
[121] Note 8. on Marmion, canto 5.
[122] Grose, ii. 246.
[123] Caxton, Fayt of Armes and of Chyvalrye, c. 62, &c. If the reader be curious for information on the subject of the allegories which were formed from the armour and dress of the Knights of the Garter and the Bath, he will find it in Anstis’s Register of the Garter, p. 119, 120, and his History of the Knighthood of the Bath, p. 77-80.
Asturco dextrarius est, Astur caput ejus
Nam prius Astur equum dextrandi repperit usum.
Ebrardus Betuniensis in Græcismo, c. 7.
[125] An Arabian horse.
[126] Weak.
[127] Lockhart’s Spanish Ballads, p. 66.
[128] William of Newbridge, c. 11. lib. ii. Brunetus in Thesauro, MS. part 1. c. 155, says “Il y a chevaus de plusieurs manieres, à ce que li un sont déstreir quant pour li combat, li auter sont palefroy pour chevaucher à l’aise de son cors pour li autres son roueis pour sommes porter,” &c. and the continuator of Nangis says, “Et apres venoient les grans chevaux et palefrois du roy tres rechement ensellez, et les valets les menaient en dextre sur autres roussins.”
[129] History of the Crusades, vol. i. p. 357. note.
[130] Lest the reader’s mind should wander in conjecture regarding the purpose of barding a horse, I will transcribe, for his instruction and illumination, a few lines from Dr. Meyrick’s Chronological Inquiry into Ancient Armour, vol. ii. p. 126. “The principal reason for arming the horse in plate as well as his rider was to preserve his life, on which depended the life or liberty of the man-at-arms himself; for when he was unhorsed, the weight of his own armour prevented him from speedily recovering himself or getting out of the way, when under the animal. Besides this, by thus preserving the horse, the expence of another was saved.” Wonderful!
[131] Statutes of the Templars, c. 37.
[132] Vincent de Beauvais, Hist. lib. 30. c. 85.
[133] From the Loka Lenna, or Strife of Loc, cited in the notes on Sir Tristrem, p. 350.; St. Palaye, “Memoires sur l’ancienne Chevaliere,” partie 3.; Du Cange, Twenty-first Dissertation on Joinville; Glossary, Arma Mutare, Companionship in weal and woe sanctioned by religious solemnities, still exists among the Albanians and other people of the eastern shore of the Adriatic. The custom is wrought into a very interesting story in the tale of Anastasius, vol. i. c. 7.
[134] Juv. des Ursins anno 1411. Vraye fraternité et compagnie d’armes, is the frequent expression in old writers for this chivalric union.
[135] Kennet’s Parochial Antiquities, p. 57. cited in Henry’s History of England, vol. iii. p. 360. 4to.
[136] The romance of Amys and Amylion. It is abridged by Mr. Ellis in the third volume of his Specimens of early English Metrical Romances, and inserted at length by Mr. Weber in the second volume of his collection. The reader may be amused to learn that the mother of the children was so complaisant to her husband as to approve of his having cut their little throats.
“O lef lief! she said tho,
God may send us children mo!
Of them have thou no care.
And if it were at my heart’s root,
For to bring thy brother boot,
My life I would not spare.
There shall no man our children sene,
For to morrow they shall buried ben,
As they fairly dead were.
Thus that lady, fair and bright,
Comforted her lord with her might,
As ye may understand
Sin[A] they went both right
To Sir Amylion, that gentle knight,
That ever was fre to fonde[B]
When Sir Amylion awaked tho,
All his foulehead away was go
Through grace of God’s Son.
Then was he as fair a man
As ever he was ere than
Since he was been in londe.”
The conclusion of the story shows the belief of the writer that heaven approved of such sacrifices to friendship.
“Then were they all blithe,
Their joy could no man kithe,
They thanked God that day.
As ye may at me liste and lythe.[C]
Into the chamber they went swythe.[D]
Ther as the children lay.
Without wern[E], without wound,
All whole the children there they found,
And lay together in play.
For joy they went there, they stood
And thanked God with mild mode
Their care was all away.”