The History of Chivalry Volume I Part 23

[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 coeur, 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 jocose 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 parle que comme d'une fete, d'un jeu, et d'un pa.s.se-temps. _Jouer leur jeu_, ont-ils dit, les arbaletriers qui faisoient pleuvoir une grele de traits. _Jouer gros jeu_, pour donner battaile. _Jouer des mains_, et une infinite d'autres facons de parler semblables se recontrent souvent dans la lecture de recits militaires nos ecrivains."

[100] Ellis' Metrical Romances. 2. 362.

[101] The s.h.i.+eld 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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, quae maculis duplicibus intexta, nullius lanceae 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 nomme Olivier Layet a l'ayde de Pierre Frotier lui bouta une espee par dessoules son haulbergeon tout dedans le ventre, &c.--En apres le dessusdit duc mis a 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 ill.u.s.trate 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 t.i.tle 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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 t.i.tle. 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 peac.o.c.k and pheasant, were devices on s.h.i.+elds, 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 s.h.i.+eld, 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 mora.s.s, 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 a.s.sailed them with missiles on both flanks. In attempting to repulse them the Milanese cuira.s.siers sank into the mora.s.s: their column was crowded on the narrow pa.s.sage, 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 cuira.s.siers 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.

[124]

Asturco dextrarius est, Astur caput ejus Nam prius Astur equum dextrandi repperit usum.

Ebrardus Betuniensis in Graecismo, 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, a ce que li un sont destreir quant pour li combat, li auter sont palefroy pour chevaucher a 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 princ.i.p.al 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, Companions.h.i.+p in weal and woe sanctioned by religious solemnities, still exists among the Albanians and other people of the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Adriatic. The custom is wrought into a very interesting story in the tale of Anastasius, vol. i. c. 7.