IX.—MILITARY SPORTS PATRONIZED BY THE LADIES.
Tournaments and justs were usually exhibited at coronations royal marriages, and other occasions of solemnity where pomp and pageantry were thought to be requisite. Our historians abound with details of these celebrated pastimes. The reader is referred to Froissart, Hall, Holinshed, Stow, Grafton, &c. who are all of them very diffuse upon this subject; and in the second volume of the Manners and Customs of the English are several curious representations of these military combats both on horseback and on foot.
One great reason, and perhaps the most cogent of any, why the nobility of the middle ages, nay, and even princes and kings, delighted so much in the practice of tilting with each other, is, that on such occasions they made their appearance with prodigious splendour, and had the opportunity of displaying their accomplishments to the greatest advantage. The ladies also were proud of seeing their professed champions engaged in these arduous conflicts; and, perhaps, a glove or riband from the hand of a favourite female might have inspired the receiver with as zealous a wish for conquest, as the abstracted love of glory; though in general, I presume, both these ideas were united; for a knight divested of gallantry would have been considered as a recreant, and unworthy of his profession.