VI.—OTHER SPORTS OF THE NOBILITY, AND THE CITIZENS AND YEOMEN.
While the principles of chivalry continued in fashion, the education of a nobleman was confined to those principles, and every regulation necessary to produce an accomplished knight was put into practice. In order fully to investigate these particulars, we may refer to the romances of the middle ages; and, generally speaking, dependence may be placed upon their information. The authors of these fictitious histories never looked beyond the customs of their own country; and whenever the subject called for a representation of remote magnificence, they depicted such scenes of splendour as were familiar to them: hence it is, that Alexander the Great, in his legendary life, receives the education of a Norman baron, and becomes expert in hawking, hunting, and other amusements coincident with the time in which the writer lived. Our early poets have fallen into the same kind of anachronism; and Chaucer himself, in the Knight's Tale, speaking of the rich array and furniture of the palace of Theseus, forgets that he was a Grecian prince of great antiquity, and describes the large hall belonging to an English nobleman, with the guests seated at table, probably as he had frequently seen them, entertained with singing, dancing, and other acts of minstrelsy, their hawks being placed upon perches over their heads, and their hounds lying round about upon the pavement below. The two last lines of the poem just referred to are peculiarly applicable to the manners of the time in which the poet lived, when no man of consequence travelled abroad without his hawk and his hounds. In the early delineations, the nobility are frequently represented seated at table, with their hawks upon their heads. Chaucer says,
Ne what hawkes sytten on perchen above,
Ne what houndes lyggen on the flour adoun.
The picture is perfect, when referred to his own time; but bears not the least analogy to Athenian grandeur. In the romance called The Knight of the Swan, it is said of Ydain duchess Roulyon, that she caused her three sons to be brought up in "all maner of good operacyons, vertues, and maners; and when in their adolescence they were somwhat comen to the age of strengthe, they," their tutors, "began to practyse them in shootinge with their bow and arbelstre, [12] to playe with the sword and buckeler, to runne, to just, [13] to playe with a poll-axe, and to wrestle; and they began to bear harneys, [14] to runne horses, and to approve them, as desyringe to be good and faythful knightes to susteyne the faith of God." We are not, however to conceive, that martial exercises in general were confined to the education of young noblemen: the sons of citizens and yeomen had also their sports resembling military combats. Those practised at an early period by the young Londoners seem to have been derived from the Romans; they consisted of various attacks and evolutions performed on horseback, the youth being armed with shields and pointless lances, resembling the ludus Trojæ, or Troy game, described by Virgil. [15] These amusements, according to Fitz Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II., were appropriated to the season of Lent; but at other times they exercised themselves with archery, fighting with clubs and bucklers, and running at the quintain; and in the winter, when the frost set in, they would go upon the ice, and run against each other with poles, in imitation of lances, in a just; and frequently one or both were beaten down, "not always without hurt; for some break their arms, and some their legs; but youth," says my author, "emulous of glory, seeks these exercises preparatory against the time that war shall demand their presence." The like kind of pastimes, no doubt, were practised by the young men in other parts of the kingdom.