INTRODUCTION
Most of us owe our early impressions of the tournament to the delightful account of the “Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms” of Ashby de la Zouche, in the county of Leicester, given by Sir Walter Scott in his fine romance Ivanhoe. But that eminent novelist, in presenting to his readers the picture of a pas d’armes of the times of the lion-hearted Richard, took a poet’s licence by describing a jousting and mêlée such as belonged, in many details, to a time later than Richard’s by some two and a half centuries. The knightly armour of the reign of King Richard was of chain-mail, while that of the times of Henry VI was, of course, a complete harness of plate. The first-named equipment is thus described by Sainte-Palaye: “Une lance forte et dificile à rompre, un haubert ou haubergeon, c’est à dire, une double cotte de mailles, tissues de fer, à l’epreuve de l’épée, étoient les armes assignées aux Chevaliers.”[1]
Sir Walter’s account is thus hopelessly misleading in regard to its period, though admirably worked out in many other respects. There are ancient romances of great historic value, in that they give nearly contemporaneous details of the tournament of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and represent many features which may be regarded as correct in the light of a close comparison with other records. That of Petit Jehan de Saintré, written by Anthoine de la Sale, in 1459, is one of these, and we owe much enlightenment to it.
There is great confusion among the works of chroniclers in regard to the dates of many tournaments, and often it is impossible to reconcile their statements. The differences are, however, usually but slight.
Mr. ffoulkes, in his Preface to this work, draws attention to the large amount of fable and exaggeration so often interwoven in many accounts given of the tournament, and to the necessity for presenting the subject historically in its true light. In order to do this one must discard much that has been written concerning it throughout the ages and go back to original information, carefully sifted and compared, in order to arrive at some degree of truth.
As a rule, illuminations in MSS. must not be estimated at their face value, for, besides being often fantastic, they are rarely contemporaneous with the events they portray; and the narrations of chroniclers were mostly written some time after the events in question, and often introduce details which really belong to a later age. Thus the illustrated Froissart in the British Museum,[2] which dates from about the end of the fifteenth century, pictures a joust at the tilt at the pas d’armes held at St. Inglevert in the year 1389, a tournament described in our [chapter IV]; but a tilt or barrier placed between the combatants, along which they rode in opposite directions, was first employed about the end of the first quarter of the century following. Such anachronisms are very common in records of the tournament, so that care and discrimination are required in their interpretation.
The works of Meyrick and Hewitt are of great historical value, and they afford much information carefully gathered from original documents. This information has been copiously made use of by more recent authors with but a scant or even no acknowledgment. It should be remembered, however, that these eminent and devoted historians were pioneers, so to speak, and much has been learnt of the tournament since their day; yet their labours form excellent foundations for the building up of a scientific superstructure.
The admirable version of Freydal, by Querin von Leitner, pictures the jousts of the Emperor Maximilian I, especially those of the last quarter of the fifteenth century. It presents a veritable mine of information concerning the tournament of that period, placing the technique of the subject on a sound basis. Even this account, however, is hardly contemporaneous.
The interest in the subject flagged for a season, and until some quarter of a century ago but little more was heard of it. It was Wendelin Boeheim, in his Waffenkunde, who set the ball rolling again; and since his book was written a number of learned papers have appeared in England and Germany dealing with the tournament, though in French literature the subject has received but little attention. Among such papers those by Viscount Dillon, published in Archæologia and the Archæological Journal, are very important. This writer has corrected many mistakes made by the earlier authors and persistently handed down from one generation to another. Most of the writers would appear to have regarded as gospel truths all statements made by Meyrick. These mistakes are most difficult to eradicate from our literature, for their correction has been made in publications such as those mentioned above, which are unfortunately only read by a select few.
All these learned books and scattered papers treat the subject more or less sectionally, and, so far as I know, there has been no work of any importance published which attempts to deal with the subject as a whole from start to finish. This manifest want I have endeavoured to supply in the present volume.
My position for many years, up to the date of the war, as an official of the Verein für Historische Waffenkunde, gave me access to a mass of original information concerning what may be fitly termed the German period. Such information is not readily got at, and much of it has been embodied in the present volume. It is to such sources that we must turn for many details, more particularly for those of a technical nature. These records, however, mainly relate to tournaments of the last quarter of the fifteenth century (after the Burgundian Chronicles cease), to the whole of the sixteenth, and so up to the time when the institution fell into desuetude.
My thanks are due to Mr. Basil Anderton, m.a., the Public Librarian of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for reading over parts of my MS. and for drawing attention to many books bearing on the subject of the tournament; to Mr. Charles J. ffoulkes, B.Litt., f.s.a., Curator of the Armouries of the Tower of London; to Mr. Frederick Walter Dendy, d.c.l., and Mr. Samuel T. Meynell, for some valuable suggestions; and to the University of Cambridge for the loan of books.
R. COLTMAN CLEPHAN
Tynemouth,
Northumberland