“Where he and all his company
Was well arrayed, and daintily,
And all purveyed at device.
There was his purpose to win prize:
With the Lord of the Wellis he
Thought til have done there a journée (day’s battle),
For both they were by certane taillé
Obliged to do there that deed, sauf faillie (without fail).”
Macpherson says, that challenges of this sort were called taillés indentures, because they were bonds of which duplicates were made having indentures taillés answering to each other.
[325] Holingshed, History of Scotland, p. 252. ed. 1587. Wyntown’s Cronykil of Scotland, book ix. c. 11. The Sir David de Lindsay, mentioned above is the knight of whom Sir Walter Scott tells an amusing story in his notes to Marmion, canto i. note 8.
[326] “Or verra l’on s’il y a nul d’entre vous Anglois, qui soit amoureux.” Froissart, vol. ii. c. 55. Lyons’s edit.
[327] Froissart, i. 345.
[328] Berners’ Froissart, vol. i. c. 374.
[329] Froissart, vol. ii. c. 78.
[330] Some writers, confounding the joust with the duel, have said that bearded darts, poisoned needles, razors, and similar weapons, were lawful in the jousts. The instance to support this assertion is the challenge of the Duke of Orleans to Henry IV. of England, recorded by Monstrelet, vol. i. c. 9., where the Duke declined to use them. But Orleans challenged Lancaster to a duel, and not to a chivalric joust.
[331] Segar, of Honor, lib. iii. c. 13.
[332] I do not know when exactly this truly chivalric circumstance occurred. The story is told in a manuscript, in the Lansdowne Collection, British Museum, No. 285. It is described as the challenge of an ancestor of the Earl of Warwick, and the MS. bears date in the days of Edward IV.