But in Richard the whole knightly character appeared in all its martial dignity and splendor. His courage was not the mere savage confidence in superior strength, but the fine display of chivalric exercises. Such was the might of his arm, and such the fierceness of his spirit, that he could sweep from the field whole squadrons of knights. When we see his javelin transfixing a Turk on the walls of Acre[389], the exploits of Grecian heroes appear to be no longer poetical fictions; and when he appears on the plains of Palestine, grasping his lance and riding from wing to wing of the Saracenian host without meeting an enemy who dared to encounter his career, the stories of Arthur and the Round Table seem the calm relations of truth.
No one was more attentive than Richard to the regulations of chivalry. In the course of his crusade he was assailed by some rustics, against whom it was unlawful for a knight to use his sword. He beat them with the flat part of it till it broke, and he then took up stones, and drove them away.[390] Richard’s mind was framed in the finest spirit of chivalric liberality. His largesses, both to his own soldiers and those of his ally, Philip Augustus, while in Sicily during their voyage to Palestine, were so magnificent, that it was acknowledged he had given more treasure in a month than his predecessors in a year.[391]
Like the knights of romance, he revelled in gorgeousness and splendour, and his court resounded with the minstrel’s lay. One of the Provençal poets followed him into Palestine: nor did he entirely want the minds of others to soften into grace his martial spirit; for often his own fancy played with poetical images. In the history of chivalric amusements, Richard is an important character. All his predecessors in sovereignty had forbidden jousts and tournaments; and their absurd regulations had only been violated in the time of Stephen. When Richard was in the Holy Land, he observed the inferiority of the English chivalry to that of the French: his own knights were rude soldiers, with none of the dexterity and skill of their crusading brethren, which could only be acquired in tournaments, the schools of war. Richard broke through the jealousy of adopting foreign customs, and, like a politic monarch, he allowed and encouraged his soldiers to practise martial exercises.[392]
These circumstances and the various other events of his chivalric life, which I have described at length in another work complete the authentic character of our lion-hearted King, for I dare not invest the severe simplicity of history with those golden fictions, which romance has delighted to throw over the story of his Eastern atchievements.
John and Henry III.
There was nothing chivalric in the character and conduct of his brother and successor King John, or he would not have suffered the foreign possessions of England’s crown to be wrested from it. In the reign of Henry III. the flame of chivalry was kept alive by some English knights, who assisted the Emperor in his Milanese wars, and whose prowess was the most distinguished of the day. The crusades to the Holy Land were not altogether forgotten; but the page of our history is marked with the peculiar disgrace that English knights assisted the French in their inhuman war on the Albigenses.
Edward I.
His gallantry at a tournament.
There was much of the chivalric character in Edward I. He was a diligent reader of the ancient romances; and, as soon as he was invested with knighthood, he went to foreign courts, in order that he might display his prowess.[393] For the sake of acquiring military fame, he exposed his person in the Holy Land, and, during his journey homeward, though ill and forespent with travel, he displayed remarkable heroism at a tournament in Savoy.[394] The challenger was the Count of Chalons; but if pontifical authority could have destroyed chivalry, the knights never would have met. The pope feared that some hostility was menaced, and earnestly dissuaded Edward from the tournament. He warned him of his danger: he exhorted him, as a son of the church, to decline these encounters, which the church had forbidden; and he added, that as Edward now was king, he might decline the challenge, as kings were not wont to risk their persons in these perilous shocks. But most of these reasons were so many stimulants of his courage: the more danger, the greater share of honour, and it was beneath the gallantry of his bearing to have thrown his rank as a shield before his knighthood. Followed by a thousand men-at-arms, and archers on horseback and on foot, Edward pressed his bounding steed upon the chosen plain, and the Count of Chalons met him with equal spirit, and nearly twice the number of companions. The English king soon found that no lofty courtesy, no love of chivalric exercises, had influenced the French lord. The graceful tournament soon became a deadly fray. The cause of honour triumphed, and the knights of Chalons were either slain or driven from the field. After many cavaliers on each side had been disabled, the lords of either host encountered. Their lances met and shivered; and if Chalons had been a courteous knight, he would have passed to the other end of the plain, and seized a new lance to continue his emprise; but, maddened at his weapon failing, he threw himself upon Edward, endeavouring to crush him by his prodigious weight. At that moment Edward’s horse started forwards, and the Count was thrown on the ground. His companions raised him; but he was so much bruised by the fall that he cried for mercy. His conduct had put him without the pale of chivalry, and Edward, therefore, treated him like a base-born churl. He beat him with the flat part of his sword; and, refusing to take him as his prisoner, he compelled him to surrender himself to a man of mean condition.[395]
His unchivalric cruelties.
He possessed no knightly courtesy.
Edward’s love of chivalric exercises was imitated by his nobility. Tournaments and jousts were held in various parts of the country; and Kenilworth is particularly marked as famous for its Round Table, to which knights from every nation flocked.[396] In his Scotch wars, therefore, his armies were not deficient in chivalric bravery. At the battle of Falkirk the strength of the Scots was foot, as that of the English was horse; and the repeated charges of Edward’s chivalry decided the fate of that memorable day. In his Welsh wars he had sullied his reputation for knightly generosity by making a public exhibition of the head of his worsted foe, Llewelyn ap Gryffyth, the last sovereign of Wales[397]; and his well-known conduct to Wallace betrayed such an absence of all nobleness of mind, that he forfeited his claims to knightly consideration. The beautiful parts, the embellishments of chivalry, were subservient to his ambition. Before his second war in Scotland he vowed, in Wesminster Abbey, by God, and also by two swans which were introduced into the assembly with great pomp and splendour, that he would punish the Scottish nation for their breach of faith, and for the death of Comyn. Nor did any of the courtesies of chivalry grace Edward: the queen of Bruce and her ladies fell into his power, and in defiance of all chivalric gallantry, he treated them as prisoners. There was something peculiarly ferocious in his treatment of the Countess of Buchan, who was also his captive. Her offence was, that she had crowned Bruce. Edward exclaimed, with the deliberation of malignity, “As she has not used the sword, she shall not perish by the sword; but for her lawless conspiracy, she shall be shut up in a stone and iron chamber, circular as the crown she gave; and at Berwick she shall be suspended in the open air, a spectacle to travellers, and for her everlasting infamy.”[398] And the English Tamerlane did not relent.[399]