The barons and knights of Poictou were conquerors, and when the confusion was hushed, they flocked round their outstretched friend and seneschal. They wept, they wrung their hands, they tore their hair, and gave way to every violent expression of grief. They called him the flower of chivalry, and lamented the hour when the lance was forged which had brought him into peril of death.
He heard and understood them well, but was unable to reply. His servants then unarmed him; and, laying him upon a pavesse, or large shield, they bore him gently to the neighbouring fortress of Mortimer.
He died on the following day; and a cavalier more courteous, and more worthily adorned with noble virtues and high qualities, never adorned the English chivalry. He was, in sooth, as gallant a knight as ever laid lance in rest.
The Prince of Wales, the Earl of Cambridge, the Earl of Pembroke, and, indeed, all the English barons and knights then in Guienne, lamented his fate, as the loss of all the English dominions in France; and many right noble and valiant knights of France mourned the death of a generous foe, and they wished he had been made prisoner; for they said he was so sage and imaginative that he would have planned a peace between the two nations.[56]
Chandos was never married. All the estates which he had won by his valour went to his three sisters.
CHAP. II.
PROGRESS OF CHIVALRY IN GREAT BRITAIN,
FROM THE REIGN OF RICHARD II. TO THAT OF HENRY VIII.