7. I shall do diligence, wheresoever I hear that there are any murderers, traitors, or masterful robbers, who oppress the king’s lieges and poor people, to bring them to the law at my power.
8. I shall maintain and uphold the noble state of chivalry, with horse, armour, and other knightly habiliments, and shall help and succour those of the same order, at my power, if they have need.
9. I shall enquire and seek to have the knowledge and understanding of all the articles and points contained in the book of chivalry. All these promises to observe, keep, and fulfil, I oblige myself: so help me God by my own hand, and by God himself.[69]
Mutual chivalry between the Scotch and English courts.
Chivalric honours formed sometimes a bond of connection between the Scottish and the English sovereigns. When Prince Henry (afterwards King Henry II.) arrived at the age of sixteen years, his father Geoffry sent him through England with a numerous and splendid retinue into Scotland, to receive the honour of knighthood from his mother’s uncle, King David. The ceremony was performed with great pomp, in the midst of a prodigious concourse of the English, Scottish, and Norman nobility; and the Prince spent about eight months in the court of Scotland, perfecting himself in military exercises.[70]
A few years afterwards chivalric honors were conferred by Henry II. of England upon Malcolm II. But the granting of knighthood was not regarded as a matter of mere courtesy. When the kings met at Carlisle, in 1158, the previous cession of the northern provinces by Malcolm to Henry gave rise to such heats and feuds, that the Scottish monarch departed without receiving the honour he desired. In the next year, however, Henry, by excellent address, persuaded Malcolm to accompany him to France for the recovery of Tholouse, which he claimed as part of the inheritance of Eleanor his queen; and the honor which Henry had refused in the last year to give him at Carlisle, he now conferred upon him at Tours in France, in the course of his return from the Tholouse expedition.[71]
In 1249 when King Alexander III. repaired from Scotland to York to be married to the Princess Margaret, daughter of Henry III. of England, the ceremonies of chivalry preceded those of marriage. Alexander received the ensigns of knighthood from the King of England on Christmas day, and the hand of his bride on the following morning.[72] Tournaments were occasionally held at the Scottish court, and strangers were courteously received.[73] Knights from Scotland are frequently mentioned in the old chronicles as having won the prize in the chivalric festivals in France and England. In the wars of the Scots with Edward III. no circumstances of a character peculiarly knightly can be selected; and in the intervals of truce chivalry could not, as in the wars between England and France, give the guise of friendship to occasional intercourse. In the year 1341, a time of peace, Edward passed some time in Scotland. Tournaments and jousts formed the occupation of the strangers and the natives; but neither party regarded the gentle rules of the tourney, and two Scottish knights and one English knight were killed.[74]
French knights’ opinions of Scottish chivalry.
Nothing could contribute more powerfully to the advancement of chivalry in the north than the frequent intercourse between the Scots and the French. The latter people, however, would not always acknowlege the chivalric character of their allies. In the year 1385, a troop of French knights joined the Scottish king; and they soon were grieved that they had ever left their own country. They complained to their leader Sir John of Vienne of their unhappy lot. They had no tapestried halls and goodly castles as in France; and instead of soft beds their couches were as hard as the ground.
Sir John was a true son of chivalry; and he said to them, “Sirs, it behoves us to suffer a little, and to speak fair since we are in the perils of war. Let us take in cheerfulness that which we find. We cannot always be at Paris, Dijon, Beaune, or at Chalons. It behoveth them that live in the world thinking to have honour, to suffer poverty as well as to enjoy wealth.”