We come upon another social trait, when we find the author lamenting that, however much it becometh a gentleman to be acquainted with hawking and hunting, yet that these pastimes are so abused by being followed to excess, that “gentlemen will almost do nothing else, or at the least can do that better than any other thing.” To the excess alluded to does the author trace the fact that “there are so many raw soldiers when time of war requireth their help. This is the cause of so many unlearned gentlemen, which, as some say, they understand not the inkhorn terms that are lately crept into our language. And no marvel it is, though they do not understand them, whereas in their own hawking and hunting terms they be ignorants as ‘Auvent’ and ‘Retrouvre,’ which they call ‘Houent’ and ‘Retrires.’” What better could be expected from men who had given up the practice of the long bow to take to the throwing of dice? But there was now as wild extravagance of dress as ignorance of uncommon things, in the class of foolish knights and gentlemen. This is alluded to in the chapter on dress, wherein it is said that “the sum of one hundred pounds is not to be accounted in these days to be bestowed of apparel for one gentleman, but in times past, a chamber gown was a garment which dwelt with an esquire of England twenty years”—and I believe that the knights were as frugal as the esquires. “Then flourished the laudable simplicity of England,” exclaims the author; “there were no conjurors and hot scholars, applying our minds to learne our new trifle in wearing our apparel.” Upon the point of fashions, the author writes with a feeling as if he despaired of his country. “The Englishman,” he observes, “changeth daily the fashion of his garment; sometimes he delighteth in many guards, welts and pinks, and pounces. Sometimes again, to the contrary, he weareth his garments as plain as a sack; yet faileth he not to change also that plainness if any other new fangle be invented. This is the vanity of his delight.” And this vanity was common to all men of high degree in his time—to those to whom “honor” was due, from men of less degree—and these were “dukes, earls, lords, and such like, of high estate,” as well as to those who were entitled to the “worship” of smaller men, and these were “knights, esquires, and gentlemen.” There is here, I think, some confusion in the way such terms are applied; but I have not made the extract for the purpose of grounding a comment upon it, but because it illustrates one portion of my subject, and shows that while “your honor” was once the due phrase of respect to the peerage, “your worship” was the reverential one paid to knights, esquires, and gentlemen. We still apply the terms, if not to the different degrees named above, yet quite as confusedly, or as thoughtlessly with respect to the point whether there be anything honorable or worshipful in the individual addressed. This, however, is only a form lingering among the lower classes. As matters of right, however, “his honor” still sits in Chancery, and “your worship” is to be seen behind any justice’s table.
We will now return to a race of kings who, whatever their defects, certainly did not lack some of the attributes of chivalry.
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
THE STUARTS.
“May’t be pleasure to a reader’s ear,
That never drew save his own country’s air,
To hear such things related.”
Heywood, the English Traveller
It is an incontrovertible fact, that the king of England, who least of all resembled a knight in his warlike character, was the one who surpassed all his brother sovereigns in his knightly spirit as a lover. I allude to James I. The godson of Charles IX. of France was in his childhood, what his godfather had never been, a dirty, droll boy. He is the only king who ever added an original remark to a royal speech set down for him to deliver. The remark in question was, probably, nearly as long as the speech, for James was but four years old when he gave utterance to it. He had been rolling about on the throne impishly watching, the while, the grim lords to whom he, ultimately, recited a prepared speech with great gravity and correctness. At the end of his speech, he pointed to a split in the tiled roof of the hall, or to a rent in the canopy of the throne, and announced to the lords and others present the indisputable fact, that “there was a hole in the parliament.”
The precocious lad passed no very melancholy boyhood in Stirling Castle, till the Raid of Ruthven took him from his natural protectors, and placed him in the hands of Gowrie. His escape thence exhibited both boldness and judgment in a youth of sixteen; and when Frederick II., of Denmark, gave him the choice of the two Danish princesses for a wife, no one thought that so gallant a king was undeserving of the compliment. When it was, however, discovered that the royal Dane required James either to accept a daughter or surrender the Orkney and Shetland islands, as property illegally wrested from Denmark, men began to look upon the Danish king as guilty of uncommonly sharp practice toward the sovereign of the Scots. A world of trouble ensued, which it is not my business to relate, although were I inclined to be discursive—which, of course, I am not—I might find great temptation to indulge therein, upon this very subject. Suffice it then to say, that a world of trouble ensued before James made his selection, and agreed to take, rather than prayed to have granted to him, the hand of Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Frederick II.