Knights, irregularly made so, were unknighted with little ceremony. Although each duly dubbed knight could confer the same honor on any deserving such distinction, it was necessary that the individual about to be so honored should be a gentleman. In France, if this rule was infringed, the unlucky knight had his spurs hacked off, on a dunghill. Occasionally the unknighted person was fined. It may be observed, however, that the king might make a knight of a villain, if the sovereign were so minded. That is, a king could raise any of his own subjects to the rank, if he thought proper. Not so with sovereigns and persons not their subjects. The Emperor Sigismund, for instance, when visiting Paris, in 1415, knighted a person who was below the rank of gentleman. The French people were indignant at this, as an act of sovereignty in another monarch’s dominions. If this chevalier was not unknighted, the reason, probably, was that the Emperor might not be offended. It is said, that in Naples it has never been necessary for a man to be noble, a gentleman in fact, in order to be a knight. This may readily be credited. In Naples the fact of a man being a brute beast does not incapacitate him from exercising the office even of a king.
After all, there appears to have been some uncertainty in the observance of the law on the subject. In England the custom which allowed knights to dub other knights, very soon fell into disuse, so that there are fewer examples of unknighting in this country than in France, where the custom prevailed down to the middle of the sixteenth century; and its abuses, of course, rendered the unmaking of illegally constituted knights, if not common, at least an occasional occurrence. Henry III., as I have said in another page, summoned tenants in capite to receive knighthood from himself, and authorized tenants of mesne lords to receive the honor from whom they pleased. But there must have been considerable disrating of these last distinguished persons, or such an abuse of creation, so to speak, that the privilege was stopped, except by special permission of the king. Some places, in France, however, declared that they held a prescriptive right for burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of noblemen, without the royal permission. Hallam, quoting Villaret, says that burgesses, in the great commercial towns, were considered as of a superior class to the roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi-nobility.
Ridiculous as modern knights, whether of town or country, have been made upon the stage, it is indisputable that in some cases the ridicule has not been what painters call “loaded,” and the reality was in itself a caricature. I have read somewhere of one city gentleman, who was knighted during his shrievalty, and who forthwith emancipated himself a little from business, and aired his chivalrous “sir” in gay company. He was once, however, sorely puzzled on receiving a note of invitation from a lady whose soirées were the especial delight of her guests, and whose note ended with the initials, so absurdly placed at the termination of an invitation in English. R. S. V. P., “réponse, s’il vous plait.” The newly-coined knight, after allusions to the pressure of business, accepted the hospitality offered him through the note, remarking at the same time, that “all work and no play made Jack a dull boy,” and that he knew nothing more to his taste, after a long day’s application, than what her ladyship’s note appeared to present to him in the initials at its foot; namely, a Regular Small Vist Party. If this anecdote be not apocryphal, I suspect that the knight’s remark may have sprung less from ignorance than humor, and that his reading of the initials was meant as a censure upon an absurd fashion.
While speaking of city knights at home, and their humor, I will avail myself of the opportunity to give an instance of wit in a poor chevalier of the city of Paris, whose whole wealth consisted of a few unproductive acres near the capital, and whose son had just married a wealthy heiress of very low degree. “Il fait bien,” said the old knight, “il fume mes terres!”
This was hardly courteous; but elevated courtesy was never wanting among true knights, in the very rudest of times.
Strange contrasts of feeling were sometimes exhibited. Thus, when the English were besieging Orleans, they grew suddenly tired of their bloody work, on Christmas-day, and asked for a truce while they ate their pudding. The request was not only readily granted, but the French knights, hearing that the day was dull in the English camp, obtained the permission of the bastard Dunois, to send over some musicians to enliven the melancholy leaguers. The band played lustily during the whole period of the truce, but the last notes had scarcely ceased, and the “Godons” as Jeanne Darc rather corruptively called our great sires, who were too much addicted to swearing, had hardly ceased uttering their thanks for the musical entertainment, when their cannonade was renewed by the besiegers with such vigor, that the French knights swore—harmony had never before been paid in such hard coin.
There was little ill-feeling consequent upon this. The pages in either army were allowed to amuse themselves by slaying each other in a two days’ duel, presided over by the respective generals-in-chief. This was chivalrous proof that neither party bore malice, and they beat out each other’s brains on the occasion, in testimony of universal good-will, with as much delighted feeling as if they had all been Irishmen. A further proof of absence of individual rancor may be seen in the fact, that Suffolk sent a gift of pigs, dates, and raisins, for the dessert of Dunois; and the latter acknowledged the present by forwarding to the English general some fur for his robe—Suffolk having complained bitterly of the cold of that memorable February, 1429.
This reminds me of a similar interchange of courtesy between French and English antagonists, in later times. When brave Elliot was defending Gibraltar from gallant Crillon, the former, who never ate meat, suffered greatly (as did his scurvy-stricken men) from a scarcity of vegetables. Crillon had more than he wanted, and he sent of his superabundance, most liberally, to the foe whom he respected. A whole cart-load of carrots and compliments made general and garrison glad, and Elliot was as profuse in his gratitude as he was bound to be. It may be remembered that similar exchanges of courtesy and creature-comforts took place at Sebastopol. Sir Edmund Lyons sent Admiral Nachimoff a fat buck, a gift which the large-minded hero of the Sinope butchery repaid by a hard Dutch cheese. It may be said too that the buck would have been more appropriately sent to the half-starved English heroes who were rotting in the trenches.
There were some other naval knights of old, touching whom I may here say a word.
The history of the sea-kings or sea-knights, whose noble vocation it was to descend from the north with little but ballast in the holds of their vessels, and to return thither heavily laden with plunder and glory, is tolerably well known to the majority of readers. The story of the Flemish pirates, who, nearly eight centuries ago, carried terror to, and brought spoil from the Mediterranean, is far less familiar. This story is well illustrated in the “Biographie des hommes remarquables de la Flandres Occidentale,” of whom the authors are M. Octave Delepierre, the accomplished Belgian consul in this country, and Mr. Carton.