Knights and their days

by Dr. Doran

Each man attached a small green cross, in cloth, to the top of his sleeve; and joyfully followed Baldwin to the field. The count was no more able to keep his word than a recruiting sergeant who promises a recruit that he shall be made a field-marshal. Nor was he to blame, for the greater part of his new allies perished; but enough were left to make a score of very doughty knights.

Admirable sailors were the Northmen, especially the Anglo-Normans, whether with respect to manœuvring or courage. “Close quarters” formed the condition on which they liked to be with an enemy. “Grapple and board” was their system as soon as they had created a little confusion among the enemy with their cross-bows and slings. The “mariners” in those days fought in armor, with heavy swords, spears, and battle-axes. They were well furnished too with bags of quick-lime, the contents of which they flung into the eyes of their adversaries, when they could get to windward of them, an end which they always had in view.

The first regular naval battle fought between the English and the French was conducted by the former after the fashion above mentioned. It was during the reign of Henry III., when Louis of France, by the destruction of his army at “the fair of Lincoln,” was shut up in London, and depended on the exertions of his wife, Blanche of Castile, for his release. Blanche sent eighty large ships, besides many smaller vessels, from Calais, under a piratical commander, the celebrated Eustace Le Moine. Hubert de Burgh had only forty vessels wherewith to proceed against this overwhelming force; and on board of these the English knights proceeded, under protest and with a world of grumbling, at being compelled to fight on the waters when they had no sea-legs, and were accustomed to no battles but those on land. No heed was taken of protest or grumbling; the forty vessels were loosened from their moorings, and away went the reluctant but strong-boned land sailors, all in shirts of mail in place of Guernsey jackets, to contend for the first time with a French fleet. The English ships contrived to get between Calais and the enemy’s vessels, and fell upon the latter in their rear. The English bowmen handled their favorite weapons with a deadly dexterity; and as soon as their vessels were made fast to those of the French, out flew the quick-lime, flung by the English, and carried by the wind into the faces of the French. While these were stamping with pain, screwing their eyes up to look through the lime-dust, or turning their backs to avoid it, the English boarders made a rush, cut down men, hacked away the rigging, and so utterly defeated the French, unaccustomed to this sort of fighting, that of the great French fleet only fifteen vessels escaped. The number of Gallic knights and inferior officers captured was very large. As for Eustace le Moine, he had slunk below to avoid the lime-powder and battle-axes. He was seized by Richard Fitzroy, King John’s illegitimate son. Fitzroy refused to give the recreant quarter, but hewed off his head on the taffrail, and sent it from town to town through England as a pleasant exhibition.

Errant knights in quest of adventure, and anxious to secure renown, less frequently visited England than other countries. They appear to have had a mortal dislike of the sea. This dislike was common to the bravest and greatest among them. I may cite, as an instance, the case of the Duke of Orleans and his cavaliers, captured at Agincourt, and brought over to England, from Calais to Dover, by the gallant and lucky Henry. The latter walked the deck during a heavy ground swell, with as much enjoyment as though he had been to the matter born. The French prince and his knights, on the other hand, were as ignorant of the sea and as uneasy upon it as a modern English Lord of the Admiralty. They suffered horribly, and one and all declared that they would rather be daily exposed to the peril of battle, than cross the straits of Dover once a month.

Nevertheless, stray knights did occasionally brave the dangers of the deep, and step ashore on the coast of Kent with a challenge to all comers of equal degree. We have an instance of this sort of adventurer in Jacques de Lelaing, whose story is told in this volume. We hear of another in the nameless knight of Aragon, who in the reign of Henry V. set all London and many a provincial baronial hall in commotion by his published invitation to all knights of the same rank as himself, to come and give him a taste of their quality in a bout at two-edged sword, axe, and dagger.

The challenge was promptly accepted by stout Sir Robert Cary. Sir Robert was a poor knight, with nothing to lose, for his sire had lost all he possessed before Sir Robert’s time, by being faithful to poor Richard II., a virtue, for the exercise of which he was punished by forfeiture of his estates, decreed against him by Henry IV. The disinherited knight, therefore, had a chance of winning land as well as honor, should he subdue the arrogant Aragonese. The two met in the then fashionable district of Smithfield, and the Devonshire swordsman, after a bloody and long-enduring fight, so thoroughly vanquished the Spaniard, that the king, who delighted in such encounters, and who was especially glad when victory was won by the side he most favored, not only restored to Sir Robert the forfeited paternal estates, but he also authorized him to wear the arms of the much-bruised knight from beyond sea.

At a later period knightly estates went in the service of another king. Sir Henry Cary risked life and property in the cause of Charles I., and while he preserved the first, he was deprived of nearly all the latter. The head of the family, no longer a knight, if I remember rightly, was residing at Torr Bay, when the Old Chevalier was about to attempt to regain the three crowns which, according to no less than a French archiepiscopal authority, James II. had been simple enough to lose for one mass. At this period, the English king that would be, sent the Duke of Ormond to the head of the Cary family, and not only conveyed to him an assurance that his services to the Stuarts had not been forgotten; but, by way of guarantee that future, and perhaps more than knightly honors should be heaped upon him, in case of victory declaring for the Stuart cause, the chevalier sent him the portraits of James II., and of that monarch’s wife, Mary of Modena. Similar portraits are to be found among the cherished treasures of many English families; and these are supposed to have been originally distributed among various families, as pledges from the giver, that for swords raised, money lost, or blood shed in the cause of the Stuarts, knighthood and honors more substantial should follow as soon as “the king” should “get his own again.”

To revert to Charles I., it may be added that he was not half so energetic in trying to keep his own as his grandson was in trying to recover what had been lost. An incident connected with the battle of Rowton Heath will serve to exemplify this. Never did king have better champion than Charles had on that day, in the able knight Sir Marmaduke Langdale. The knight in question had gained a marked advantage over his adversary, the equally able Poyntz. To cheer the king, then beleaguered in Chester Castle, with the news, Sir Marmaduke despatched Colonel Shakerley. He could not have commissioned a better man. The colonel contrived to get into Chester after crossing the Dee in a tub, which he worked with one hand, while he towed his horse after him with the other. He delivered his message, and offered to convey an answer or instructions back to Sir Marmaduke, and by the same means, in a quarter of an hour. The king hesitated; some sanction required for a certain course of action proposed by Sir Marmaduke was not given, and Poyntz recovered his lost ground, defeated the royal horse, and thus effectually prevented Charles from obtaining access to Scotland and Montrose.

I have given some illustrations of the means by which knighthood was occasionally gained: an amusing illustration remains to be told. Dangeau, in his memoirs, speaks of two French peeresses who lived chiefly upon asses’ milk, but who, nevertheless, became afflicted with some of the ills incident to humanity, and were ordered to take physic. They were disgusted with the prescription, but got over the difficulty charmingly by physicking the donkey. It was not an unusual thing in France for very great people to treat their vices as they did their ailments, by a vicarious treatment. Catherine de Medicis is one out of many instances of this. She was desirous of succeeding in some great attempt, and set down her failure to the account of her sins. She instantly declared that she would atone for the latter, provided her desires were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who would go from France to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three steps he advanced should go back one. The wished-for success was achieved, and after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong enough, and sufficiently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The royal pledge was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the pilgrim, who was a soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some say he was a merchant; but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted, ennobled, and enriched him. His arms were a cross and a branch of palm tree. We are not told if he had a motto. It, at all events, could not have been nulla vestigia retrorsum. They who affirm that the pilgrim was a merchant, declare that his descendants lost their nobility by falling again into commercial ways—a course which was considered very derogatory, and indeed, degrading, in those exclusive days.

I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly treated many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the degree of a knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, many a squire may have outdone his master in bravery; and indeed, many a simple soldier may have done the same, but the memory of it could not go down to posterity, because the valiant actor was not noble enough to be worthy of distinction. In our English army, much the same rule still obtains. Illustrious incompetence is rewarded with “orders,” but plain John Smith, who has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a couple of sovereigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by getting drunk with his friends. Our heraldic writers approve of this dainty way of conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work on Heraldry and Chivalry, published at Worcester “sixty years since,” says—“We must consider that had heraldry distributed its honors indiscriminately, and with too lavish a hand, making no distinction between gentry and plebeians, the glory of arms would have been lost, and their lustre less refulgent.”