But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cognizance who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes infringed. Thus, when Edward the Black Prince made the stout Sir James Audley, his own especial knight, with an annuity of five hundred marks, for gallant services at Poictiers, Audley divided the annuity among his four squires, Delves, Dutton, Foulthurst, and Hawkeston, and also gave them permission to wear his own achievements, in memory of the way in which they had kept at his side on the bloody day of Poictiers.
The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had, however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very battle of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos reconnoitring the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, who was reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the device on the upper vestment of his adversary was the same as his own, blue worked with rays of gold round the border. They each fell to sharp, and not very courteous words. The French lord at length remarked that Sir John’s claim to wear the device was just like “the boastings of you English. You can not invent anything new,” added the angry French knight, “but when you stumble on a pretty novelty, you forthwith appropriate it.” After more angry words they separated, vowing that in next day’s fight, they would make good all their assertions.
As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cognizance, so also was it a rule that knights should only fight with their equals.
For knights are bound to feel no blows
From paltry and unequal foes;
Who, when they slash and cut to pieces,
Do all with civilest addresses.
It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho Panza: “Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest us to be any way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to expect that I should offer to draw my sword against them; for I will not do it in the least; no, do thou then draw and chastise them as thou thinkest fit; but if any knight come to take their part, then will I be sure to step in between thee and danger.”
Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for very strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter reasons, perhaps, than in France. We may probably except Belgium; for there is a living knight there, who obtained his order of chivalry for his pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in furnishing new-laid eggs every morning at the late queen’s table, when every hen but his, in the suburban village of Laecken had ceased to lay!
Dumas, in his “Salvandire,” satirically illustrates how knights were occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of that dashing romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort l’Evêque; and as the king will not grant him permission to leave, he resolves to leave without permission. He makes the attempt by night, descends from the window in the dark, is caught by the thigh on a spike, and is ultimately carried to a cell and a bed within his prison-walls. The following day the governor waits upon him, and questions him upon the motives for his dangerous enterprise. The good governor’s curiosity is founded solely on his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner, that the desire of the latter to escape was not caused by his dissatisfaction with any of the prison arrangements, whether of discipline or diet. The captive signs a certificate to that effect, adding, that his sole motive for endeavoring to set himself free, was because he had never done anything to deserve that he should be put under restraint. A few days after, the governor announces to the recluse that the certificate of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger supposes that it has gained him his liberty; but the governor complacently remarks that it has done better than that, and that the king, in acknowledgment of the strict character of the governor’s surveillance, has created him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If all the prisoners had succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, the governor would probably have been made Knight of the Holy Ghost! The king of France had many such faithful servants; but history affords many examples of a truer fidelity than this; particularly the old romances and legendary history—examples of faithfulness even after death; but, though there may be many more romantic in those chronicles, I doubt if there is any one so touching as the proof of fidelity which a knighted civilian, Sir Thomas Meautis, gave of his affection for Lord Bacon, to whom that ancient servant of the great lawyer, erected a monument at his own cost. Hamond Lestrange relates a curious incident, to show that these two were not divided even after death. “Sir Thomas,” says Lestrange, “was not nearer to him living than dead; for this Sir Thomas ending his life about a score of years after, it was his lot to be inhumed so near his lord’s sepulchre, that in the forming of his grave, part of the viscount’s body was exposed to view; which being espied by a doctor of physic, he demanded the head to be given to him; and did most shamefully disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the continent of so vast treasures of knowledge.”