Fall not for him who, like the swan,
Wears his best plumes, sings sweetly on,
Sounds his last song—and dies!
With regard to the burial of knights, we may observe that, down to a comparatively late period the knights and barons of England were buried with much solemn splendor. At the obsequies of a baron, there was an official present who wore the armor of the defunct, mounted a horse in full trappings, and carried the banner, shield, and helmet, of the deceased. So, in Henry the Eighth’s time, Lord William Courtney was buried with the ceremonies observed at the funeral of an earl, to which rank it had been the king’s intention to elevate him. On this occasion Sir Edmund Carew, a gallant knight, rode into the church in full armor, with the point of his battle-axe downward—a token, like a reversed torch, of death.
The latest instance I have met with of a union of ancient and modern customs at the burial of a knight, occurred at Treves, in 1781, at the interment of the Teutonic knight, General Frederick Casimir. This gallant soldier’s charger was led to the brink of the grave in which the body had just been deposited; the throat of the steed was swiftly cut by an official, and the carcass of the horse was flung down upon the coffin of the knight. Such sacrifices were once common enough. At the funerals in England of cavalry soldiers, or of mounted officers, the horse is still processionally conducted to the brink of the grave, but we are too wisely economical to leave him there, or to fling him into it.
Where chivalry had great perils and temptations, we need not be surprised to find that there were many scions of noble houses who either declined to win spurs by encountering mortal danger, or who soon grew weary of making the attempt. Let us, then, consider the unambitious gentlemen who grew “tired of it.”
THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW “TIRED OF IT.”
“How blest are they that waste their weary hours
In solemn groves and solitary bower
Where neither eye nor ear