[264] Alfonso de’ Liguori, Theologia moralis, iii. 151, vol. i. 249.
[265] Ibid. iii. 152, vol. i. 249.
[266] Ibid. iii. 151, vol. i. 249.
[267] Meyrick, op. cit. i. 25
Adherence to truth and especially perfect fidelity to a promise were strongly insisted upon by the code of Chivalry.[268] However exacting or absurd the vow might be, a knight was compelled to perform it in all the strictness of the letter. A man frequently promised to grant whatever another should ask, and he would have lost the honour of his knighthood if he had declined from his word.[269] We are told by Lancelot du Lac that when King Artus had given his word to a knight to make him a present of his wife, he would neither listen to the lamentations of the unfortunate woman, nor to any representations which could be made him; he replied that a king must not go from his word, and the queen was accordingly delivered to the knight.[270] The knights taken in war were readily allowed liberty for the time they asked, on their word of honour that they would return of their own accord, whenever it should be required.[271] So great, it is said, was the knight's respect for an oath, a promise, or a vow, that when they lay under any of these restrictions, they appeared everywhere with little chains attached to their arms or habits to show all the world that they were slaves to their word; nor were these chains taken off till their promise had been performed, which sometimes extended to a term of four or five years.[272] It cannot be expected, of course, that reality should have always come up to the ideal. In the thirteenth century the Count of Champagne declared that he confided more in the lowest of his subjects than in his knights.[273] Moreover, the knightly duty of sincerity seems to have gone little beyond the formal fulfilment of an engagement. “The age of Chivalry was an age of chicane, and fraud, and trickery, which were not least conspicuous among the knightly classes.”[274] It is significant that the English law of the thirteenth century, though quite willing to admit in vague phrase that no one should be suffered to gain anything by fraud, was inclined to hold that a man has himself to thank if he is misled by deceit, the king’s court generally providing no remedy for him who to his disadvantage had trusted the word of a liar.[275] Towards the end of the Middle Ages and later, crimes against the Mint and the offence of counterfeiting seals, usually accompanied by that of forging letters or official documents, were extremely common in England;[276] and false weights, false measures, and false pretences of all kinds were ordinary instruments of commerce.[277]
[268] Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, foll. 18 b, 31 b, 34 b. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V. i. 84. Sainte-Palaye, Mémoires sur l’ancienne chevalerie, i. 76 sq.
[269] Mills, History of Chivalry, p. 152.
[270] Lancelot du Lac, vol. ii. fol. 2 a.
[271] Sainte-Palaye, op. cit. i. 135.
[272] Ibid. i. 236 sq.