It is probable that these Berkeleys were an exceptionally business-like family; but there is similar evidence for other great households, and the intimate history of our noble families is far from justifying that particular view of chivalry which has lately found its most brilliant exponent in William Morris. The custom of modern Florence, where you may ring at a marble palace and buy from the porter a bottle of the marquis’s own wine, is simply a legacy of the Middle Ages.[193] The English nobles of Chaucer’s day were of course far behind their Florentine brethren in this particular direction; but that current was already flowing strongly which, a century later, was to create a new nobility of commerce and wealth in England.
The direct effect of the great French war on chivalry must be reserved for discussion in another chapter; but it is pertinent to point out here one indirect, though very potent, influence. Apart from the business-like way in which towns were pillaged, the custom of ransoming prisoners imported a very definite commercial element into knightly life. In the wars of the 12th and early 13th centuries, when the knights and their mounted retainers formed the backbone of the army on both sides, and were sometimes almost the only combatants, it is astounding to note how few were killed even in decisive battles. At Tinchebrai (1106), which gave Henry I. the whole duchy of Normandy, “the Knights were mostly admitted to quarter; only a few escaped; the rest, 400 in all, were taken prisoners.... Not a single knight on Henry’s side had been slain.” At the “crushing defeat” of Brenville, three years later, “140 knights were captured, but only three slain in the battle.” At Bouvines, one of the greatest and most decisive battles of the Middle Ages (1214), even the vanquished lost only 170 knights out of 1500. At Lincoln, in 1217, the victors lost but one knight, and the vanquished apparently only two, though 400 were captured; and even at Lewes (1264) the captives were far more numerous than the slain.[194] It was, in fact, difficult to kill a fully-armed man except by cutting his throat as he lay on the ground, and from this the victors were generally deterred not only by the freemasonry which reigned among knights and squires of all nations, but still more by the wicked waste of money involved in such a proceeding. “Many a good prisoner” is a common phrase from Froissart’s pen; and, in recounting the battle of Poitiers, he laments that the archers “slew in that affray many men who could not come to ransom or mercy.” Though both this and the parallel phrase which he uses at Crécy leave us in doubt which thought was uppermost in his mind, yet he speaks with unequivocal frankness about the slaughter of Aljubarrota: “Lo! behold the great evil adventure that befel that Saturday; for they slew as many prisoners as would well have been worth, one with another, four hundred thousand franks!”[195] In the days when the great chronicler of chivalry wrote thus, why should not Lord Berkeley deal in Scottish prisoners as his modern descendant might deal in Canadian Pacifics?
It is, indeed, a fatal misapprehension to assume that a society in which coin was necessarily scarce was therefore more indifferent to money than our own age of millionaires and multi-millionaires. The underlying fallacy is scarcely less patent than that which prompted a disappointed mistress to say of her cook, “I did think she was honest, for she couldn’t even read or write!” Chaucer’s contemporaries blamed the prevalent mammon-worship even more loudly and frequently than men do now, with as much sincerity perhaps, and certainly with even more cause. Bribery was rampant in every part of 14th-century society, especially among the highest officials and in the Church. Chaucer’s satire on the Archdeacon’s itching palm is more than borne out by official documents; and his contemporaries speak even more bitterly of the venality of justice in general. How, indeed, could it be otherwise, in an age when the right of holding courts was notoriously sought mainly for its pecuniary advantages? In “Piers Plowman,” Lady Meed (or, in modern slang, the Almighty Dollar) rules everywhere, and not least in the law courts. Gower speaks no less plainly. The Judges (he says) are commonly swayed by gifts and personal considerations: “men say, and I believe it, that justice nowadays is in the balance of gold, which hath so great virtue; for, if I give more than thou, thy right is not worth a straw. Right without gifts is of no avail with Judges.”[196] What Gower recorded in the most pointed Latin and French he could muster, the people whose voice he claimed to echo wrote after their own rough fashion in blood. The peasants who rose in 1381 fastened first of all upon what seemed their worst enemies. “Then began they to show forth in deeds part of their inmost purpose, and to behead in revenge all and every lawyer in the land, from the half-fledged pleader to the aged justice, together with all the jurors of the country whom they could catch. For they said that all such must first be slain before the land could enjoy true freedom.”[197]
CHAPTER XVI
HUSBANDS AT THE CHURCH DOOR
“Io ho uno grandissimo dubbio di voi, ch’io mi credo che se ne salvino tanti pochi di quegli che sono in istato di matrimonio, che de’ mille, novecento novantanove credo che sia matrimonio del diavolo.”—St. Bernardino of Siena, Sermon xix
But we have as yet considered only one side of chivalry. While blushing, like Gibbon, to unite such discordant names, let us yet remember that the knight was “the champion of God and the ladies,” and may therefore fairly claim to be judged in this latter capacity also.
Even here, however, we find him in practice just as far below either his avowed ideal or the too favourable pictures of later romance. The feudal system, with which knighthood was in fact bound up, precluded chivalry to women in its full modern sense. Land was necessarily held by personal service; therefore the woman, useless in war, must necessarily be given with her land to some man able to defend it and her. As even Gautier admits, the woman was too often a mere appendage of the fief; and he quotes from a chanson de geste, in which the emperor says to a favoured knight—