In the reign of Richard II, Henry, Duke of Hereford, sent, by Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, good advice and counsel to the King, which was purposely misrepresented, and mixed with offensive words, of which the Duke of Hereford being informed, he went to the King and explained the message he had sent; but denied the false one delivered in his name, and begged that he might combat the Duke of Norfolk, and maintain the truth. Leave was granted, and time and place appointed; but when they appeared and were ready to draw their swords, the King, who had submitted the matter to Parliament, commanded them to forbear, banished the Duke of Norfolk for ever, and his cousin of Hereford for a term of years: the meeting took place in 1398, near Coventry.
In the reign of Edward III, a most singular meeting took place between William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and Robert, Bishop of Salisbury, for the right of the castle of Old Sarum. The Bishop had laid claim to it, but the Earl declared himself ready to defend his possession by duel, to which the prelate consented. The day and place were appointed, when the parties were to fight by proxies. The Bishop brought to the lists his champion, cloaked with a white garment down to the knee, above which was a cassock embroidered with the episcopal arms, and with him a knight carrying a shield and staff. The Earl also led his champion by the hand into the lists, cloaked in the same manner, with two knights attending him; but while they were viewing and comparing arms, and searching whether any of them had amulets, charms, or enchantments about them, an order came from the King to adjourn the combat, and the matter was arranged.
From the commencement of the war of the roses, the trial by battle fell into desuetude. One of the latest instances of this ordeal was in the reign of Elizabeth, in 1571, when a suit having been instituted for recovery of certain manorial rights in the isle of Hartie, Kent, the defendant offered to maintain his claim by duel. The plaintiff accepted the challenge, champions were appointed, and the requisite arrangements made. On the day appointed, the judges, attended by the counsel of the parties, repaired to the lists in Tothill-fields, as umpires of the combat; but as the plaintiff did not make his appearance to acknowledge his champion, he was nonsuited, or rather the suit was compounded—the defendant remaining in possession by paying a stipulated sum to the petitioners; but yet to save the credit of the defendant, who had demanded the combat, all the ceremonials of time, place, and arms, were adjusted.[[1]] Another instance occurred in the Court of Chivalry, in 1631: a trial by battle was also demanded in the palatine of Durham, in 1638. Of late years, it was only in 1818, that a similar demand was made in the case of Thornton and Ashford, when this barbarous and superstitious practice was finally abolished.
In 1542, Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who had distinguished himself in the jousts and tournaments on the marriage of Henry VIII. to Anne of Cleves, was imprisoned in the Fleet, on the ground of a quarrel with a private gentleman, and remained closely confined for several weeks, until he was liberated on giving security to keep the peace in the then enormous sum of ten thousand marks. He was not long out of durance, being recommitted for having eaten meat in Lent, and broken the windows of peaceable citizens by shots from his crossbow. The defence of this unfortunate nobleman for the latter offence was rather curious, as he maintained that he had broken their windows in the hope of correcting the licentious and corrupt manner of these citizens, by impressing them with an idea that such attacks, by means unheard and unseen, were supernatural warnings from Providence of impending vengeance, a plea which is now extant on the minutes of the Privy Council!
During the reign of James I. duels appear to have been more frequent, and were resorted to, not only by the upper classes, but amongst the lower orders. This appears from a speech of Bacon, when attorney-general, in the case of a challenge brought before the Star Chamber Court. Bacon therein attributes the frequency of the practice to the rooted prejudice of the times, and hopes that the great would think it time to leave off the custom, when they find it adopted by barber-surgeons and butchers; and in one of his letters on the subject to Lord Villiers, he expresses his determination not to make any distinction between a coronet and a hatband in his efforts to repress the practice. “I will prosecute,” he says, “if any man appoint the field, though no fight takes place; if any man send a challenge in writing or verbally; if any man accept a challenge, or consent to be a second; if any man depart the realm in order to fight; if any man revive a quarrel after the late proclamation.” It does not appear, however, that this great man’s exertions were productive of much beneficial result, as the monarch, in one of his proclamations, called these combats “the bewitching duel.”[[2]]
The duel fought, and the challenge sent, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and which we have elsewhere recorded, are striking illustrations of the chivalric notion of the times; and the Quixotic language in which that challenge was couched, was somewhat similar to that of the one sent by Sir Henry Urton, our ambassador to the court of France, to the Duc de Guise.
“Forasmuch as lately in the lodgings of the Lord Dumogre, and in public elsewhere, impudently, indiscreetly, and overboldly, you spoke badly of my sovereign, whose sacred person here in this country I represent, to maintain, both by word and weapon, her honour (which was never called into question among persons of honesty and virtue). I say you have wickedly and maliciously lied, in speaking so basely of my sovereign, and you shall do nothing else but lie whenever you dare to tax her honour. Moreover, that her sacred person (being one of the most complete and virtuous princesses that lives in this world) ought not to be evil spoken of by the vile tongue of such a perfidious traitor to her land and country as you are, and therefore I do defy you, and challenge your person to mine, with such manner of arms as you shall like or choose, be it either on horseback or on foot; nor would I have you to think any inequality of person between us, I being issued of as great a race and noble a house as yourself, in assigning me an indifferent place, I will there maintain my words, and the lie which I gave and give you. If you consent not to meet me hereupon, I will hold you, and cause you to be generally held, for the arrantest coward, and the most slanderous slave, in all France. I expect your immediate answer.”
It appears that De Guise did not think it expedient to accept the challenge.
The peace of the realm appears to have been frequently disturbed during the reign of James by duels, in which many valuable lives were lost. The death of Sir Hatton Cheek was one of these fatal occurrences. This gallant officer was the second in command of the English army at the siege of Juliers, in 1609, where a few hasty words addressed by him to Sir Thomas Dutton, induced that officer, who was of an inferior rank, to resign his commission and repair to England, where he endeavoured to injure the character of Cheek by various unfavourable reports, and the latter demanded a meeting at Calais. On their meeting on the sands, Dutton began to reproach Cheek with the injuries he had received at his hands, but Cheek insisted upon the immediate settlement of the business. The seconds stripped both parties to their shirts, and they attacked each other, each of them armed with a rapier and a dagger. In the first onset Cheek ran Dutton through the throat with his dagger, close to the windpipe; when Dutton made a pass at him and ran him through the body, while he stabbed him in the back with his poniard. Although Cheek’s wounds were mortal, he rushed upon his antagonist, who, observing that he gradually drooped from loss of blood, merely kept on the defensive till he fell dead at his feet.
James had to punish severely the Lord Sanquair, for having killed a fencing-master in a duel: the riddance to society of a master of the art of murder would have palliated the offence, but the unruly conduct of the Scotch followers of Sanquair was so obnoxious and ungovernable, that it was deemed necessary to inflict a punishment on their chief. This case was a curious one: his lordship, who prided himself on his skill in swordsmanship, had an assault with a fencing-master of the name of Turner, who put out one of his eyes with his foil. Turner made every possible excuse for the unfortunate occurrence, and Sanquair affected to forgive him. Some years after he visited the court of Henri IV. of France, when this prince asked him how he had lost his eye. Sanquair was embarrassed by the question, and with some hesitation replied, “By a sword wound.” The king immediately replied, “And does the man live?” An expression which sunk deep into his mind, and from that moment he formed the resolution to rid himself of the obnoxious cause of his misfortune in any manner. On his return to England, disdaining to sacrifice his victim with his own noble hands, he hired two ruffians who assassinated Turner in his lodgings in Whitefriars. The murderers were taken, but Sanquair had fled, and 1000l. reward was offered by proclamation for his apprehension. Trusting to his sovereign’s partiality for the Scotch, and having for a mediator at court the Archbishop of Canterbury, he surrendered himself; but all intercession was vain. Bacon was ordered to prosecute, and Sanquair and his accomplices were condemned, and he was hanged on the 29th of June, 1612, in front of the entrance of Westminster-hall.