That is, in the heart of a man of gentle, or noble birth.
[153] The bars were the palisades of the lists. Upon one occasion, when a challenger, in a cause of treason, had died before the day of combat, a court of chivalry appointed his dead body to be brought into the lists, completely armed, and adjudged that the defendant should be held conqueror, if he could throw it over the bars. But the corpse and arms being weighty, the sun set before he could accomplish this, and he was condemned for treason as conquered in the trial by combat. See Sir David Lindsay on Heraldry, MS. Advocates' Library.
[154] This strange association of persons did not shock the times of Chaucer.
[155] Chaucer reads more appropriately, "under a bent."
[156] Rubeus and Puella.—Dryden.
[157] Dryden has here omitted a striking circumstance:
A wolf there stood before him at his feet,
With eyen red, and of a man he eat.
[158] Prussia.
[159] Boots, or armour for the legs.
[160] The accoutrements of the knights of yore were as various as the modern fashions of female dress; and as it was necessary, in the single combat, that each warrior should be equally armed, it was a matter of no small nicety, to ascertain exactly, what weapons, offensive and defensive, should be allowed to them. But in general tournaments, each knight seems to have used the arms which pleased him best; subject always to such general regulations as were laid down by the judges, for lessening the danger of these military games. There is a long enumeration of various kinds of armour, in the romance of "Clariodus and Meliadus."