Monkish chronicles, written in times not contemporaneous with the events they describe, are usually unreliable in being coloured with the circumstances of a later age; and any illuminations or wood-cuts accompanying them are apt to reflect the times in which they were executed, rather than those they are represented to portray, for the artist fills in his picture with the details of the scenes before him. However, with the accumulated knowledge we now possess, we are enabled to correct some of the mistakes, from a chronological point of view.
A royal tournament was held in London by King Richard II, immediately after the Michaelmas of the year 1390, in honour of Queen Isabella; and heralds were sent to proclaim it throughout England, Scotland, Hainault, Germany, Flanders and France. Sixty knights were to joust with rebated lances, as tenans, for two successive days, the Sunday and Monday, against all comers; and the Tuesday following was set apart for the esquires. The jousting was to be followed by banquets, dances and sumptuous fêtes and entertainments of various kinds. The prizes for the Sunday were as follows:—A rich crown of gold for the best lance among the venans; and, for the most successful among the tenans, a very rich golden clasp. Those for the Monday are not stated; but for the Tuesday, the esquires’ day, they were a handsome charger, fully accoutred, and a falcon, for the best lances of the venans and tenans, respectively. The ladies were to act as judges and to present them. The Sunday’s jousting was called the feast of the challengers. At three p.m. the procession started from the Tower of London. Sixty barded chargers, an esquire mounted on each, advanced at a foot’s pace; then sixty ladies of rank richly apparelled and mounted on palfreys, rode in single file, each leading a knight, in full armour, by a silver chain. The procession thus formed proceeded along the streets of London, down Cheapside to Smithfield, attended by minstrels and trumpeters. The King and Queen, with their suites, accompanied by some of the great barons, had gone earlier to Smithfield, and there awaited the arrival of the procession and the knights from abroad. Their Majesties were lodged in the Bishop’s palace, and there the banquets and dances were to be held. Many foreign knights and esquires attended, and among them Sir William of Hainault (Count d’Ostrevant)[89] and the Count de St. Pol.
On the arrival of the procession at Smithfield the knights mounted their horses and prepared for jousting, which began soon after. The prize for the best lance of the venans on the Sunday, the first day of jousting, was awarded by the ladies to the Count de St. Pol; and that for the most skilful knight among the tenans, to the Earl of Huntingdon.[90] The King led the tenans on the Monday; and the prize for the best lance of the venans was awarded to the Count d’Ostrevant; that for the most successful of their opponents to Sir Hugh Spencer. The esquires jousted on the Tuesday, after which there was a banquet, and dancing was continued until daybreak. There was jousting on the Wednesday for knights and esquires indiscriminately; and on Thursday and Friday fêtes, masques and banquets, after which the royal party left for Windsor.[91]
Caxton refers to these royal jousts in the following terms:—
“All of the King’s hous were of one sute, theyr cotys, theyr armys, theyr sheldes and theyr trappours were embrowdred all with whyte hertis, with crownes of gold about their necks, and cheynes of gold hangyng thereon; whiche hertys were the King’s leverey, that he gaf to lordes, ladyes, knyghtes, ＆ squyers, to know his houshold peple from other; then four and twenty ladyes comynge to the justys, ladde[92] four and twenty lordes with chynes of gold, and alle in the same sute of hertes as is afore sayd, from the Tour on horsback thrurgh the cyte of London into Smythfeld.” The narrative of this tournament by Holinshed[93] is far from being so picturesque as that of Froissart, and it differs in some particulars from it. He says there were twenty-four ladies, not sixty, mounted on palfreys; and that the prizes for the first day were awarded to the Comte de St. Pol and the Earl of Huntingdon; and on the Monday to the Earl of Ostravant and Sir Hugh Spencer.
King Richard proclaimed another grand tournament to be held at Windsor in one of the closing years of his reign; the tenans or challengers to be forty knights and forty esquires, clothed in green. The Queen was present, but very few of the barons attended, owing to the great unpopularity and arbitrary actions of the King,[94] whose reign had begun under the happiest auspices, but the manifest defects in his character brought his career to a sorrowful ending.
There was a kind of tourney called the Espinette held at Lille, in honour of a relic preserved there, which, though obscure, would seem to have been but an ordinary joust with which certain annual ceremonies were connected. Hewitt[95] quotes the Chronicle of Flanders concerning a celebration in the year 1339:—“Jehan Bernier went to joust at the Espinette, taking with him four damsels, namely, the wife of Seigneur Jehan Biensemé, the wife of Symon du Gardin, the wife of Monseigneur Amoury de la Vingne, and mademoiselle his own wife. And the said Jehan Bernier was led into the lists by two of the aforesaid damsels by two golden cords, the other two carrying each a lance. And the King of the Espinette this year was Pierre de Courtray, who bore Sable, three golden Eagles with two heads and red beaks and feet.” M. Leber gives some account of the fête de l’épinette in the Collection des traités.
The vamplate, avant-plate, placed on the shaft of the lance, for the protection of the right hand and arm, first appears in the fourteenth century; and so does the lance-rest on the breastplate. An ordinance of the thirteenth century orders the lance to be blunted for the tourney; but in the fourteenth it was ordered to be tipped with a coronal, the short points of which were just sufficient to catch on to the armour without being capable of piercing it. The helmet of the fourteenth century was the pointed bascinet, with the camail or hood of mail worn over the top of the cyclas. The great heaume used early in the fourteenth century differs little from that of the end of the thirteenth; later it assumed the form of a cylinder, surmounted by a truncated cone. It was usually of iron, though sometimes of leather, either ordinary or of cuir-bouilli. The fan crest, doubtless adopted from a classic prototype, came into vogue in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, though it is represented on the seal of King Richard I.
Crests were made of various materials. Those for the cavaliers taking part in the tournament at Windsor Park, in 1278, were of calf-skin, one for the man and another for the horse, as shown in the Roll of Purchases; that of the Black Prince, at Canterbury,[96] was of cloth. They were attached to the helm by means of a thin iron bar. Crests were usually affixed to the great helm, which was worn over the bascinet; though there are instances of their being used alone on the smaller head-piece.
The heraldic crest does not appear before towards the close of the thirteenth century; a notable instance may be cited in the case of the remarkable effigy of Sir John de Botiler, in St. Bride’s Church, Glamorganshire, which dates about the year 1300. The helmet of this monument is the cervellière, which is a visor-less, saucer or shallow basin-shaped head-piece, going over the hood of mail; and the crest is embossed on its front. Crests were not generally worn before about the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century, after which period they develop from comparative simplicity into fantastic and even ridiculous conceptions.