The origin of the joust does not appear to be less ancient than that of the tourney itself,[11] which it gradually almost supplanted; and it may have been suggested by the quintain. William of Malmesbury thus defines it:—Justa, jouste. Monomachia ludicra, hastiludium singulare.[12] The Bayeux tapestry shows a kind of combat with spears.
The terms “tourney” and “joust” are often confounded with each other, but they are sharply different, the former being a battle in miniature, an armed contest of courtesy on horseback, troop against troop; while the other is a single combat of mounted cavaliers, run with lances in the lists; though jousting was by no means confined to these enclosures; indeed, such contests were sometimes run in the open street or square of a town. Jousts were often included with the tourney, though frequently held independently; and as the lance was the weapon of the former so was the sword greatly that of the latter. The lance was to be directed at the body only, otherwise it was considered foul play. The joust more especially was run in honour of ladies. These martial games were much practised in all the countries of chivalry.
The chroniclers are vague in their definitions of the Round Table game, the Tabula Rotunda, or as Matthew Paris calls it “Mensa Rotunda.”[13] He expressly distinguishes it from the tournament, though in what respect it differs from it he does not enlighten us. He describes a tabula rotunda, held at the Abbey of Wallenden in the year 1252, which was attended by a great number of cavaliers, both English and foreign, and states that on the fourth day of the meeting a knight named Arnold de Montigney was pierced in the throat by a lance “which had not been blunted as it ought to have been.” The lance-head remained in the wound and death soon followed. We see from this incident that already in the middle of the thirteenth century it was customary to joust with blunted or rebated lances! In 1279 (8 Ed. I) a Round Table was held by Roger Earl of Mortimer, at his castle of Kenilworth, which is thus described in Historia Prioratus de Wigmore[14]:—“He (Mortimer) invited a hundred knights and as many ladies to an hastilude at Kenilworth, which he celebrated for three days at a vast expense. Then he began the round table; and the golden lion, the prize for the triumphant knight, was awarded to him.” Dugdale states that the reason for the institution itself was to assert the principle of equality and to avoid questions of precedence among the knights.
In some “Observations on the Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter,” printed in Archæologia of the year 1846,[15] it is stated that in 1343, King Edward III in imitation of King Arthur, the traditional founder of British Chivalry, bent on reviving the fabled glories of a by-gone age, determined to hold a Round Table at Windsor on the 19th of January, 1344. The intended meeting was proclaimed by heralds of the king, in France, Scotland, Burgundy, Hainault, Flanders, Brabant, and in the German Empire, offering safe-conducts to all foreign knights and esquires wishful to take part in it.[16] King Edward fixed the number of the tenans at forty, enrolling the bravest in the land; and he appointed that a “Feast” should be kept from year to year at Windsor on every following St. George’s Day. Walsingham, writing about half a century after Froissart, states that in 1344 the King began to build a house in Windsor Park, which should be called the “Round Table”; that it was circular in form, and 200 feet in diameter. It is also stated that a circular table, made of wood, was constructed at Windsor sometime before 1356; and that the Prior of Merton was paid L26-13-4 for 52 oaks, taken from his woods near Reading, for the material.[17] Walsingham relates that Philip of France, jealous of the fame of our king, had a table made on the Windsor model.
Matthew of Westminster chronicles that a round table was held in 1352, which had a fatal ending.
There is an actual round table of ancient provenance hanging on the eastern wall of the hall of the royal palace at Winchester, the reputed “painted table of Arthur,” and there are some remarks concerning it in the Winchester volume of the Archæological Institute, 1846, telling all that is known concerning it. The hall itself may have been standing in the reign of Henry III; and in the sixteenth century, and probably long before, a round table was an appendage to it; but as to the approximate date of its make there is no reliable evidence. The earliest historic reference to the table is by Hardyng, late in the reign of Henry VI or early in that of Edward IV, who alludes to it as “hanging yet” at Winchester; and Paulus Jovius tells us that the table was shown to the emperor Charles V in 1520, when it had been newly painted for the “last” time, but that the marginal names had been restored unskilfully. In the reign of Henry VIII a sum of L66-16-11 was expended in repairing the “aula regis infra castrum de Wynchestre, et le Round tabyll ibidem.” John Lesley, bishop of Ross, said that he saw the table not long before 1578, and that the names of the knights were inscribed on its circumference; and a Spanish writer, who was present at the marriage of Philip and Mary, thus describes the painting on the table:—
“Lors du mariage de Philip II. avec la reine Marie, on montrait encore à Hunscrit la table ronde fabriquée par Merlin: elle se composait de 25 compartemens teintés en blank et en vert, lesquels se terminaient en pointe au milieu, et allaient s’elargissant jusqu’à la circonférence, et dans chaque division étaient écrits le nom du cavalier et celui du roi. L’un de ces compartemens appelé place de Judas, ou siége périlleux, restait toujours vide.”
The forms of the lettering and general decoration of the table point to a date in the reign of Henry VII or early in that of Henry VIII, but this, of course, only applies to the painted enrichment. Whatever may be the date of this table and its painting, they are both undoubtedly of considerable antiquity, probably from five to six centuries old.
The fête d’armes held by Boucicaut at St. Ingelbert in 1389 (which is described in [Chapter III]), is called in the account of the meeting a “table-ronde”; and the text would imply that the holding of a round table meant a hastilude at which the challengers or tenans kept open house to all comers, as well as meeting them in combat in the lists; and the institution is thus coupled with the banquet. The passage runs:—
“Ainsi feit là son appareil moult grandement et très-honnorablement messire Boucicaut, et feit faire provisions de très-bon vins, et de tous vivres largement, et à plain, et de tout ce qu’il convient si plantureusement comme ‘pour tenir table rond à tout venans’ tout le dict temps durant, et tout aux propres despens de Boucicaut.”[18]