No. 212. A Knight and his Steed.
The knight still carried his spear with him in travelling, as the footman carried his staff. In our cut [No. 212], from a manuscript of the fourteenth century in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (No. 6963), the rider, though not armed, carries his spear with him. The saddle in this instance is singularly and rather rudely formed. It was a great point of vanity in the middle ages in England to hang the caparisons of the horse with small bells, which made a jingling noise. In the romance of “Richard Cœur de Lion” (Weber ii. 60), a messenger coming to king Richard has no less than five hundred such bells suspended to his horse— His trappys wer off tuely sylke,
With five hundred belles rygande.
And again, in the same romance (vol. ii. p. 223), we are told, in speaking of the sultan of “Damas,” that his horse was well furnished in this respect— Hys crouper heeng al fulle off belles,
And hys peytrel, and hys arsoun;
Three myle myghte men here the soun.
The bridle, however, was the part of the harness usually loaded with bells, and, according to Chaucer, it was a vanity especially affected by the monks; for the poet tells us of his monk, that— Whan he rood, men might his bridel heere
Gyngle in a whistlyng wynd so cleere,
And eek as lowde as doth the chapel belle.
—Cant. Tales, l. 169.
The rider is seldom furnished with a whip, because he urged his steed forward with his spurs; but female riders and persons of lower degree have often whips, which generally consist of several lashes, each having usually a knob at the end. Such a whip is seen in our cut [No. 213], taken from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the British Museum (MS. Arundel. No. 91), which represents a countryman driving a horse of burthen; and he not only uses the whip, but he tries further to urge him on by twisting his tail. A whip with one lash—rather an unusual example—is in the hand of the woman driving the cart in our cut [No. 214], which is taken from a manuscript of the romance of “Meliadus,” in the French National Library (No. 6961), belonging to the fourteenth century. The lady here is also evidently riding astride. The cart in which she is carrying home the wounded knight is of a simple and rude construction. As yet, indeed, carriages for travelling were very little in use; and to judge by the illuminations, they were only employed for kings and very powerful nobles in ceremonial processions.
No. 213. A Horsewhip.
The horse was, after a man’s own limbs, his primary agent of locomotion. Perhaps no animal is so intimately mixed up with the history of mankind as the horse—certainly none more so. Our Anglo-Saxon forefathers travelled much on foot, and, as far as we know, the great importance in which the horse was held in the middle ages in this part of the world, began with feudalism, and the best and most celebrated breed of horses in Europe, from the earliest ages of chivalry, was brought from the East. The heroes of early romance and poetry are generally mounted on Arab steeds, and these have often the additional merit of having been won by conquest from the Saracens. In the thirteenth century they were obtained from Turkey and Greece; and at a later period from Barbary. France, also, had its native breed, which enjoyed a high reputation for many valuable qualities, and especially for its fierceness in war; Gascony, and, on the other side of the Spanish frontier, Castile and Aquitaine, were much celebrated for their horses. The Gascons prided themselves much on their horses, and they displayed this pride sometimes in a very singular manner. In 1172, Raymond de Venous, count of Toulouse, held a grand cour plénière, and, as a display of ostentation, caused thirty of his horses to be burnt in presence of the assembly. It was a fine example of the barbarity of feudalism. At the provincial synod of Auch, held in 1303, it was ordered that archdeacons, when they made their diocesan circuits, should not go with more than five horses, which shows that the Gascon clergy were in the habit of making a great display of cavalry. It appears that at this early period the best horses were imported into England from Bordeaux. It may be mentioned, in passing, that the male horse only was ridden by knights or people of any distinction, and that to ride a mare was always looked upon as a degradation. This seems to have been an old Teutonic prejudice, perhaps a religious superstition.
No. 214. Lady and Cart.
The kinds of horses most commonly mentioned in the feudal ages are named in French (which was the language of feudalism), the palefroi, or palfrey, the dextrier, the roncin, and the sommier. The dextrier, or destrier, was the ordinary war-horse; the roncin belonged especially to the servants and attendants; and the sommier carried the luggage. Ladies especially rode the palfrey. The Orkney islands appear to have been celebrated for their dextriers. The Isle of Man seems also to have produced a celebrated breed of horses. Brittany was celebrated for its palfreys. The haquenée, or hackney, of the middle ages, appears to have been especially reserved for females. England seems not to have been celebrated for its horses in the middle ages, and the horses of value possessed by the English kings and great nobles were, in almost all cases, imported from the Continent. The ordinary prices of horses in England in the reign of Edward I., was from one to ten pounds, but choice animals were valued much higher. When St. Louis returned to France from his captivity, the abbot of Cluny presented to the king and the queen each a horse, the value of which Joinville estimates at five hundred livres, equivalent to about four hundred pounds of our present English money. These must have been horses which possessed some very extraordinary qualities, as the price is quite out of proportion to that of other horses at the same period. In the charters published by M. Guérard, horses are valued at forty sols, and at three pounds at various periods during the eleventh century. In 1202, two roncins are valued at thirty sols each, another at forty, two at fifty each, and two at sixty; the roncin of an arbalester at sixty sols; a sommier, or baggage-horse, at forty sols; and three horses, of which the kind is not specified, at six pounds each. These appear to have been the ordinary prices at that period; for, though prices of horses are mentioned as high as thirty-four, thirty-five, and forty pounds, these were only possessed or given as presents by kings. The value of horses went on rising through the thirteenth century, until Philippe le Hardi found it necessary to fix it by an ordonnance, which limited the price which any man, whether lay or clergy, however rich, might give for a palfrey, to sixty pounds tournois, and that to be given by a squire for a roncin to twenty pounds. The prices of horses appear not to have varied much from this during the fourteenth century. In the middle of the century following the prices rose much higher.
Of the colours of horses, in the middle ages, white seems to have been prized most highly, and after that dapple-gray and bay or chestnut. The same colours were in favour among the Arabs. One of the poets of the thirteenth century, Jean Bodel, describes a choice Gascon horse as follows:—“His hair,” he says, “was more shining than the plumage of a peacock; his head was lean, his eye gray like a falcon, his breast large and square, his crupper broad, his thigh round, and his rump tight. They who saw it said that they had never seen a handsomer animal.” The food given to horses in the middle ages seems to have been much the same as at the present day. In 1435 the queen of Navarre gave carrots to her horses. Although the mediæval knight resembled the Arab in his love for his horse, yet the latter was often treated hardly and even cruelly, and the practice of horsemanship was painful to the rider and to the horse. To be a skilful rider was a first-rate accomplishment. One of the feats of horsemanship practised ordinarily was to jump into the saddle, in full armour:—
No foot Fitzjames in stirrup staid,
No grasp upon the saddle laid;
But wreath’d his left hand in the mane,
And lightly bounded from the plain.