Chapter XVII: Part 17

Charles II. was the first monarch who allowed the Knights of the Garter to wear, as at present, the star of the order on the breast of the coat. Our present queen has renewed in her gracious person, the custom that was once observed, if we may believe Ashmole, by the ladies, that is, the wives of Knights of the Garter--namely, of wearing the symbol of the order as a jewelled badge, or a bracelet, on the arm. This is in better taste than the mode adopted by Lady Castlereagh, at the gay doings attendant upon the sitting of the Congress of Vienna; where the noble lady in question appeared at court with her husband’s jewelled garter, as a bandeau, round her forehead!

James II. has had not merely his apologists but his defenders. He had far more of the knightly character than is commonly supposed. For a long time he labored under the disadvantage of being represented, in England, by historians only of the Orange faction. Poor Richard the Third has suffered by a similar misfortune. He was wicked enough, but he was not the monster described by the Tudor historians and dramatists.

James, in his youth, had as daring and as crafty a spirit as ever distinguished the most audacious of pages. The tact by the employment of which he successfully made his escape from the republican guards who kept him imprisoned at St. James’s, would alone be sufficient proof of this. When Duke of York, he had the compliment paid to him by Condé, that if ever there was a man without fear it was he. Under Turenne he earned a reputation of which any knight might be proud; and in the service of Spain, he won praise for courage, from leaders whose bravery was a theme for eulogy in every mouth.

Partisans, not of his own faction, have censured his going publicly to mass soon after his accession; but it must be remembered that the Knights of the Garter, in the collar of their order, complacently accompanied him, and that the Duke of Norfolk was the only knight who left him at the door of the chapel.

He had little of the knight in him in his method of love, if one may so speak. He cared little for beauty; so little, that his brother Charles remarked that he believed James selected his mistresses by way of penance. He was coarsely minded, and neither practised fidelity nor expected it in others. Whatever he may have been in battle, there was little of the refinement of chivalry about him in the bower. It was said of Louis XIV. and his successor, that if they were outrageously unfaithful to their consorts, they never failed to treat them with the greatest politeness. James lacked even this little remnant of chivalrous feeling; and he was barely courteous to his consort till adversity taught him the worth of Mary of Modena.

He was arrogant in prosperity, but the slightest check dreadfully depressed him, and it is hardly necessary to say that he who is easily elated or easily depressed, has little in him of the hero. His conduct when his throne was menaced was that of a poor craven. It had not about it the dignity of even a decent submission. He rose again, however, to the heroic when he attempted to recover his kingdom, and took the field for that purpose. This conduct has been alluded to by a zealous and impartial writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” for November, 1855. “After the battle of the Boyne,” he says, “the Orange party circulated the story that James had acted in the most cowardly manner, and fled from the field before the issue was decided. Not only was this, in a very short time believed, but even sensible historians adopted it, and it came down to us as an historical fact. Now in the secret archives of France there are several letters which passed between Queen Mary and the Earl of Tyrconnel, and these together with some of the secret papers, dispose at once of the whole story. It has now been placed beyond a doubt, that the king was forced from the field. Even when the day was lost and the Dutch veterans had routed the half-armed and undisciplined Irish, James rallied a part of the French troops, and was leading them on, when Tyrconnel and Lauzun interposed, pointed out the madness of the attempt, and seizing the reins of his horse, compelled him to retreat.”

This is perhaps proving a little too much, for if the day was lost, it was not bravery, but rashness, that sought to regain it; and it is the first merit of a knight, the great merit of a general, to discern when blood may be spilled to advantage. As for the archives in France, one would like to know upon what authority the papers preserved there make their assertions. Documents are exceedingly valuable to historians, but they are not always trustworthy. The archives of France may contain Canrobert’s letter explaining how he was compelled to put constraint upon the bravery of Prince Napoleon, and send him home, in consequence of severe indisposition. And yet the popular voice has since applied a very uncomplimentary surname to the Prince--quite as severe, but not so unsavory, as that which the people of Drogheda still apply to James. In either case there is considerable uncertainty. I am inclined to believe the best of both of these illustrious personages, but seeing that the uncertainty is great, I am not sure that Scarron was wrong when he said that the best way of writing history was by writing epigrams, pointed so as to prick everybody.

Cottington (Stafford’s Letters) tells us of a domestic trouble in which James was concerned with one of his knights. The king’s perplexities about religion began early. “The nurse is a Roman Catholic, to whom Sir John Tunston offered the oath of allegiance, and she refused it; whereupon there grew a great noise both in the town and court; and the queen afflicted herself with extreme passion upon knowledge of a resolution to change the woman. Yet after much tampering with the nurse to convert her, she was let alone, to quiet the queen.” The dissension is said to have so troubled the nurse, as also to have injured the child, and never had knight or king more difficult task than James, in his desire to please all parties.

It was one of the characteristics of a knight to bear adversity without repining; and if Dodd may be believed, James II. was distinguished for this great moral courage in his adversity. The passage in Dodd’s Church History is worth extracting, though somewhat long: “James was never once heard to repine at his misfortune. He willingly heard read the scurrilous pamphlets that were daily published in England against him. If at any time he showed himself touched, it was to hear of the misfortunes of those gentlemen who suffered on his account. He would often entertain those about him with the disorders of his youth, but it was with a public detestation of them, and an admonition to others not to follow his example. The very newspapers were to him a lesson of morality; and the daily occurrences, both in the field and the cabinet, were looked upon by him, not as the result of second causes, but as providential measures to chastise both nations and private persons, according to their deserts. He would sometimes say that the exalted state of a king was attended with this great misfortune, that he lived out of the reach of reproof, and mentioned himself as an example. He read daily a chapter in the Bible, and another in that excellent book, ‘The Following of Christ.’ In his last illness he publicly forgave all his enemies, and several of them by name, especially the Prince of Orange, whom he acknowledged to be his greatest friend, as being the person whom Providence had made use of to scourge him and humble him in the manner he had done, in order to save his soul.” As something very nearly approaching to reality, this is more pleasing than the details of dying knights in romance, who after hacking at one another for an hour, mutually compliment each other’s courage, and die in the happiest frame of mind possible. Some one speaking of this king, and of Innocent II., made an apt remark, worth the quoting; namely, that “he wished for the peace of mankind that the pope had turned papist, and the king of England, protestant!” How far the latter was from this desired consummation is wittily expressed in the epitaph on James, made by one of the poet-chevaliers, or, as some say, by one of the abbés who used to lounge about the terrace of St. Germains.

“C’est ici que Jacques Second,
Sans ministres et sans maitresses,
Le matin allait à la messe,
Et le soir allait au sermon.”

I have noticed, in a previous page, the very scant courtesy which the queen of Charles I. met with at the hands of a Commonwealth admiral. The courtesy of some of the Stuart knights toward royal ladies was not, however, of a much more gallant aspect. I will illustrate this by an anecdote told by M. Macaulay in the fourth volume of his history. The spirit of the Jacobites in William’s reign had been excited by the news of the fall of Mons.... “In the parks the malcontents wore their biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had in the late reign been high in favor and military command, and was now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exaltation he forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than once made himself conspicuous by his impertinence to the queen. He now ostentatiously put himself in her way when she took her airing, and while all around him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a rude stare, and cocked his hat in her face. The affront was not only brutal but cowardly. For the law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence, however gross; and the king was the only gentleman and soldier in the kingdom who could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All that the queen could do was to order the park-keepers not to admit Sir John again within the gates. But long after her death a day came when he had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He found, by terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate assassins not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an intense personal aversion.”

The portrait of William III. as drawn by Burnet, does not wear any very strong resemblance to a hero. The “Roman nose and bright sparkling eyes,” are the most striking features, but the “countenance composed of gravity and authority,” has more of the magistrate than the man at arms. Nevertheless, and in despite of his being always asthmatical, with lungs oppressed by the dregs of small-pox, and the slow and “disgusting dryness” of his speech, there was something chivalrous in the character of William. In “the day of battle he was all fire, though without passion; he was then everywhere, and looked to everything. His genius,” says Burnet in another paragraph, “lay chiefly in war, in which his courage was more admired than his conduct. Great errors were often committed by him; but his heroical courage set things right, as it inflamed those who were about him.” In connection with this part of his character may be noticed the fact that he procured a parliamentary sanction for the establishment of a standing army. His character, in other respects, is not badly illustrated by a remark which he made, when Prince of Orange, to Sir W. Temple, touching Charles II. “Was ever anything so hot and so cold as this court of yours? Will the king, who is so often at sea, never learn the word that I shall never forget, since my last passage, when in a great storm the captain was crying out to the man at the helm, all night, ‘Steady, steady, steady!’” He was the first of our kings who would not touch for the evil. He would leave the working of all miracles, he said, to God alone. The half-chivalrous, half-religious, custom of washing the feet of the poor on Maundy Thursday, was also discontinued by this prince, the last of the heroic five Princes of Orange.

Great as William was in battle, he perhaps never exhibited more of the true quality of bravery than when on his voyage to Holland in 1691, he left the fleet, commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Sir George Rooke, and in the midst of a thick fog attempted, with some noblemen of his retinue, to land in an open boat. “The danger,” says Mr. Macaulay, who may be said to have _painted_ the incident in a few words, “proved more serious than they had expected.” It had been supposed that in an hour the party would be on shore. But great masses of floating ice impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on, the fog grew thicker, the waves broke over the king and the courtiers. Once the keel struck on a sandbank, and was with great difficulty got off. The hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness, but William through the whole night was as composed as if he had been in the drawing-room at Kensington. “For shame,” he said to one of the dismayed sailors, “are you afraid to die in my company?” The _vehis Cæsarem_ was, certainly, not finer than this.

The consort of Queen Anne was of a less chivalrous spirit than William. Coxe says of him, that even in the battle-field he did not forget the dinner-hour, and he appears to have had more stomach for feeding than fighting. Of George I., the best that can be said of him in his knightly capacity, has been said of him, by Smollet, in the remark, that this prince was a circumspect general. He did not, however, lack either courage or impetuosity. He may have learned circumspection under William of Orange. Courage was the common possession of all the Brunswick princes. Of some of them, it formed the solitary virtue. But of George I., whom it was the fashion of poets, aspiring to the laureatship, to call the great, it can not be said, as was remarked of Philip IV. of Spain, when he _took_ the title of “Great,” “He has become great, as a ditch becomes great, by losing the land which belonged to it.”

One more custom of chivalry observed in this reign, went finally out in that of George II. I allude to the custom of giving hostages. According to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, “two persons of rank were to reside in France, in that capacity, as sureties to France that Great Britain should restore certain of its conquests in America and the West Indies.” The “Chevalier,” Prince Charles Edward, accounted this as a great indignity to England, and one which, _he said_, he would not have suffered if he had been in possession of his rights.

The age of chivalry, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, went out before Burke pronounced it as having departed. I do not think it survived till the reign of George II. In that reign chivalry was defunct, but there was an exclusive class, whose numbers arrogated to themselves that nice sense of honor which was supposed, in olden times, to have especially distinguished the knight. The people alluded to were _par excellence_, the people of “fashion.” The gentlemen who guarded, or who were supposed to guard, the brightest principle of chivalry, were self-styled rather than universally acknowledged, “men of honor.”

The man of honor has been painted by “one of themselves.” The Earl of Chesterfield spoke with _connoissance de fait_, when he treated of the theme; and his lordship, whose complacency on this occasion, does not permit him to see that his wit is pointed against himself, tells a story without the slightest recollection of the pithy saying of the old bard, “De te fabula narratur.”

“A man of honor,” says Lord Chesterfield, “is one who peremptorily affirms himself to be so, and who will cut anybody’s throat that questions it, even upon the best grounds. He is infinitely above the restraints which the laws of God or man lay upon vulgar minds, and knows no other ties but those of honor, of which word he is to be the sole expounder. He must strictly advocate a party denomination, though he may be utterly regardless of its principles. His expense should exceed his income considerably, not for the necessaries, but for the superfluities of life, that the debts he contracts may do him honor. There should be a haughtiness and insolence in his deportment, which is supposed to result from conscious honor. If he be choleric and wrong-headed into the bargain, with a good deal of animal courage, he acquires the glorious character of a man of honor; and if all these qualifications are duly seasoned with the genteelest vices, the man of honor is complete; anything his wife, children, servants, or tradesmen, may think to the contrary, notwithstanding.”

Lord Chesterfield goes on to exemplify the then modern chivalrous guardian of honor, by drawing the portrait of a friend under an assumed name. He paints a certain “Belville” of whom his male friends are proud, his female friends fond, and in whom his party glories as a living example--frequently making that example the authority for their own conduct. He has lost a fortune by extravagance and gambling; he is uneasy only as to how his honor is to be intact by acquitting his liabilities from “play.” He must raise money at any price, for, as he says, “I would rather suffer the greatest incumbrance upon my fortune, than the least blemish upon my honor.” His privilege as a peer will preserve him from those “clamorous rascals, the tradesmen”; and lest he should not be able to get money by any other means, to pay his “debts of honor,” he writes to the prime minister and offers to sell his vote and conscience for the consideration of fifteen hundred pounds. He exacts his money before he records his vote, persuaded as he is that the minister will not be the first person that ever questioned the honor of the chivalrous Belville.

The modern knight has, of course, a lady love. The latter is as much like Guinever, of good King Arthur’s time, as can well be; and she has a husband who is more suspicious and jealous than the founder of the chivalrous Round Table. “Belville” can not imagine how the lady’s husband can be suspicious, for he and Belville have been play-fellows, school-fellows, and sworn friends in manhood. Consequently, Belville thinks that wrong may be committed in all confidence and security. “However,” he writes to the lady, “be convinced that you are in the hands of a man of honor, who will not suffer you to be ill-used, and should my friend proceed to any disagreeable extremities with you, depend upon it, I will cut the c----’s throat for him.”

Life in love, so in lying. He writes to an acquaintance that he had “told a d----d lie last night in a mixed company,” and had challenged a “formal old dog,” who had insinuated that “Belville” had violated the truth. The latter requests his “dear Charles” to be his second--“the booby,” he writes of the adversary who had detected him in a lie, “was hardly worth my resentment, but you know my delicacy where honor is concerned.”

Lord Chesterfield wrote more than one paper on the subject of men of honor. For these I refer the reader to his lordship’s works. I will quote no further from them than to show a distinction, which the author draws with some ingenuity. “I must observe,” he says, “that there is a great difference between a MAN OF HONOR and a PERSON OF HONOR. By PERSONS OF HONOR were meant, in the latter part of the last century, bad authors and poets of noble birth, who were but just not fools enough to prefix their names in great letters to the prologues, epilogues, and sometimes even the plays with which they entertained the public. But now that our nobility are too generous to interfere in the trade of us poor, professed authors” (his lordship is writing anonymously, in the WORLD), “or to eclipse our performances by the distinguished and superior excellency and lustre of theirs; the meaning at present of a PERSON OF HONOR is reduced to the simple idea of a PERSON OF ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH.”

The chivalrous courage of one of our admirals at the close of the reign of George II., very naturally excited the admiration of Walpole. “What milksops,” he writes in 1760, “the Marlboroughs and Turennes, the Blakes and Van Tromps appear now, who whipped into winter quarters and into ports the moment their nose looked blue. Sir Cloudesley Shovel said that an admiral deserved to be broken who kept great ships out after the end of September; and to be shot, if after October. There is Hawke in the bay, weathering this winter (January), after conquering in a storm.”

George III. was king during a longer period than any other sovereign of England; and the wars and disasters of his reign were more gigantic than those of any other period. He was little of a soldier himself; was, however, constitutionally brave; and had his courage and powers tested by other than military matters. The politics of his reign wore his spirit more than if he had been engaged in carrying on operations against an enemy. During the first ten years after his accession, there were not less than seven administrations; and the cabinets of Newcastle and Bute, Grenville and Rockingham, Grafton and North, Shelburne and Portland, were but so many camps, the leaders in which worried the poor monarch worse than the Greeks badgered unhappy Agamemnon. Under the administration of Pitt he was hardly more at his ease, and in no degree more so under that of Addington, or that of All the Talents, and of Spencer Perceval. An active life of warfare could not have more worn the spirit and health of this king than political intrigues did; intrigues, however, be it said, into which he himself plunged with no inconsiderable delight, and with slender satisfactory results.

He was fond of the display of knightly ceremonies, and was never more pleased than when he was arranging the ceremonies of installation, and turning the simple gentlemen into knights. Of the sons who succeeded him, George IV. was least like him in good principle of any sort, while William IV. surpassed him in the circumstance of his having been in action, where he bore himself spiritedly. The race indeed has ever been brave, and I do not know that I can better close the chapter than with an illustration of the “Battle-cry of Brunswick.”

THE BATTLE-CRY OF BRUNSWICK.

The “Battle-cry of Brunswick” deserves to be commemorated among the acts of chivalry. Miss Benger, in her “Memoirs of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia,” relates that Christian, Duke of Brunswick, was touched alike by the deep misfortunes, and the cheerful patience of that unhappy queen. Indignant at the neglect with which she was treated by her father, James I. of England, and her uncle, Frederick of Denmark, Duke Christian “seemed suddenly inspired by a sentiment of chivalric devotion, as far removed from vulgar gallantry as heroism from ferocity. Snatching from her hand a glove, which he first raised with reverence to his lips, he placed it in his Spanish hat, as a triumphal plume which, for her sake, he ever after wore as a martial ornament; then drawing his sword he took a solemn oath never to lay down arms until he should see the King and Queen of Bohemia reinstated in the Palatinate. No sooner had Christian taken this engagement than he eagerly proclaimed it to the world, by substituting on his ensign, instead of his denunciation of priests, an intelligible invocation to Elizabeth in the words ‘For God and for her!’ _Fur Gott und fur sie!_”

“Flash swords! fly pennons! helm and shield
Go glittering forth in proud array!
Haste knight and noble to the field,
Your pages wait, your chargers neigh.
Up! gentlemen of Germany!
Who love to be where strife is seen,
For Brunswick leads the fight to-day,
For God and the Queen!

“Let them to-day, for fame who sigh,
And seek the laurels of the brave;
Or they who long, ’ere night, to lie
Within a soldier’s honored grave,
Round Brunswick’s banner take their stand;
’Twill float around the bloody scene,
As long as foeman walks the land,
’Gainst God and the Queen.

“Draw, Barons, whose proud homes are placed
In many a dark and craig-topped tower;
Forward, ye knights, who have been graced
In tourney lists and ladies’ bower.
And be your country’s good the cause
Of all this proud and mortal stir,
While Brunswick his true sabre draws
For God and for her!

“To Him we look for such good aid
As knights may not be shamed to ask,
For vainly drawn would be each blade,
And weakly fitted to its task,
Each lance we wield, did we forget
When loud we raise our battle-cry,
For old Bohemia’s Queen, to set
Our hopes with God on high.”

The original superscription on the banner of Brunswick was the very energetic line: “Christian of Brunswick, the friend of God and the enemy of priests.” Naylor, in his “Civil and Military History of Germany,” says, that the Duke imprinted the same legend on the money which he had coined out of the plate of which he had plundered the convents, and he adds, in a note derived from Galetti, that “the greater part of the money coined by Christian was derived from twelve silver statues of the apostles, which the bigotry of preceding ages had consecrated, in the cathedral of Munster.” When the Duke was accused of impiety by some of his followers, he sheltered himself under the authority of Scripture; and pretended to have only realized the ancient precept: “Go hence, into all parts of the earth!”

Having seen the English Kings as knights, let us look at a few of the men whom they knighted.

RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD.

“The dew of grace bless our new knights to-day.” BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.

The Conquest was productive of a far more than average quantity of knights. Indeed, I think it may be asserted without fear of contradiction, that the first and the last William, and James I. were more addicted to dubbing knights than any other of our sovereigns. The good-natured William IV. created them in such profusion that, at last, gentlemen at the head of deputations appeared in the royal presence with a mysterious dread lest, in spite of themselves, they should be compelled to undergo a chivalric metamorphosis, at the hands of the “sea king.” The honor was so constantly inflicted, that the recipients were massed together by “John Bull” as “The Thousand and one (K)nights!”

William the Conqueror was not so lavish in accolades as his descendant of remoter days, nor was he so off-handed in the way of administering the distinction. He drew his sword with solemnity, laid it on the shoulder before him with a sort of majestic composure, and throughout the ceremony looked as calm as dignity required. William is said to have ennobled or knighted his cook. He does not stand alone in having so acted: for, unless I am singularly mistaken, the great Louis tied some small cross of chivalry to the button-hole of the immortal Vatel. William’s act, however, undoubtedly gave dignity to that department in palaces, whence many princes have derived their only pleasure. It was from him that there passed into the palace of France the term “Officiers de Service,” a term which has been appropriated by others of less elevated degree than those whom it originally served to distinguish. The term has led to a standing joke in such dwellings. “Qui vive?” exclaims a sentinel in one of the base passages, as one of these officials draws near at night. “Officier,” is the reply of the modest official in question. “Quel officier?” asks the guard. “Officier de service!” proudly answers he who is thus questioned; whereupon the soldier smilingly utters “Passe, Caramel!” and the royal officer--_not_ of the body-guard, passes, as smilingly, on his way.

But, to return from Caramel to the Conqueror, I have to observe, that the cook whom William knighted bore an unmusical, if not an unsavory, name. The culinary artist was called Tezelin. The service by which he had won knighthood consisted in the invention of a white soup for maigre days. The hungry but orthodox William had been accustomed to swallow a thin broth “à l’eau de savon;” but Tezelin placed before him a tureen full of an orthodox yet appetizing liquid, which he distinguished by the name of _Dillegrout_. The name is not promising, particularly the last syllable, but the dish could not have been a bad one. William created the inventor “chevalier de l’office,” and Sir Caramel Tezelin was farther gratified by being made Lord of the Manor of Addington. Many a manor had been the wages of less honest service.

The Tiercelins are descendants of the Tezelins; and it has often struck me as curious that of two recently-deceased holders of that name, one, a cutler in England, was famous for the excellence of his carving-knives; and the other, an actor in France, used to maintain that the first of comic parts was the compound cook-coachman in Molière’s “_Avare_.” Thus did they seem to prove their descent from the culinary chivalry of William of Normandy.

But there are other samples of William’s knights to be noticed. Among the followers who landed with him between Pevensey and Hastings, was a Robert who, for want of a surname, and because of his sinews, was called Robert le Fort, or “Strong.” It would have gone ill with William on the bloody day on which he won a throne, had it not been for this Robert le Fort, who interposed his escu or shield, between the skull of the Norman and the battle-axe of a Saxon warrior. This opportune service made a “Sieur Robert” of him who rendered it, and on the coat-of-arms awarded to the new knight was inscribed the device which yet belongs to the Fortescues;--“Forte Scutum Salus Ducum,”--a strong shield is the salvation of dukes--or leaders, as the word implies. The Duke of Normandy could not have devised a more appropriate motto; but he was probably helped to it by the learning and ready wit of his chaplain.

The danger into which William rushed that day was productive of dignity to more than one individual. Thus, we hear of a soldier who, on finding William unhorsed, and his helmet beaten into his face, remounted his commander after cleverly extricating his head from the battered load of iron that was about it. William, later in the day, came upon the trusty squire, fainting from the loss of a leg and a thigh. “You gave me air when I lacked it,” said the Conqueror, “and such be, henceforth, thy name; and for thy lost leg and thigh, thou shalt carry them, from this day, on thy shield of arms.” The maimed knight was made lord of broad lands in Derbyshire; and his descendants, the Eyres, still bear a leg and a thigh in armor, for their crest. It is too pretty a story to lose, but if the account of these knight-makings be correct, some doubt must be attached to that of the devices, if, as some assert, armorial bearings were not used until many years subsequent to the battle of Hastings. The stories are, no doubt, substantially true. William, like James III. of Scotland, was addicted to knighting and ennobling any individuals who rendered him the peculiar pleasures he most coveted. Pitscottie asserts that the latter king conferred his favors on masons and fiddlers; and we are told that he not only made a knight of Cochrane, a mason, but also raised him to the dignity of Earl of Mar. Cochrane, however, was an architect, but he would have been none the worse had he been a mason--at least, had he been a man and mason of such quality as Hugh Millar and Allan Cuningham.

Although it has been often repeated that there were no knights, in the proper sense of that word, before the period of William the Conqueror, this must be accepted with such amount of exception as to be almost equivalent to a denial of the assertion. There were knights before the Conquest, but the systems differed. Thus we know from Collier’s Ecclesiastical History that Athelstan was knighted by Alfred; and this is said to have been the first instance of the performance of the ceremony that can be discovered. Here again, however, a question arises. Collier has William of Malmesbury for his authority. The words of this old author are: “Athelstane’s grandfather, Alfred, seeing and embracing him affectionately, when he was a boy of astonishing beauty and graceful manners, had most devoutly prayed that his government might be prosperous; indeed, he had made him a knight unusually early, giving him a scarlet cloak, a belt studded with diamonds, and a Saxon sword with a golden scabbard.” This, and similar instances which might be cited, is supposed by some to prove the existence of knights as a distinct order among the Saxons, while others think that it may amount to nothing more than the first bestowing of arms. Louis le Débonnaire, it is remarked, _ense accinctus est_, received his arms at thirteen years old. But this was in some degree “knighting,” for we read in Leland’s History of Ireland, of Irish knighthood being conferred on recipients only seven years old.

If William the Conqueror made many knights in order to celebrate his conquest, the gentlemen with new honors did not always obtain peaceable possession of the estates which were sometimes added to the title. Here is an instance in the case of the ancient family of the Kinnersleys. William’s commissioners had appeared in Herefordshire, and in course of their predatory excursion, they came before the castle of John de Kinnersly, an old man, who is described as a knight, albeit some assert that there were no more knights in England before the conquest than there was rain on the earth before the flood. The old man who was blind, stood at his castle-gate in front of a semicircle formed by his twelve sons. Each had sword on thigh and halberd in hand. When the sheriffs and other commissioners asked him by what tenure he held his castle and estates, blind John exclaimed, “By my arms; by sword and spear; and by the same will keep them!” To which all his lively lads uttered a vigorous “Ay, ay,” and the Norman commissioners were so satisfied with the title, that they did not venture to further question the same, but left the possessor of castle and land undisturbed in that possession which is said to be nine points out of the ten required by the law.

During many reigns, no man was knighted, but who was of some “quality,” and generally because he was particularly useful to his own or succeeding generations. These require no notice. Some of these introduced customs that are worth noticing, and here is a sample.

Among the lucky individuals knighted by Edward I., Sir William Baud holds a conspicuous place. Sir William gave rise to a curious custom, which was long observed in Old St. Paul’s. During his lifetime, the dean and chapter had made over to him some laud in Essex. In return, or perhaps in “service” for this, the knight presented at the high altar of the cathedral, a doe “sweet and seasonable,” on the conversion of St. Paul, in winter; and a buck, in equally fitting condition, on the commemoration of St. Paul in summer. The venison was for the especial eating of the canons resident. The doe was carried to the altar by one man, surrounded by processional priests, and he was to have nothing for his trouble. The buck had several bearers and a more numerous accompaniment of priests, who disbursed the magnificent sum of twelve pence to the carriers. The knight’s buck made the dean and chapter so hilarious that when they appeared at the doors of the cathedral to escort it to the altar, they wore copes and vestments, and their reverences wore wreaths of roses on their solemn heads! Indeed, there was a special dress for the cathedral clergy on either day; each, according to the occasion, being ornamented with figures of bucks or does. At the altar, the dean sent the body to be baked, but the head was cut off and carried on a pike to the western door, where the huntsmen blew a _mort_, and the notes proclaiming the death of the stag were taken up and repeated by the “horners” of the city, who received a trifle from the rosy dean and chapter, for thus increasing the noisy importance of the occasion.

There is something, too, worthy of notice in the fact that Richard II. was the first king who knighted a London tradesman. Walworth, who struck down Wat Tyler, and who was knighted by that king for his good service, was engaged in commercial pursuits. This lord mayor, however, derived very considerable profits from pursuits less creditable to him. He was the owner of tenements by the water side, which were of the very worst reputation, but which brought him a very considerable yearly revenue. Sir William pocketed this with the imperially-complacent remark of “non olet.” The dagger in the city arms is not in memory of this deed; it simply represents the sword of St. Paul, and it has decorated the city shield since the first existence of a London municipality.

Walworth then is not a very respectable knight. We find one of better character in a knight of ancient family name, whose deeds merit some passing record.

Sir Robert Umfreville, a knight of the Garter, who owed his honors to the unfortunate Henry VI., found leisure, despite the busy and troubled times in which he lived, to found the Chantry of Farmacres, near Ravensworth, where two chaplains were regularly to officiate according to the law of Sarum. If the knight’s charity was great, his expectations of benefit were not small. The chaplains were daily to perform service for the benefit of the souls of the founder, and of all his kith, kin, and kindred. Nay, more than this, service was to be performed for the soul’s profit of all knights of the Garter, as long as the order existed, and of all the proprietors of the estate of Farmacres. The chaplains were to reside, board, and sleep, under the roof of the chapel. Once every two years the pious will of the founder allowed them a renewal of costume, consisting of “a sad and sober vest sweeping to their heels.” Upon one point Sir Robert was uncommonly strict; he would not allow of the presence of a female in the chapel, under any pretence whatever--even as a servant to the chaplains--_quia frequenter dum colitur Martha, expellitur Maria_. The latter, too, were bound to exercise no office of a secular nature, especially that of bailiff. To a little secular amusement, however, the sagacious knight did not object, and two months’ leave of absence was allowed to the chaplains every year; and doubtless no questions were asked, on their return, as to how it had been employed.

While touching on the matters which occurred during the reign of that unhappy Lancastrian king, Henry VI., I will observe that we have foreign testimony to the fact of our civil wars having been carried on with more knightly courtesy than had hitherto been the case in any other country. “In my humble opinion,” says Comines, “England is, of all the dominions with which I am acquainted, the one alone in which a public interest is properly treated. There is no violence employed against the people, and in war-time no edifice is destroyed or injured by the belligerents. The fate and misery of war falls heaviest on those immediately concerned in carrying it on.” He alludes particularly to the knights and nobles; but it is clear that, let war be carried on in ever so knightly a fashion, the people must be the chief sufferers. The warehouses may stand, but so also will commerce--very still and unproductive.

Courteous as the knights of this age may have been, they were by no means incorruptible. There were many of them in the service of Edward IV., who were the pensioners of Louis XI., who used to delight in exhibiting their names at the foot of acknowledgments for money received. One official, however, Hastings, would never attach his autograph to his receipt, but he had no scruples with regard to taking the money. The Czar buys Prussian service after the fashion of Louis XI.

Henry VIII. cared more for merit than birth in the knights whom he created. He first recognised the abilities of him who was afterward Sir John Mason, the eminent statesman of five reigns. This king was so pleased with an oration delivered in his presence by Mason, at All Souls, Oxford, that he took upon himself the charge of having him educated abroad, as one likely to prove an able minister of state. He was a faithful servant to the king. Elizabeth had one as gallant in Sir Henry Unton, who challenged the great Guise for speaking lightly of his royal mistress. The motives for the royal patronage of these knights was better than that which moved Richard I. when he raised the lowly-born Will Briewer to favoriteship and knighthood. Henry VIII. was fond of conferring the honor of chivalry on those who served him well; thus of the Cornish lawyer, Trigonnel, he made a knight, with forty pounds a year to help him to keep up the dignity, in acknowledgment of the ability with which, as proctor, he had conducted the case of divorce against Queen Katharine. It was better service than John Tirrell rendered to Richard III., who knighted him for his aid in the murder of the young princes, on which occasion he kept the keys of the Tower, and stood at the foot of the stairs, while Forest and Dighton were despatching the young victims. We have a knight of a different sort of reputation in Sir Richard Hutton, Charles I.’s “honest judge,” at whose opposition against the levying of ship-money, even the king could not feel displeased. Sir Richard deserved his honors; and we may reckon among them the fact, that “when he was a barrister at Gray’s Inn, he seldom or never took a fee of a clergyman.”

The old crest of the Huntingdonshire Cromwells was a lion rampant, holding a diamond ring in its fore-paw. This crest has reference to an individual knighted by Henry VIII. In the thirty-second year of that king’s reign, Richard Williams, _aliàs_ Cromwell, with five other gentlemen, challenged all or any comers from Scotland, Flanders, France, or Spain, who were willing to encounter them in the lists. The challenge was duly accepted, and on the day of encounter, Richard Cromwell flung two of his adversaries from their horses. Henry loved the sport, and especially such feats as this exhibited by Cromwell, whom he summoned to his presence. The king said, “You have hitherto been my Dick, now be my diamond;” and taking a diamond ring from his own finger, and placing it on that of Cromwell, he bade the latter always carry it for his crest. The king, moreover, knighted Richard, and what was better, conferred on him Romney Abbey, “on condition of his good service, and the payment of £4,663 4_s._ 2_d._ held in capite by the tenth part of a knight’s fee, paying £29 16_s._”

It was in the reign of Henry VIII. that for the first time a serjeant-at-law received the honor of knighthood. This seems to have been considered by the learned body as a corporate honor, by which the entire company of sergeants were lifted to a level with knights-bachelors, at least. It is doubtless for this reason that sergeants-at-law claim to be equal in rank with, and decline to go below those said knight’s bachelors.

Of Elizabeth, it is sufficient to name but one sample of her knights. She created many, but she never dubbed one who more nobly deserved the honor than when she clapped the sword on the shoulder of Spielman, the paper-maker, and bade him rise a knight. This was done by way of recompense for the improvements he had introduced into his art, at a time when printers and paper-makers were considered by Romanists anything but angels of light.

Hume, referring to the chivalry of James I.’s time, remarks that the private soldiers were drawn from a better class of men than was the case in Hume’s time. They approached, he says, nearer to an equality with the rank of officers. It has been answered that no such rank existed as that from which they are chiefly drawn now. This, however, is not the case. There were then, as now, doubtless many of the peasant and working classes in the army; but there is not now, as there was then, any encouragement to men of respectable station to begin the ascent in profession of arms at the lowest round of the ladder.

One of James I.’s knights was the well-known Sir Herbert Croft. James knighted him at Theobalds, out of respect to his family, and personal merits. Some years subsequently Sir Herbert, then above fifty years of age, joined the Church of Rome, and retired to Douay, where he dwelt a lay-brother, among the English Benedictines. He died among them, after a five years’ residence, in the year 1622. His eldest son William was also knighted, I think, by Charles I. He is an example of those who were both knights and clergymen, for after serving as colonel in the civil wars, he forsook catholicism, in which he had been brought up by his father, entered the Church of England, and like so many other knights who in former times had changed the sword for the gown, rose to the dignity of carrying an episcopal pastoral staff, and was made Bishop of Hereford in 1661. It was a descendant of his who wrote the very inaccurate biography of Young, in “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.” Wood, in his _Athenæ_, shows that the first Sir Herbert was a literary knight, who took up pen in the service of the communion into which he had entered. These were;--1. Letters persuasive to his wife and children to take upon them the Catholic religion. 2. Arguments to show that the Church, in communion with the See of Rome, is the true Church. 3. Reply to the answers of his daughter, Mary Croft, which she made to a paper of his sent to her concerning the Roman Church. All these pieces appeared in the same year, 1619, and they seem to have been very harmless weapons in the hands of a very amiable knight.

Among the most worthy of the knights created by James I. was Leonard Holliday, who served the office of Lord Mayor in 1605, and was dubbed chevalier by a king who is said never to have conferred the honor without being half afraid of the drawn sword which was his instrument. Sir Leonard did good service in return. In his time Moorfields consisted of nothing but desolate land, the stage whereon was enacted much violence and terrible pollution. In this savage locality, Sir Leonard effected as wonderful a change as Louis Napoleon has done in the Bois de Boulogne; and even a greater; for there were more difficulties in the knight’s way, and his will was less sovereign and potent to work mutation. Nevertheless, by perseverance, liberal outlay, and hard work of those employed in the manual labor, he transformed the hideous and almost pathless swamp into a smiling garden, wherein the citizens might take the air without fearing violence either to body or goods. They blessed king James’s knight as they disported themselves in the rural district with their wives and children. The laborers employed were said to have been less lavish of benedictions upon the head of him from whom they took their wages. They complained bitterly of the toil, and for a long time in London, when any great exertions were necessary to produce a desired end, promptly, men spoke of the same as being mere “Holiday work.”

James I. was not so perfect a knight in presence of a sword as he was in presence of a lady. He made more knights than any other king, not excepting William IV.; but he never dubbed one without some nervousness at the sight of the weapon with which he laid on the honor. Kenelm Digby states that when _he_ was knighted by James, the sword, had it not been guided in the King’s hand by the Duke of Buckingham, would have gone, not upon his shoulder, but into his eye. James’s aversion from the sight of a sword is said to have descended to him from his mother who, a short time previous to his birth, was the terrified spectator of the murder of Rizzio. The same King used to remark that there were two great advantages in wearing armor, namely, that the wearer could neither receive nor inflict much injury. Indeed, as James sagaciously remarked, the chief inconvenience to be dreaded from armor was in being knocked down in it, and left without a squire to lend assistance. In this case the knight stood, or lay, in imminent peril of suffocation; the armor being generally too heavy to admit of a knight rising from the ground without help. If he lay on his face his condition was almost hopeless. The sentiment of chivalry was, after all, not so foreign to James as is popularly supposed. Witness the circumstance when Sully came over here as embassador extraordinary, James made the embassador lower his flag to the pennant of the English vessel sent out to receive or escort him. This, however, had been well nigh construed into an affront. The poets of this time too began to have a chivalrous feeling for the hardships of common women. The feeling used to be all for princesses and courtly dames, but it was now expressed even for shop-wives, behind counters. Thus the author of “The Fair Maid of the Inn” says:--

“A goldsmith keeps his wife
Wedged into his shop like a mermaid; nothing of her
To be seen, that’s woman, but her upper part.”

The ladies too, themselves were growing ambitious, and as fanciful as any knight’s “dame par amour” of them all. The Goldsmith’s daughter in “Eastward Ho!” who wants to be made a lady, says to her “sweet knight,” “Carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearing of Bow bells!” and _à-propos_ to titles, let me add that, in James’s time, it was, according to Jonson--

“----a received heresy
That England bears no Dukes.”

Southey commenting on this passage, said that the title was probably thought ominous, so many dukes having lost their heads.

In the second year of the reign of James I., he made not less than three hundred knights; and on another occasion he is said to have made two hundred and thirty-seven in six weeks. In France, when the state was in distress, knighthood was often a marketable commodity; but it probably was never more so there, than it was in England under the first James. No one was more conscious than he, when he had an unworthy person before him; and it sometimes happened that these persons had the same uncomfortable consciousness touching themselves. Thus, we are told that when “an insignificant person” once held down his head, as the king was about to knight him, James called out, “Hold up thy head, man, I have more need to be ashamed than thou.”