The History of Chivalry Volume II Part 3

The squire took the ring, and immediately mounting his courser, fled through the postern, thinking he should achieve great honor if he could reach Sir John Chandos.

The first squire having lost so much time in the confusion of the night did not arrive at Poictiers till nine in the morning. He found Sir John at ma.s.s; and, in consequence of the importance of his message, he disturbed his devotions.

Chandos's feelings had been severely offended by the pride and presumption of the Earl of Pembroke, and he was in no great haste to relieve him. He heard the ma.s.s out. The tables were then arranged for the noon repast.

The servants, among whom the message of the squire had been bruited, enquired of Sir John if he would go to dinner. He replied, "Yes; if it were ready."

He went into the hall, and knights and squires brought him water. While he was was.h.i.+ng, the second squire from the Earl of Pembroke, pale, weary, and travel-soiled, entered the hall, and knelt before him, and took the ring out of his purse, and said, "Right dear Sir, the Earl of Pembroke recommends himself to you by this token, and heartily desires your a.s.sistance in relieving him from his present danger at Puirenon."

Chandos took the ring; but instead of calling his friends to arm, he coldly observed, that it would be difficult to a.s.sist the Earl if the affair were such as the squire had represented it. "Let us go to dinner,"

said he; and accordingly the knights sat down.

The first course was eaten in silence, for Chandos was thoughtful, and the minds of his friends were not idle.

In the middle of the second course, when the generous wine of France had roused his better nature, he started from a reverie, and with a smile of pride and generousness exclaimed, "Sirs, the Earl of Pembroke is a n.o.ble man, and of great lineage: he is son of my natural lord the King of England, for he hath married his daughter, and in every thing he is companion to the Earl of Cambridge. He hath required me to come, to him, and I ought to consent to his desire."

Then thrusting the table from him, and rising to the full height of his fine martial figure, he cried, "Gallant knights, I will ride to Puirenon."

This n.o.ble and generous resolve found an echo in the heart of every one that was present. The trumpets sounded, the knights hastily donned their armour, and saddled the first horses they could meet with; and in a few moments the court-yard glittered with more than two hundred spears. They rode apace towards Puirenon; but news of their approach reached the vigilant French in sufficient time for them to abandon the siege, and effect their retreat with their prisoners and booty.

The Earl of Pembroke soon found that the terror of the name of Chandos had scared the foe, and he proposed to his companions to ride towards Poictiers and meet their deliverers. They accordingly left the village in a right pleasant mood, some on foot, others on horses, and many a gallant steed carried double that day. They had not ridden a league before they met Sir John Chandos and his company, who much to their regret heard of the retreat of the French. The two parties rode in company for the s.p.a.ce of three leagues, holding merry converse on deeds of arms. They then departed, Chandos returning to Poictiers, and the Earl of Pembroke to Mortaygne.[55]

[Sidenote: The last curious circ.u.mstances of his life.]

Our knight's career of glory approached its close. By the treachery of a monk, the abbey of St. Salvyn, seven leagues from Poictiers, fell into the possession of the French, who all that year, 1371, had been hara.s.sing the English territories. Chandos was deeply mortified at the loss of the abbey, it being within the scope of his seneschals.h.i.+p. To recover it by chivalric skill, or to bring his enemies to fair and manly battle, seemed equally impossible, and his high spirit was wounded at these insults to his military abilities. On the last day of December he made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the abbey; and when he returned to the town of Chauvigny, he dismissed two-thirds of his troops, knights of Poictou and England. Sir Thomas Percy, with thirty spears, had his leave to go in quest of adventures. His own mind was too ill at rest for him to indulge in mere chivalric exercises; and after he had wished them good speed he went back into the house full of melancholy thoughts. He would not retire to rest though the night was far advanced; but he remained in the kitchen warming himself by the fire, his servants endeavouring by their jests and tales to banish his uneasiness.

Before daylight a man with the haste and anxiety of the bearer of news of import came into the house.

"The Frenchmen are riding abroad," said he to Sir John.

"How knowest thou that?"

"I left St. Salvyn with them," was the answer.

"Which way did they ride?" demanded Chandos.

"Their exact course I wot not," replied his informant; "but I saw them on the high road to Poictiers."

"What Frenchmen?" required Sir John.

"Sir Louis of St. Julian, and Carnot the Breton."

"Well," quoth Chandos, "I care not: I have no mind to ride forth to-night: it may happen that they may be encountered, though I am not there."

The conversation closed here, but Chandos could not dismiss the subject from his mind. He mused upon what he had heard, and hope gradually broke through the gloom of his disappointment.

He then told his knights he would ride to Poictiers, and they joyfully caparisoned their horses.

Chandos and forty spears left Chauvigny before daylight, and getting into the Frenchmen's course, they soon overtook them near the bridge of Lusac.

They were on foot, preparing to attack Sir Thomas Percy and his little band, who had posted themselves on the other side of the bridge.

Before the Frenchmen and Bretons had arranged their plan of a.s.sault, they heard the trampling of Chandos's war-horses, and turning round they saw his dreadful banner displayed. He approached within three furlongs of the bridge and had a parley with them. He reproached them for their robberies and acts of violence in the country whereof he was seneschal.

"It is more than a year and a half," he continued, "that I have set all my aim to find and encounter you, and now, I thank G.o.d, I see you and speak to you. It shall soon be known who is prowest, you or I. You have often vaunted your desire to meet me; now you may see me before you.--I am John Chandos: regard me well," he thundered in their ears, his countenance darkening as he spoke.

At that moment an English squire was struck to the earth by the lance of a Breton. The generous nature of Chandos was rouzed at this ungallant act; and, in a tone of mingled expostulation and reproof, he cried to his own company, "Sirs, how is it that you suffer this squire thus to be slain? A foot, a foot!"

He dismounted, and so did all his band, and they advanced against the French. His banner, with the escutcheon above his arms, was carried before him, and some of his men-at-arms surrounded it. Chandos missed his steps, for the ground was slippery from the h.o.a.r-frost of the morning, and in his impatience for battle he entangled his feet in the folds of his surcoat.

He fell just as he reached his enemy; and as he was rising, the lance of a French squire entered his flesh, under the left eye, between the nose and the forehead. Chandos could not see to ward off the stroke; for, some years before, he had lost the sight of that eye, while hunting the hart in the country round Bourdeaux: unhappily, too, his helmet was without the defence of its vizor.

He fell upon the earth, and rolled over two or three times, from the pain of the wound, but he never spoke again.

The French endeavoured to seize him; but his uncle, Sir Edward Clifford, bestrode the body, and defended it so valorously, that soon none dared to approach him.

[Sidenote: Grief at his death.]

The barons and knights of Poictou were conquerors, and when the confusion was hushed, they flocked round their outstretched friend and seneschal.

They wept, they wrung their hands, they tore their hair, and gave way to every violent expression of grief. They called him the flower of chivalry, and lamented the hour when the lance was forged which had brought him into peril of death.

He heard and understood them well, but was unable to reply. His servants then unarmed him; and, laying him upon a pavesse, or large s.h.i.+eld, they bore him gently to the neighbouring fortress of Mortimer.

He died on the following day; and a cavalier more courteous, and more worthily adorned with n.o.ble virtues and high qualities, never adorned the English chivalry. He was, in sooth, as gallant a knight as ever laid lance in rest.

The Prince of Wales, the Earl of Cambridge, the Earl of Pembroke, and, indeed, all the English barons and knights then in Guienne, lamented his fate, as the loss of all the English dominions in France; and many right n.o.ble and valiant knights of France mourned the death of a generous foe, and they wished he had been made prisoner; for they said he was so sage and imaginative that he would have planned a peace between the two nations.[56]

Chandos was never married. All the estates which he had won by his valour went to his three sisters.

CHAP. II.

PROGRESS OF CHIVALRY IN GREAT BRITAIN,

FROM THE REIGN OF RICHARD II. TO THAT OF HENRY VIII.

_Complaints of the unchivalric State of Richard's Court ... Influence of Chivalry on the national Character ... Scottish Chivalry ...

Chivalric Kindness of Robert Bruce ... Mutual Chivalry between the Scotch and English Courts ... French Knights' Opinions of Scottish Chivalry ... Courtesies between English and Scottish Knights ...

Chivalric Battle of Otterbourn ... Hotspur and the Douglas ... A cavaleresque Story ... Reign of Henry IV. ... Chivalric Parley between him and the Duke of Orleans ... Henry's unchivalric Conduct at Shrewsbury ... Henry V. ... Knights of the Bath ... Henry's Love of chivalric Books ... His chivalric Bearing ... Commencement of the Decline of Chivalry ... The Civil Wars injured Chivalry ... Caxton's Lamentation ... He exaggerates the Evil ... Many gallant English Knights ... Character of Henry VIII. with Reference to Chivalry ...

Tournaments in his Reign ... Field of the Cloth of Gold ...

Introduction of Italian Literature favoured Romance ... Popularity of Chivalric Literature ... English Knights continued to break Lances for Ladies' Love ... State of Scottish Chivalry at this Period ... James IV. ... Chivalric Circ.u.mstances at Flodden Field._

In the reign of Richard II. the splendor of England's chivalry was clouded. That monarch had neither spirit nor ambition to recover the possessions which had been wrested from the crown during the illness of his father, the Black Prince, and the imbecility of his grandfather, Edward III.; for though the war with France nominally continued, yet he gave few occasions for his knights to break their lances with the French.

Not that England enjoyed a state of perfect peace, but the wars in France and Portugal had no brilliant results, for the English knights were no longer guided by the sageness of Chandos, or the gallantry of Prince Edward.

[Sidenote: Complaints of the unchivalric state of Richard's court.]

England was menaced with invasion by Charles VI. of France; but the project died away, and nothing gave greater offence to the people than the want of spirit in the court, in not revenging itself for the insult. A comparison was immediately inst.i.tuted between the present and the preceding reign. Where were those great enterprises, it was asked, which distinguished the days of King Edward III.? where could be found the valiant men who had fought with the Prince, his son? In those days England was feared, and was reputed as possessing the flower of Christian chivalry; but now no man speaks of her, now there are no wars but such as are made on poor men's purses, and thereto every one is inclined.[57]