Henry VI., but there was chivalry enough for two in the heart of his
admirable wife, the most heroic, perhaps, of English queens, Margaret
of Anjou. How unlike was the destiny of this ill-matched pair to that
of their successors Edward IV. and his wife Elizabeth Woodville! This
king assumed one privilege of knighthood, by loving whom he pleased,
and marrying whom he loved. He was the first king of England who
married with a simple lady, that is, one not of princely blood. He did
not prosper much the more for it, for his reign was one of a rather
splendid misery, in which the luxurious king was faithful to no one,
neither to the friends who upheld his cause, nor to Mistress Shore, who
helped him to render his cause unworthy. Passing over Edward V., we may
notice that there was much more of the knightly character in Richard
III., than in the fourth Edward. Richard would be better appreciated
if we judged him according to the spirit of the times in which he
was born, and not by the standard of our own. A braver monarch never
fronted an English force; and if heavy crimes can justly be laid to his
account, it should not be forgotten, that amid the bloody struggles
which he had to maintain, from the day almost of his accession, he had
leisure to put in force more than one enactment by which English people
profit, down even to the present period.
I have elsewhere remarked that many of us originally take our idea of
Henry VII. from the dashing Richmond who opens the fifth act of Richard
III. in panoply and high spirits. None of Shakespeare’s characters make
a more knight-like appearance than he. The fact, nevertheless, is that
Henry was anything but chivalrous in mien or carriage. His mother was
married, it was said, when only nine years old; and it is added that
Henry was born in the year following the marriage. It is certain that
the lady was not in her teens, and to this circumstance, Turner is
inclined to attribute the feebleness of Henry’s constitution.
If he could not so well defend himself by the sword as poets and Tudor
historians have declared he could, he at least knew how to do so by
the strong arm of the law. It was in his reign that benefit of clergy
was taken from lay persons murdering their lord, master, or sovereign
immediate.
It is as certain that, in some parts of the island at least, the
chivalry of Richard, who was never nearly so black as he has been
painted, was more appreciated than the cautiousness of his successful
rival. In the northern counties, says Bacon, “the memory of King
Richard was so strong, that it lay like lees in the bottom of men’s
hearts, and if the vessel was but stirred, it would come up.”
The _gallant_ sentiment of chivalry was really strongly impressed on
the popular mind at this period. I may cite as an instance, that not
only was Perkin Warbeck, who may be called an adventurous knight who
has not had due justice rendered to him, familiarly spoken of by the
name of “the White Rose;” but that if we may believe Bacon, the name
was continued in common speech to his wife, in compliment to her true
beauty.
Henry has been much censured for a vice from which all knights were
bound, like friars, to be free. But there were chevaliers in his reign
who were as fond of money as he. Sir William Stanley was one of them.
At the period of his execution, there was found in his castle of Holt,
a more than modest temporary provision for a poor knight. In ready
money alone, there were forty thousand marks--to say nothing of plate,
jewelry, household furniture, and live stock, all in abundance, and of
the first quality. “And for his revenue in land and fee, it was three
thousand pounds sterling a year of old rent, great matter in those
times. The great spoil of Bosworth field came almost wholly into this
man’s hands, to his infinite enriching.”
Bacon classes Henry VII., Louis XI., and Ferdinand of Aragon, as the
three _Magi_ of kings of the age in which they lived. It is a happy
classification. Ferdinand, however, had more of the knight in him than
his royal cousins, and not less of the statesman. He it was who first
invented the resident embassador at foreign courts.
In chivalric bearing, Henry VIII., when young, was perhaps never
equalled, and certainly never surpassed. He was the most courteous of
knights, and the most gallant of gentlemen. As long as he had Cardinal
Wolsey at his side to guide and control him, he maintained this
character unimpaired; and it was not till this old Mentor died, that
Henry lost his reputation as a Christian knight and gentleman.
By a decree of the 24th of this king’s reign, no person below the
degree of a knight could wear a collar of SS. The judges wear such
collars because they are, or rank with, knights. That a decree was
issued to this effect would seem to imply that previous to the period
named, individuals below the knightly degree might wear the collar in
question. Edward IV., therefore, when he conferred the collar on the
Tanner of Tamworth, was not guilty of any anomaly. On the contrary, he
evidently knew what he was about, by the remark--
“So here I _make_ thee the best Esquire
That is in the North Countrie.”
In Edward’s time then, the collar may have constituted the difference
between squire and knight. But it was not the only one. If there was
a difference at their necks, there was also a distinction at their
heels. The knight always wore golden spurs: he was the Eques Auratus.
The squire could wear spurs of no more costly metal than silver, and
“White-spurs,” accordingly, was the generic term for an esquire. It
was probably in allusion to this that the country squire mentioned
by Jonson, displayed his silver spurs among his side-board plate. To
return to Henry VIII.; let me add that he exhibited something of what
was considered a knightly attribute, compassion for the lowly, when he
suggested that due sleeping-time should be allowed to laborers during
the summer.
Edward VI. was simply a youth of much promise. His father was
unwilling to create him a knight before he knew how to wield arms;
and if he gained this knowledge early, he was never called to put
it in practice. There was more of the chivalrous character in his
over-abused half-sister, Mary, and also in Elizabeth; but then queens
can not of course be considered as knights: Elizabeth, however, had
much of the spirit, and she was surrounded by knightly men and served
with a knightly devotion. There was, I may observe, one species of
knights in her time, who were known as “knights of the road.” The
39th of Elizabeth, especially and curiously points to them in an act
to relieve the hundred of Beynhurst from the statute of Hue and Cry
(where there was no voluntary default) on account of the penalties to
which that hundred was subject from the numerous robberies committed in
Maidenhead Thicket. Mavor, in his account of Berkshire, says that “The
vicar of Henley who served the curé of Maidenhead, was allowed about
the same time an advance of salary as some compensation for the danger
of passing the thicket.” The vicar, like the knights of the road, at
least, had purer air than the clergy and chivalry who kept house in
the capital. “In London,” says Euphues, “are all things (as the fame
goeth) that may either please the sight, or dislike the smell; either
fill the eye with delight, or fill the nose with infection.”
Refreshment under such circumstances was doubly needed; and the popular
gratitude was due to that most serviceable of knights, Sir Thomas
Gresham, who introduced the orange as an article of trade, and who was
consequently painted by Antonio More with an orange in his hand. The
old Utrecht artist just named, was knighted by Charles V. who paid
him poorly--some six hundred ducats for three pictures, but added
knighthood, which cost the emperor nothing, and was esteemed of great
value by the painter.
One would imagine that under Mary and Elizabeth, knighthood had become
extinguished, were we to judge by an anonymous volume which was
published in Mary’s reign, and republished in that of Elizabeth. The
great names of that period are proof to the contrary, but there may
have been exceptions. Let us then look into the volume of this unknown
writer who bewails the degeneracy of his times, and lays down what he
entitles the “Institution of a Gentleman.”
“THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN.”
“Your countenance, though it be glossed with knighthood, looks so
borrowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as ‘stand
and deliver.’”--_The Asparagus Garden._
The unknown author of the “Institution of a Gentleman,” dedicates
his able treatise to “Lorde Fitzwater, sonne and heire to the Duke
of Sussex.” In his dedicatory epistle he does not so much mourn over
a general decay of manners, as over the lamentable fact, that the
lowly-born are rising to gentility, while nobility and knighthood are
going to decay. These he beseeches “to build gentry up again, which
is, for truth sore decayed, and fallen to great ruin, whereby such
great corruption of manners hath taken place, that almost the name of
gentleman is quenched, and handicraftsmen have obtained the title of
honor, though (indeed) of themselves they can challenge no greater
worthiness than the spade brought unto their late fathers.”
The writer is troubled with the same matter in his introductory
chapter. This chapter shows how, at this time, trade was taking
equality with gentry. “Yea, the merchantman thinketh not himself
well-bred unless he be called one of the worshipful sort of merchants,
of whom the handicraftsman hath taken example; and taketh to be called
‘Master,’ whose father and grandfather were wont to be called ‘Good
Man.’”
On the question of “What is a gentleman?” the author goes back to a
very remote period, that of Adam, quoting the old saying:--
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
and he makes the following comment upon this well-known text:
“There be many of so gross understanding that they think to confound a
gentleman, when they ask of him this question. To whom it may be said
that so much grace as Adam our first father, received of God at his
creation, so much nobility and gentry he received. And to understand
perfectly how and after what demeanor Adam behaved himself, or how he
directed the order of his life, the witnesses, I think, in that behalf
are far to seek, whose behavior, if it were good and honest, then was
he the first gentleman, even so much as the first earthly follower of
virtues. But if there were in him no such virtue, then was he the first
gentleman in whom virtues and gentle deeds did first appear.”
As a training toward excellence, our anonymous author recommends
severity of discipline from the cradle upward. “Neither,” he says,
“do I mean to allow _any_ liberty to youth, for as liberty is to all
eyes hurtful, so is it to youth a present poison;” but he forgets
that even poisons are administered in small doses in order to cure
certain diseases, and that life would be a disease, even to the young,
without some measure of liberty. He is terribly afraid that freedom in
childhood will spoil the man, who himself will be no man, with too much
liberty, but a “Royster;” “and a ‘Royster,’” he adds, “can not do the
office of a gentleman, so long I mean as a Roysterian he doth continue.”
He then informs us that there had long been in England a division
of classes, under the heads of “Gentle Gentle, Gentle Ungentle, and
Ungentle Gentle.” These were not classes of society generally, but
classes of the orders of Gentlemen exclusively. The _Gentle Gentle_
are those of noble birth, from dukes’ sons down to esquires, provided
they join to their “gentle house, gentle manners, and noble conditions,
which is the cause of the addition of the other word called gentle.”
This is much such a definition of gentleman as might be now given,
with the exception that the question of birth has little to do
with the matter, and that gentle manners and noble conditions, as
our author calls gentleman-like bearing, scholarly education, and
Christian principles, now make of a man a gentleman, let him be of
“gentle” house or not. Indeed, the author himself is not indisposed to
accept this method of definition, for on proceeding to tell us what
“Gentle Ungentle” is, he says that “Gentle Ungentle is that man which
is descended of noble parentage, by the which he is commonly called
gentle, and hath in him such corrupt and ungentle manners as to the
judgment of all men he justly deserveth the name of ungentle.” His
remedy again for preventing the gentle becoming ungentle is coercion
in youth-time. He thinks that virtue is to be got from the human
being like oils or other juices from certain vegetable substances, by
ex-pression. Squeeze the human being tightly, press him heavily, he is
sure to yield something. No doubt; but after the pressure he is often
of little more use than a well-sucked orange.
We next come to the “Ungentle Gentle.” In the definition of this term,
the author, with all his reverence for nobility, is compelled to allow
that there is a nobility of condition as well as a nobility of birth;
but others who contested this fact, gave a new word to the English
tongue, or made a new application of an old word in order to support
their theory and assail those whom they sought to lower.
“Ungentle Gentle,” says our author, “is he which is born of a low
degree--which man, taking his beginning of a poor kindred, by his
virtue, wit, policy, industry, knowledge in laws, valiancy in arms, or
such like honest means, becometh a well-behaved and high-esteemed man,
preferred then to great office, put in great charge and credit, even so
much as he becometh a post or stay of the commonwealth, and so growing
rich, doth thereby advance and set up the rest of his poor line or
kindred. They are the children of such one commonly called gentleman;
of which sort of gentleman we have now in England very many, whereby
it should appear that virtue flourisheth among us. These gentlemen are
now called ‘Up-starts,’ a term lately invented by such as pondered
not the grounds of honest means of rising or coming to promotion.”
Nevertheless, says our censor, there be upstarts enough and to spare.
The worshipful unworthies, he tells us, abound; and the son of good-man
Thomas, or good-man John, have obtained the name of gentlemen, the
degree of esquires or knights, and possessing “a little dunghill
forecast to get lands, by certain dark augmentative practices,” they
are called “worshipful” at every assize. He dates the origin of this
sort of nobility, knighthood and esquirearchy, from the time of the
suppression and confiscation of abbeys and abbey-estates. He has a
curious passage on this subject:--
“They have wrongfully intruded into gentry, and thrust themselves
therein, as Bayard, the cart-jade, might leap into the stable of
Bucephalus, and thrust his head into the manger with that worthy
courser. The particular names of whom, if I should go about to
rehearse, it would require long labor, and bring no fruit to the
readers thereof. And it is well known that such intruders, such
unworthy worshipful men, have chiefly flourished since the putting down
of abbeys, which time is within my remembrance.”
While allowing that gentlemanly manners help to make the gentleman,
and that birth is only an accidental matter, having little to do with
the subject, he still can not forbear to reverence rather good men of
high birth than good men of low degree. He evidently thinks that he
was enjoined by religion to do so, for he remarks: “As in times past,
no man was suffered to be ‘Knyght of the Roodes,’ but such one as was
descended of the lyne of gentleman, whereby it appeareth that no men
were thought so meet to defend the right, that is to say the faith
of Christ, as gentlemen, and so to have their offices agreeable with
their profession, it is most meet that all gentlemen be called to such
room and office as may be profitable to the commonwealth.” This idea
that the holy sepulchre was to be rescued from the infidels only by
gentlemen, and the fact that it has not been so rescued, reminds me of
that king of Spain, who, finding himself in danger of being roasted
alive, from sitting in a chair which one of his great officers had
placed too near the fire, chose to roast on, for the singular reason
that there was no grandee at hand to draw his chair away again!
In 1555, this writer still accounted the profession of arms as the
noblest, the most profitable to the professor, and the most useful to
the commonwealth. Courage, liberality, and faithful observance of all
promises; thus endowed, he thinks a man is a true gentleman. He draws,
however, a happy parallel when admitting that if it become a gentleman
to be a good knight and valiant soldier, it even more becometh him
to be a great statesman. For, “although to do valiantly in the wars
it deserveth great praise and recompense, yet to minister justice
in the state of peace is an office worthy of higher commendation.
The reason is, wars are nothing necessary, but of necessity must be
defended when they fall. And contrariwise, peace is a thing not only
most necessary, but it is called the best thing which even nature hath
given unto man.” This parallel, if indeed it may be so called, is only
employed, however, for the purpose of showing that certain posts in the
state should only be given to gentlemen born. There is a good deal of
the red-tapist in our moralist after all; and he has a horror, still
entertained in certain localities, of admitting the democratic element
into the public offices. Thus we find him maintaining that, “Unto a
gentleman appertaineth more fully than unto any other sort of man,
embassage or message to be done between kings or princes of this earth;
more fitly I say, because gentlemen do know how to bear countenance and
comely gesture before the majesty of a king, better than other sorts
of men.” One would think that the majesty of a king was something too
dazzling for a common man of common sense to look upon and live, and
yet the writer is evidently aware that there is nothing in it, for he
concludes his chapter on this matter by observing that “a gentleman
sent of embassage unto a prince ought to think a king to be but a
man, and, in reverence and humility, boldly to say his message unto
him.” Surely a man of good sense might do this, irrespective of his
birth, particularly at a time when the unskilfulness and ignorance of
gentlemen were so great as to pass into a proverb, and “He shooteth
like a gentleman fair and far off,” implied not only ill-shooting
with bows and arrows, “but it extended farther and reached to greater
matters, all to the dispraise of ignorant gentlemen.”
It is so common a matter with us to refer to the days in which this
author wrote, as days in which old knights and country gentlemen
maintained such hospitality as has seldom been since witnessed, that we
are surprised to find complaint made, in this treatise, of something
just the contrary. The author enjoins these knights and gentlemen to
repair less to London, and be more seen dispensing hospitality in their
own houses. “In the ancient times,” he says, “when curious buildings
fed not the eye of the wayfaring man, then might he be fed and have
good repast at a gentleman’s place, so called. Then stood the buttery
door without a hatch; yeoman then had no cause to carve small dishes;
Flanders cooks had then no wages for their devices, nor square tables
were not used. This variety and change from the old English manner hath
smally enriched gentlemen, but much it hath impoverished their names,
not without just punishment of their inconsistency in that behalf.” Let
me add, that the writer thinks the country knight or gentleman would
do well were he to exercise the office of justice of the peace. He is
sorely afraid, however, that there is a disqualification, on the ground
of ignorance. A moralist might have the same fear just now, without
coming to the same conclusion. Our author, for instance, argues that
reverence is to be paid to the noble, _quand même_. Let him be ignorant
and tyrannical, yet to reverence him is to give example of obedience to
others. This is very poor logic, and what follows is still worse; for
this writer very gravely remarks, that “We ought to bear the offences
of noble men patiently, and that if these forget themselves, yet ought
not smaller men to be oblivious of their duty in consequence, and fail
in their respect.”
We come upon another social trait, when we find the author lamenting
that, however much it becometh a gentleman to be acquainted with
hawking and hunting, yet that these pastimes are so abused by being
followed to excess, that “gentlemen will almost do nothing else, or
at the least can do that better than any other thing.” To the excess
alluded to does the author trace the fact that “there are so many raw
soldiers when time of war requireth their help. This is the cause of so
many unlearned gentlemen, which, as some say, they understand not the
inkhorn terms that are lately crept into our language. And no marvel it
is, though they do not understand them, whereas in their own hawking
and hunting terms they be ignorants as ‘Auvent’ and ‘Retrouvre,’
which they call ‘_Houent_’ and ‘_Retrires_.’” What better could be
expected from men who had given up the practice of the long bow to
take to the throwing of dice? But there was now as wild extravagance
of dress as ignorance of uncommon things, in the class of foolish
knights and gentlemen. This is alluded to in the chapter on dress,
wherein it is said that “the sum of one hundred pounds is not to be
accounted in these days to be bestowed of apparel for one gentleman,
but in times past, a chamber gown was a garment which dwelt with an
esquire of England twenty years”--and I believe that the knights were
as frugal as the esquires. “Then flourished the laudable simplicity
of England,” exclaims the author; “there were no conjurors and hot
scholars, applying our minds to learne our new trifle in wearing our
apparel.” Upon the point of fashions, the author writes with a feeling
as if he despaired of his country. “The Englishman,” he observes,
“changeth daily the fashion of his garment; sometimes he delighteth
in many guards, welts and pinks, and pounces. Sometimes again, to the
contrary, he weareth his garments as plain as a sack; yet faileth he
not to change also that plainness if any other new fangle be invented.
This is the vanity of his delight.” And this vanity was common to all
men of high degree in his time--to those to whom “honor” was due, from
men of less degree--and these were “dukes, earls, lords, and such
like, of high estate,” as well as to those who were entitled to the
“worship” of smaller men, and _these_ were “knights, esquires, and
gentlemen.” There is here, I think, some confusion in the way such
terms are applied; but I have not made the extract for the purpose of
grounding a comment upon it, but because it illustrates one portion of
my subject, and shows that while “your honor” was once the due phrase
of respect to the peerage, “your worship” was the reverential one paid
to knights, esquires, _and_ gentlemen. We still apply the terms, if
not to the different degrees named above, yet quite as confusedly, or
as thoughtlessly with respect to the point whether there be anything
honorable or worshipful in the individual addressed. This, however, is
only a form lingering among the lower classes. As matters of right,
however, “his honor” still sits in Chancery, and “your worship” is to
be seen behind any justice’s table.
We will now return to a race of kings who, whatever their defects,
certainly did not lack some of the attributes of chivalry.
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
THE STUARTS.
“May’t be pleasure to a reader’s ear,
That never drew save his own country’s air,
To hear such things related.”
HEYWOOD, _the English Traveller_
It is an incontrovertible fact, that the king of England, who least
of all resembled a knight in his warlike character, was the one who
surpassed all his brother sovereigns in his knightly spirit as a lover.
I allude to James I. The godson of Charles IX. of France was in his
childhood, what his godfather had never been, a dirty, droll boy. He
is the only king who ever added an original remark to a royal speech
set down for him to deliver. The remark in question was, probably,
nearly as long as the speech, for James was but four years old when he
gave utterance to it. He had been rolling about on the throne impishly
watching, the while, the grim lords to whom he, ultimately, recited
a prepared speech with great gravity and correctness. At the end of
his speech, he pointed to a split in the tiled roof of the hall, or
to a rent in the canopy of the throne, and announced to the lords and
others present the indisputable fact, that “there was a hole in the
parliament.”